“Contemplative practice” is just that: practice. The existence of a practice implies that there must be a “real thing” for which we are preparing, and in the case of contemplative practice, the thing for which we are preparing is life itself. While a practice can serve as an end in itself (in as much as God can and use the space created by our practice as an opportunity for direct awareness/encounter). But, our contemplative practices really start ...
Commenting on Mary’s response to the Annunciation, author and chaplain Charles W. Sidoti recognizes patience as a form of contemplative action: To understand how “having patience” can be a form of action, it is first necessary to realize that having patience is about...
Generally speaking, growth in the Divine life is a process of gradual unfolding. For instance, the process of creation took eons to get from God’s first physical manifestation to now, with creation still evolving. The salvific journey took millennia to get from Abraham to Christ, and we still await the full, final realization of our union with...
Contemplative practice is a school of many aspects of the Divine character, including patience. A contemplative lifestyle requires us to be patient with the unfolding of things: patient with ourselves as we learn to ...
Contemplative blogger Beth Godbee offers a writing practice for resolving to act with intention in the new year: Writing can help with deepening understandings and setting intentions. I find it helps me to have...
If we’re honest, any relationship that isn’t growing and changing, is instead dying. So, our prayer lives will necessarily change, both in light of God’s continual revelation to us of the Godself and our own True Selves, and in response to the circumstances of our lives as they develop. The reality and necessity of change in ...
Whether we realize it or not, we all suffer one primal addiction throughout the course of our lifetimes: an addiction to our own way of thinking. Not one of us is free from our particular set of lenses through which we view the world – the perspectives inherited from culture, country, ethnic group, religious tradition, family, and past experience. So too do we find ourselves bound by our particular ways of processing the world ...
his Christmas, we offer the two images below – Nativity by Joseph Mulamba-Mandangi (left) and a traditional Byzantine icon (right) – for your gazing. How does each ...
This final week of Advent will find the holiday hustle turned up to full throttle, but in the midst of gatherings and celebrations, the German Jesuit Karl Rahner encourages us to find time to buck the trend in order the welcome the true “Christmas spirit”: Have the courage to be alone. Only once you have ...
While there will always be temptations to dwell in great glories and insights of the past, real hope is not found lingering in the space of yesterday. Likewise, there is temptation to believe that the real good we seek is just up ahead or around the corner, in a future that...
o be contemplative is to adopt a posture of openness to the Presence and Action of God in all things and at all times. As we expectantly await our own future as a parish and an archdiocese, the welcoming posture of contemplation can be brought to bear. Brian McLaren reflects on a contemplative relationship to the future:...
Contemplative practice is welcoming Reality as it is, and finding truth, goodness, beauty, holiness, healing and love in that reality. This includes welcoming all that is true, good, beautiful, holy, healing and loving within ourselves, Christ birthed in and through our own being. The idea of affirming our own giftedness is simple enough, but it may not come easy, especially for those who did not have a ....
Dr. John M. de Castro reflects on some of the contemplative dimensions of thankfulness: Certainly one of the most taken for granted amazing blessings that we have is our own awareness… Reflect for a moment what a miracle it is. There is an essence to us that is forever present and unchanging. What we are aware of