Our Lady’s Teaching on Prayer – A Lenten Course on Prayer

Part Five – Our Lady and Mystical Contemplation

Everyone has experienced what it feels like to be captivated by a wonderous landscape or a gloriously calm and serene seascape that enthrals the senses. As the sun sets on the horizon it is set aglow, emblazoning the low-lying clouds with a kaleidoscope of different shades of fiery splendour. We are still enthralled even when the light finally fades away and darkness begins to envelop us so we can no longer be enraptured by the beauty of God’s creation. Even as we wander away back into the world of hustle and bustle whence we came, the feeling of inner peace and serenity into which we were plunged remains, at least for a while.

The Meaning of Contemplation

The psychological state of awe that draws all our inner faculties together as one to search for and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, is called contemplation. These enchanting experiences that we can never forget,  give us a brief contemplative glimpse of God through his creation and is a call to enter into the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  Sadly, they are so rare and never last for long because they demand a pure and uncluttered heart that sin and selfishness have denied us. But for Mary who was immaculately conceived, that is not the case. She could at all times, not only see the beauty of God’s creation, but something of the glory of God himself, in a way that no other human being has been able to see and contemplate. This gift of contemplation was brought to perfection in this life when after the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, she was, not only taken up into her beloved son’s mystical body but into his mystical contemplation of his Father. She was able to see and experience the love of God, not just as it is embodied in creation, but as it exists in himself, and in the glorious ecstatic bliss of the Three in One.

The word mystical simply comes from the Greek word for unseen, invisible or secret. What is called natural contemplation is used to describe the experience of gazing upon the glory of God as it can be seen embodied in his creation. The expression mystical contemplation is used to describe the experience of gazing upon the glory of God in himself, in, with and through Christ. It is because the object of this awesome contemplation is invisible and unseen that it is called mystical.

St Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation

Any mother wants to share with her children all that is good, beautiful and desirable that she has experienced, and the mother of God is no exception. She wants us to be united with her son, as she is, and to come to love God as he is in himself through mystical contemplation. St Thomas Aquinas insists that mystical contemplation is the penultimate pinnacle of the spiritual life because gazing upon the glory of God is the prelude to union with him. However, the only way to come to know and love God, as he is in himself, is to begin where Our Lady herself began, by coming to love him as he was made flesh and blood in the person of her son Jesus Christ. That is why Our Lady became such an important person in the early Church when according to tradition, she settled down with her new foster son St John. In order that new converts could come to know Jesus as she and the other apostles and first disciples had known him, a new form of prayer arose that was later called meditation. This prayer would enable those who had not known Christ, to pore over every detail of his life on earth, reflecting and ruminating on it, and so learn to know and love him.

The Prayer that Leads to Contemplation

They were taught to do this in such a way that their love for Jesus would not just impel them to become closer to him and copy him, but to be united with him. Our Lady’s contribution to this new form of prayer called meditation was unique. Who else was there when she first learnt that she was to conceive the son of God? Who else was there at his birth, to tell of the moment when the infinite God became a helpless child to be laid in a manger? Who else was alive to tell of the flight into Egypt, the presentation in the Temple, and the hidden years when she was intimately involved in helping the Christ child to grow in stature and in divine wisdom as he prepared for his public ministry? Who was more painfully there when he was so cruelly put to death and humiliated as a slave or as a common criminal?

That is why in the early Church and in the present Church there is no one else who so relentlessly calls upon her children to meditate on Christ’s life and most particularly on his Passion and death in order to come to love him. Only this love generated by loving him as he once was on earth, can be transformed into a love that wants to be united with him now as he is in heaven.

From Meditation to Contemplation

This is how meditation is gradually transformed into the contemplation that enables a person to glimpse something of the glory of God, even in this life, that is the prelude to the ultimate union with God for which he created us in the first place. As the vast majority of the first Christians were Jews it was to be expected that they would continue to pray in the synagogue three times a day, until as heretics they were forbidden. But even then they would meet in one another’s houses to pray together three times a day. Although they used many of the same psalms, canticles, hymns and prayers they used before, these were gradually Christianised. Knowing that they were now sung, recited, or prayed within the Risen and mystical body of Jesus, their contents were often changed to reflect the new Spiritual Temple in whom they now lived and moved and had their being. Furthermore, prayer began to end with the words, ‘in, with and through Our Lord Jesus Christ’, or with similar words to express how they were now praying in their Risen Lord, to God their ever-loving Father.

Daily Meditation

The God who seemed so far away before, was now near, and would respond to their prayer because they were praying in, with, and through his son, Jesus. They were taught to use the set times for daily prayer for meditation on his life and death. More precisely, we find in the writings of the early Fathers of the Church that set times for prayer, whether the faithful were together in a home or alone, should be a time for meditation too.   Nine o’clock was specified as the time to meditate on Christ’s infamous condemnation to death and all that this entailed,  from his scourging at the Pillar to his crowning with thorns. Midday would be a reminder to meditate on all the horrors that surrounded Christ’s crucifixion, and three o’clock to meditate on his actual death and the events that surrounded that terrible event.

That is why Our Lady told the children at Garabandal to meditate daily on the Passion. If this is the greatest act of love for us, performed by the greatest lover the world has ever known, then it is by meditating on this action more than on any other,  that we can generate within us the love that can unite us within Our Risen Lord.