Contemplative prayer seeks him "whom my soul loves (Song of Songs 1:7). It is Jesus, and in him, the Father. We seek him, because to desire him is always the beginning of love, and we seek him in that pure faith which causes us to be born of him and to live in him… -CCC 2709
In the excerpt above from the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s treatment of contemplative prayer, contemplative practice is identified as a prayer of seeking. There is humility implicit in seeking because, in adopting the attitude of seeking, we recognize that we have not fully found and do not fully possess that which we seek. This is not to challenge the notion that Christian contemplatives have encountered Jesus and continue to encounter the Mystery of Christ in their daily living, as it is certainly these encounters that drive our searching practice. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that Christ in God is endlessly knowable, and no matter the depth and breath of our previous encounters with Jesus, there is always more to be discovered. The desire that moves us forward is the truly insatiable desire for divine intimacy. That we pray with a “pure” faith point to contemplative prayer as a prayer of letting go, surrendering our presuppositions about and expectations of Christ, meeting God on God’s terms, rather than our own. We seek after the full Reality of God, not a god of our own creation.