Reflecting and Responding
Gregory the Great
Living the Active Life Contemplatively
My unhappy intellectual soul pierced with the wound of its own distraction, remembers how it used to be in the monastery in those days. . . . It thought only about heavenly things . . . but now the beauty of that spiritual repose is over, and the contact with worldly men and their affairs, which is a necessary part of my duties as bishop, has left my soul defiled with earthly activities.
SERMONS ON EZEKIEL
WHEN I ENCOUNTERED GREGORY THE GREAT I realized I had finally found somebody who understood my plight. In 1996 Richard Foster and I were preparing to team-teach this material for the first time. I had been agonizing for nearly twenty years over how to develop a life of prayer and contemplation when my daily responsibilities were filled with “worldly men and their affairs.” Encountering Gregory the Great gave me permission to be myself—to live the active life contemplatively. I am forever grateful.
Gregory (540-604) was born to a Roman senator and an aristocratic mother. His status in life afforded him the highest levels of privilege and education. One of the last great church leaders to be trained in the ancient Roman school system, Gregory’s raw genius combined with his excellent education provided him a level of unusual skill and preparation as a church leader.
In 573 Gregory was made prefect of Rome, essentially coordinating all church business with the ruling authorities. While serving in this role he came under enormous spiritual conviction, selling all his property in order to establish seven monasteries that thrived for several centuries. As his love and devotion to God deepened, his effectiveness grew. His influence spread throughout the Mediterranean world. In Constantinople, the emperor heard of his tremendous skill and persuaded the religious authorities to send Gregory to his city. Gregory served there for seven years.
Why He Is Gregory “the Great”
In 585, Gregory returned to Rome to assist Pope Pelagius II. His prominence continued to rise and when Pelagius died suddenly of the plague in 590, Gregory was quickly chosen to succeed him. Serving as the bishop of Rome and head of the Western church until his own death in 604, he distinguished himself as one of the greatest popes in the history of the church. His papacy was marked by unprecedented advances and great gains on virtually every temporal and spiritual front. He negotiated landmark treaties with occupying armies, strengthened and spread the role and effectiveness of monasteries and sent missionaries throughout the world.
Gregory’s contribution to understanding our life with God is equally robust. While consolidating power in the church he synthesized Cassian, Benedict and Augustine. As he read their work, he often recalled his earlier days when a life of relative calm and modest influence provided a life of ease and rest. It was easy to contemplate God, Gregory mused, when you are not scurrying to meet the avalanche of human needs that confront you as bishop. Although he longed for an easier life and simpler time, he embraced fully God’s call for him to be pope and exuded a boundless confidence that the best life is one that simultaneously contemplates God and engages in purposeful activity.
To understand Gregory it is important to keep in mind that he saw every level of the Christian life as beneficial. In his writings he emphasizes that the contemplative life is superior to the active life, but he does not stop at the contemplative life. The contemplative life is surpassed by dynamic interaction between action and contemplation. What follows is a snapshot form of his thought.
Since Gregory rarely speaks about action and contemplation directly, we must deduce his thinking from a variety of sources, including extant books and scattered sermons. Gregory begins with a clear definition of what he believes constitutes contemplation: total regard for God alone. It is to fix our attention on heavenly things. But we cannot sustain pure contemplation in this life. We can enjoy it for a time, but we always return to our human state. In fact, Gregory compares this tendency to a grasshopper that can leap high in the air for a brief period of time but inevitably falls back to earth.
As you’ll notice in the chart above, the motion of the spiritual life proceeds both from bottom to top and left to right. Beginning with the active life and concluding with glimpses of the life to come, we see a concrete progression that absorbs each level in the forward movement toward God until we rest in eternal contemplation of him.
