17. The First Requirement, Then, for the Contemplation of Wisdom Is That We Should Take Complete Possession of Our Minds
17. The first requirement, then, for the contemplation of wisdom is that we should take complete possession of our minds before anything else does.17
Quieting the heart is the work of meditation. One way we taste wisdom is by way of meditation and contemplation. We have seen how Aquinas and the Dominicans were, like the Franciscans, a radical movement of mendicant friars that consciously and deliberately broke with the centuries-old monastic tradition. The key word for these new movements was “poverty”—it was time, they maintained, to turn one’s back on the privileges of monasticism and connect to the poor, as Jesus had.
But what to take from the monastic tradition? What to save from the burning building? Contemplation was part of the training within monasticism that Aquinas underwent from the age of five to sixteen. He cherished it, but he also saw it as only part of a bigger vision for deepening one’s spirituality. It was important to put contemplation into action, not to hoard it for oneself.
What is contemplation? Says Aquinas: “Contemplation regards the simple act of gazing on truth.” Study and meditation can lead to contemplation for “one reaches the knowledge of truth by applying oneself by one’s personal study, and this requires meditation” (80). Studying creatures can open the heart to wonder. “From God’s creatures we all are led to wonder at the divine power and in this way to hold God in reverence. The maker is nobler than the things that are made. From wonder comes awe and reverence. In addition, creatures have the capacity to warm our hearts to love the goodness of God.” What a rich explanation of the Via Positiva and wonder and awe and reverence lies here! Aquinas cites the psalmist who says “I meditate on all your works, I muse on the work of your hands” (Ps. 143:5), and then comments: “Meditation is indispensable for well-instructed faith.”
Contemplation often takes us into the darkness, into a “night that holds the quiet of contemplation, in which there is first the desire of the excitement of love: ‘My soul has desired you in your decrees: in the middle of the night I rose up to praise you’ (Ps 119). And it signifies the silence of divine consolation” (218).
Aquinas also offers advice about contemplative practice in three steps: (1) “The first requirement, then, for the contemplation of wisdom is that we should take complete possession of our minds before anything else does, so that we can fill the whole house [one’s mind or soul] with the contemplation of wisdom.” (2) “It is also necessary that we be fully present there, concentrating in such a way that our aim is not diverted to other matters.” Focus is everything. (3) “Thus Scripture says: ‘Return home quickly and gather yourself together there and play there and pursue your thoughts’ (Eccl 32:15-16). To ‘gather yourself together there’ is to draw together your whole intention” (210). This threefold practice sounds quite Buddhist with its emphasis on silence, presence, and letting be. Playing with wisdom is the key and the goal of an empty mind.
Aquinas teaches that “contemplation concerns ends that serve no ulterior purpose.” Aquinas compares contemplation to play when he says: “Play, too, is concerned with ends when you play for the fun of it, though with means to ends when you take exercise in order to keep fit.” Contemplation becomes a holiday: “The contemplative life is a kind of holiday. ‘Be still and see that I am the Lord’ (Ps. 46:10). It is a life lived with divine things.” Again, this resonates with Buddhist invitations to mindfulness. Furthermore, it is echoed in Meister Eckhart, who urges people to “love without a why” and “work without a why.” One plays without a why.
Contemplation includes being alone and in solitude. “In the contemplation of wisdom we work all the more effectively the more we dwell alone with our selves.” Thus the words “return home quickly”—that is, “be eager to return from external things to your own mind, before anything else gets hold of it and any other anxiety distracts it. That is why it says in Wisdom 8:16: ‘I will enter my house and find rest with her,’ with wisdom, that is.” What comes next? “When our interior house is entirely emptied like this and we are fully present there in our intention the text tells us what to do next: ‘and play there’” (210).
Aquinas celebrates the “delight” that contemplation brings with it, and he offers a broad understanding of contemplation when he identifies it with the pursuit of knowledge and truth. “Contemplation of the truth befits one according to one’s nature as a rational animal: the result being that all people naturally desire to know, so that consequently they delight in the knowledge of truth.” But the real goal in contemplation is not just knowledge but wisdom! And the habit (or virtue) of blending both, of one leading to the other. “And more delightful still does this become to those who have the habit of wisdom and knowledge, the result of which is that they contemplate without difficulty.” Contemplation is natural and organic when it derives from knowledge and truth-seeking.
Contemplation includes the heart; it is about being in the presence of love and this too brings great delight. “Contemplation may be delightful in respect to its object, insofar as one contemplates that which one loves. Even as bodily vision gives pleasure, not only because to see is pleasurable in itself, but because one sees a person whom one loves. Since then, the contemplative life consists chiefly in the contemplation of God, of which charity is the motive, it follows that there is delight in the contemplative life, not only by reason of the contemplation itself, but also by reason of divine love.
How great is this delight? “This delight surpasses all human delight. … Hence it is written (Ps. 34:8): ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good.’” There is a kind of circle in contemplation that begins in the appetite and travels to the mind and then back to the heart. “The very delight in the object seen arouses a yet greater love. … This is the ultimate perfection of the contemplative life, namely, that the divine truth be not only seen but also loved” (439).
It is a great thing
to do miracles,
but it is a greater thing
to live virtuously.