206. Are the active and contemplative lives opposed?
206. ARE THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES OPPOSED?
The last point—uniting Mary and Martha—seems impossible. It’s difficult to contemplate God when you have to contemplate a practical business decision, and it’s equally difficult to make a practical business decision when you are contemplating God. St. Thomas admits that there are two different lives, the active and the contemplative. They may both be good, but they are so different that not only is one better than the other (“Mary has chosen the better”) but each one seems to hinder the other.
Whether the contemplative life is hindered by the active life?
Gregory says: Those who wish to hold the fortress of contemplation must first of all train in the camp of action (II-II,182,3).
In other words, the contemplative life not only does not exclude, but requires, the active life. For if we have not cultivated the moral virtues, especially the virtue of self-control, in the arena of action (which is the only place the moral virtues can be cultivated), our selfishness and self-indulgence will hinder our contemplation.
Yet it is also true that action and contemplation have different objects and are different psychic states, so that it is impossible or at least difficult to practice both at the same time. St. Thomas, as usual, solves this apparent contradiction with a commonsensical distinction:
I answer that, The active life may be considered from two points of view. First, as regards the attention to and practice of external works; and thus it is evident that the active life hinders the contemplative life, in so far as it is impossible for one to be busy with external action and at the same time give oneself to divine contemplation. Secondly, (in contrast,) active life may be considered as quieting and directing the internal passions of the soul (by cultivating the moral virtues); and from this point of view the active life is a help to the contemplative, since the latter is hindered by the inordinateness of the internal passions (II-II,182,3).
(A consequence of the difference between action and contemplation is that) He that is prone to yield to his passions on account of his impulse to action is simply more apt for the active life by reason of his restless spirit. Hence Gregory says that there be some so restless that when they are free from labor they labor all the more, because the more leisure they have for thought, the worse interior turmoil they have to bear. Others, on the contrary, have the mind naturally pure and restful, so that they are apt for contemplation. . . . (yet) those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for the contemplative by the practice of the active life (II-II, 183,4).
Those unfortunate “restless souls” Gregory speaks of here need not be satisfied with their aversion to contemplation if, as all the saints say, contemplation is for everyone, even though a life devoted to it most of the time is only for the few. St. Thomas resolved a dispute among the theologians of his time on the issue of whether the contemplative or the active life was the highest by saying that it was the mixed life which was the highest, since that was the life of Christ. That was also St. Benedict’s reason for describing the life of the complete monk as ora et labora, prayer and work.
It is quite in the spirit of St. Thomas to add that there is also a third relationship between action and contemplation, in addition to (1) action preventing contemplation because attention is required for an external work and (2) action preparing for contemplation by the cultivation of the moral virtues which are a precondition for the intellectual virtues; and that is (3) what Brother Lawrence called “the practice of the presence of God” in the active life. This is the typically Jesuit spirituality of “seeing God everywhere”, especially in others and in your duties. When you go to the Church’s rich variety of religious orders and saints for advice about the spiritual life, you always find one emphasis perfecting or adding to another rather than rivaling it.