Table 6.2. Ordering the Active and Contemplative Life
Disposition of Life
Mystical ascent
Active and contemplative life
Contemplative life
Active life
Christian Activity
Perfect love of God and neighbor
Love of God
Love of neighbor
Source of Growth
Christ
Holy Spirit as inner teacher producing seven gifts of the Spirit
Four cardinal virtues
Theological Virtues
Love
Hope
Faith
Source of Tension
Oscillation between the two
Internal state of mind
External activity of the body
Works to Prepare
Rise above the self to encounter God
Review what has been recollected
Call self to reflect on the self
Role of Scripture
Anagoge and tropological
Allegorical
Historical
Best Expression of Life
Uninterrupted meditation on God
Bishops, rulers, preachers
Monk
Average lay person
Level One: The Active Life
The active life begins with love of neighbor, which is expressed in concrete acts of service. Whether you teach an illiterate person to read, feed the hungry or clothe the poor, every act of kindness is the beginning point of our life with God.
The source of growth is the cultivation of virtue. The four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. Together these form the foundation of human character. Each virtue must be present for the other three to maintain their dynamic vitality—in other words, there is no possibility of possessing any of the virtues without possessing all of them. This interconnected nature allows us to increase in virtue gradually over time. It permits us to harness the powers of our mind in order to attend properly to God.
Of the theological virtues (faith, hope, love), the virtue that develops in level one is faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, as the writer of the Hebrews defines it (Heb 11:1). It is recognizing not the irrational dimension of life and faith but the fact that our Christian beliefs are based on the right use of reason and the integration of every dimension of our human nature.
The focus of our life energy at this point is the external activity of the body. The spiritual work that helps us make headway involves practicing the disciplines of self-reflection, self-awareness, Scripture reading, humility and the cultivation of discretion. Coming to understand who we are and how we operate in relationship to other people is critical for our long-term sustainable effectiveness.
The active life is the life lived by people who are beginning their life with God. Over time our maturity expands and develops and we are able to rise above the active life, but we are never free of it, as we will see. Still, the cultivation of the virtues on this level allows us to discipline our mind and attention in order to rise above all exterior distractions.
Level Two: The Contemplative Life
The second level is the contemplative life. Here we begin to turn inward in a reflective state. Having started with love of neighbor, we now focus on learning to love God as the source of all earthly loves with the Holy Spirit as our teacher. As we turn inward from the outside world, we begin to understand what motivates us, what leads us to God and what takes us away from our deepest longings. The theological virtue of hope develops on this level.
Gregory defines contemplation as “attentive regard for God alone.” This is when our spiritual senses reawaken and we begin to learn how to perceive God. The Holy Spirit prompts us to desire him.
After the cultivation of the four cardinal virtues, the Holy Spirit provides us with seven gifts of grace: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord. These gifts of grace help overcome the impulses that destroy the virtuous life. They turn our gaze inward and calm our sense perception. Here are the gifts of grace that help us combat distractions from our external life:
Contemplation allows us to dwell in a state of mind and existence as long as we can, even as we recognize that the state of mind cannot last indefinitely. Gregory recognizes that contemplation is possible only with careful training; we cannot enter a contemplative state automatically. We must learn to quiet the senses and empty the mind of all mental images. “Spurn and tread underfoot,” Gregory writes, “whatever presents itself to its thought from sign, from hearing, from smell, from bodily touch or taste, so that it may seek itself interiorly as it is without these sensations.”
In this same section Gregory offers some of his most astute observations from Scripture. First, he defines the central, primary role of Scripture as working like a “measuring reed” because it measures every action of our life so that we may see what sort of progress we are making. It is also through Scripture that God instructs us both in the active and in the contemplative life. Scripture is a door that affords us entry into the invisible truths that must be understood, a dense forest that shields believers from the cruel heat of the world and a river in which lambs can walk and elephants swim.
He shows us how the active life and the contemplative life are paired throughout Scripture. Beginning with Martha and Mary, Gregory writes, “These two women signify two ways of life. When Martha complained that her sister neglected to help her, the Lord replied, ‘Martha, one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part which shall not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10:41-42). Behold Martha’s part is not censured, but Mary’s is praised so that Martha’s too was shown to be good.”
