Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him who has no voice, and yet who speaks in everything that is, and who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words of his. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way to contain Him and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living One....
It is awakening, enlightenment, and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life. Hence contemplation does not simply "find" a clear idea of God and confine Him within
the limits of that idea, and hold Him there as a prisoner to Whom it can always return. On the contrary, contemplation is carried away by Him into His own realm, His own mystery, and His own freedom”
I think this is from one of my students in my on-line Program who has been reading the Cloud of Unknowing and may be quoting Thomas Merton. I just thought it would be good to put here since I was on Spring Break and trying to practice contemplation myself. For me, it is allowing God to love me and just trying to be with him in the depths of his Heart.
The Gospel today is from Luke 6: 36-38; Jesus said to his disciples: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you." That is a powerful Gospel and certainly a call to each of us to be merciful, non-judgmental, and generous.
We are made in the image of God. Think about this as we listen to Jesus say to us, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful...."
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