Becoming contemplative

THIS is no big deal actually. We have to disabuse ourselves from the thought that to be contemplative is an impossible dream. We are meant to be contemplatives, to live our life, right where we are at the moment, with God, seeing things, thinking and doing things with him.

            Obviously, right now, many people are asking whether this is really a goal for us to reach, whether it is feasible, whether it is worth the effort. And that’s because the current world culture is still unfamiliar, if not averse, to this truth that needs to be worked out.

            We have to resolve this problem. And we have to start by knowing exactly who and what we are. Are we just rational beings guided only by our senses and at most by our intelligence, and meant only to have an earthly and temporal shelf-life? Or we are more than that?

            Do we believe that we are really the image and likeness of God, and made children of his through his grace, meant to share our life with God not only for a time but for eternity? How can we prove this?

            I believe the root of today’s crisis can be traced to these questions. The answers have been varied, and lately they tend more toward considering man as a mere natural being bound only to space and time.

            If there’s any mention of God in that frame of mind, it’s more for formalism or because such reference can give some solutions to temporal problems, like our physical and mental health.

            This was what I gathered from two news items that recently appeared in an American newspaper, known for its very liberal and secular worldview. In one item, it said that believing in God, doing some prayers, can give relief to people with depression. The other said that going to church from time to time can do us some good.

            Of course, with the way God, faith and religion are framed in those articles, some health effects of some religious practices are highlighted, while disregarding other aspects involved. And so those articles did not lack critics who reacted strongly.

            One critic said that religion is a dangerous thing. It is, in fact, according to him, a mental illness, and that whatever good effects religion can give, as mentioned in the articles, are at best only apparent and can be attained also by other more reliable means—like talking with brilliant people, having regular injections of hormones like endorphin, etc.

            What to me emerged into the open from those articles and their reactions is the fact that many people have a very poor, reduced understanding of man. Man, to them, is simply a being with earthly and temporal shelf-life. There is no after-life, nothing spiritual in us, much less, anything destined to the supernatural in us.

            That’s the reason why we have to highlight nowadays the spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life, and one consequence of which is that we are meant to have a contemplative life—a life of faith, of abiding conversation with God, of living life with him.

            Much of the problem about showing the spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life stems from the ignorance many people have about how to live a spiritual and supernatural life, how to be contemplatives in the middle of the world.

            But this should be no problem, because if we really believe there is God and that God is our Creator and Father who sent his son to reveal to us who God is and who we really are, then we can easily make the proper conclusions to guide us as to the practical implications of these truths.

            The crisis is due to the fact that many of us are not doing our part in relation to this truth. This truth calls us to believe, to pray, to acquire a certain lifestyle where God becomes the root, the center and the end of everything.

            The crisis is due to the fact that we prefer to be guided only by our senses and by material, earthly values, making them the only reality in life. Nothing beyond them.

            The increasingly volatile crisis can somehow be tackled if we really make a consistent and convincing testimony of an authentic spiritual and contemplative life right in the middle of the world.

            God is everywhere, and he waiting for us to engage with him all the time, and usually in most ordinary events of our daily life. If we correspond to this, then we start to live a contemplative life.