Gregory amplifies this teaching with the illustration of Leah and Rachel from Genesis 29. Leah represents the active life, Rachel the contemplative life: “The Blessed Jacob had indeed desired Rachel but in the night accepted Leah because all who are turned to the Lord have desired the contemplative life and seek the quiet of the Eternal Kingdom, but must first in the night of this present life perform the works which they can, sweat with effort, i.e. accept Leah in order that they afterward rest in the arms of Rachel.”
In explaining this illustration Gregory expands on the interdependence of the active and the contemplative life. “It must be understood,” he observes, “that just as a good order of life is to strive from the active to the contemplative, so the spirit frequently reverts from the contemplative to the active, so that the active life may be lived the more perfectly because the contemplative has kindled the mind.” Gregory goes on to emphasize that we move in and out of the contemplative and active life just as Jacob would return from his embrace with Rachel to still love Leah because “even after the beginning [in the contemplative life] is glimpsed, the laborious life of good works is not to be wholly abandoned.
Gregory uses a number of additional passages to illustrate his point, the final one taken from Genesis 28, the image of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God.
There is in the contemplative life much mental struggle, when it rises toward the heavenly, when it stretches the spirit in spiritual things, when it strives to transcend everything which is bodily seen, when it narrows in order to extend. This is well portrayed in the sacred narrative, which tells of Blessed Jacob wrestling with the Angel. For when Jacob was returning to his proper parents he met an Angel along the way with whom he wrestled in a great struggle. Therefore the Angel stands for God, and Jacob, who fights with the Angel, symbolizes the souls of each perfect man who is placed in contemplation.
Just as Gregory reaches the heights of mystical contemplation he returns to the realistic plane of human existence. Because the best expression of the contemplative life is monasticism and because Gregory wanted an understanding of the spiritual life that is for everybody, he could not stop with contemplation as the ultimate ideal of the Christian life. Our earthly thoughts and our human needs always bring us back to our earthly existence. When this happens we are drawn to the even deeper reality that life is a constant oscillation between action and contemplation. Although contemplation is higher than action, the active life always draws us back from contemplation and vice versa. The two work in partnership, not against one another.
Level Three: The Active Life Lived Contemplatively
Thus the third and highest level is a state in which the active and contemplative life work in interdependence. Here we live every day in the experiential dialectic of polar opposites:
It is at this level that we express perfect love of God and neighbor. The theological virtue of love reaches its fullest expression here. Christ is our mediating link as he balances perfectly our inner life and outer world. Just as Adam is the first and foremost contemplative in action but lost his place in the divine order, Christ works to restore it. Contemplation, for Gregory, is always Christocentric. There is no way to return to God except through Christ. “God is our wall within,” Gregory states, “but our wall without is the God-man.”
The highest virtue is love. Through the creative tension of the active and contemplative life we ascend to a greater height than we can see from contemplation alone. But there are not many who can make this journey. Gregory is very clear: “The active life belongs to many, the contemplative to few.” It is at this highest level that we understand both the height and breadth of our love for God. “The broader our love for neighbor,” Gregory insists, “the higher our love for God.”
Finally, the highest calling of this life, according to Gregory, is not to be an average lay person or even a monk, but to be a bishop or preacher who leads a life of prayer and devotion to God while overseeing the affairs of the local and universal church. The responsibilities to love God and love our neighbor realize their fullest expression at this level. Gregory believes that this state reflects the very life Christ himself led. “When our incarnate Redeemer came, showing both lives, he unified them in himself,” Gregory writes. “The mixed life realized in the preachers, who are called both to contemplative devotion to God alone and active love of neighbor, especially in preaching and pastoral counsel, are given the highest rank.”
The Grasshopper and Our Life with God
Gregory concludes with an interesting analogy taken from Job 39:20. He uses the image of a locust to illustrate the nature of our spiritual life: “The hopping of the locust is seen as a figure of the alternation between solid practice of charity and bold, if brief, flight into the upper reaches of contemplation.” That is to say, our efforts to ascend to God will often plod along on the active plane with brief flights to the contemplative plane.
Through all of this, Gregory provides one of the most enduring understandings of the spiritual life. His relevance remains strong because he captures so well the plight of our life as humans seeking to love God: we are never free of the burdens and cares of this life while experiencing in fleeting moments a taste of the life to come.
REFLECTING AND RESPONDING
What a model for our lives today, this Gregory the Great. It is astonishing that in the sixth century he could see so clearly that the contemplative way by itself was not the summum bonum of the Christian life. Rather, he understood that the contemplative life is surpassed by the dynamic interplay between action and contemplation.
Gregory found value in all three levels—action alone, contemplation alone, and the commingling of action and contemplation—but he found the third to be the best. In the active life we learn how to love our neighbor, and in doing this we develop into our character formation the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. This is no small thing, but it comes only by intention. It is entirely possible to be among people in an exceedingly active life where instead of cardinal virtues we develop cardinal vices of anger, bitterness, manipulation and retaliation. So even here in the active life we learn the lessons of dependence on God to look at others and respond to others in the power of the Spirit.
Gregory views the contemplative life as “attentive regard for God alone.” How good for us to find ways to turn from the modern scramble of panting feverishness to see God alone, high and lifted up. Here, Gregory tells us, the graces of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of the Lord develop. Again this is a great gain, and again it comes only by intention. We all know how easy it is to try to experience a contemplative life and end up deeply confused by the buzzing, buzzing, buzzing of our noisy hearts. We need God’s peace to quiet the inner clatter and turn us toward that Center that knows no distraction.
For Gregory, though, the highest level of life comes when we experience the dynamic interaction between a life in the world and a life of prayer. Here the virtue of love is perfected. But not automatically; we need intention. We learn over time and experience how to bring the reality of resting in God into the confusion and busyness of daily life. We learn to work resting.
We learn to live on two levels at once. On the one level we carry on the ordinary tasks of our day. But on a deeper level we live out of inward promptings and whispered words of wisdom. We learn to walk in the light wherever we may be, whomever we may be with and whatever we may be doing.
To be sure, we are working, but we are working resting. There is a rest for the people of God, says the writer to the Hebrews, and we are entering into this divine rest.
There is only one place where I want to take exception to Gregory and his counsel. He finds this highest level of action and contemplation in the bishops and priests as they oversee the life of the church. I certainly hope it is found there. But I also hope it is found in every walk of life and every kind of business. Years later Martin Luther would give us insight into the priesthood of all believers. By this he meant far more than that “the plow boy and the milk maid” could do priestly work, but that the plow boy in his plowing and the milk maid in her milking were doing priestly work.
I have a friend in the Pacific Northwest who paints houses. He tells me he “paints and prays.” I believe him, for his life certainly is formed in deep ways into Christlikeness. My mother, Marie Temperance Foster, is another example. She lived an ordinary life as a schoolteacher, piano instructor and homemaker. Throughout her short life she worked with a growing disability from multiple sclerosis. Still, I have not met anyone more godly, more spiritually formed than my mother. The same is true, I know, for business persons, computer programmers and laborers without number.
I’m so glad for Gregory’s high Christology regarding the intersection of action and contemplation. No one better understands how to live the active life contemplatively than Jesus. Constantly immersed in crowds, always attending to the deepest of human need, Jesus saw only what the Father saw, spoke only what the Father spoke, did only what the Father did. He is the divine paradigm for conjugating all the verbs of our life.
O Lord, it is so true that we are like the hopping of the locust. Once in a while we catch a glimpse of things above the grasses. But soon we are back down in the thick of things. This is the way our lives run, Lord. But we’re not complaining. Only please, Lord, when we need to see the bigger picture of life with you, help us to leap high. Amen.