Chapter 1
In the first chapter Merton makes an effort to describe the indescribable. Contemplation is a spontaneous, gifted experience of God beyond thoughts, words, images, and feelings. And it is not that at all in as much as it is infinitely more than that and altogether less than that too. This quote from Merton is a great way to start:
"Whatever I may have written, I think it can all be reduced in the end to this one truth: that God calls human persons to union with Himself and one another in Christ, in the Church which is His Mystical Body. It is also a witness to the fact that there is, and must be in the Church, a contemplative life which has no other function than to realize these mysterious things and to return to God all the thanks and praise that human hearts can give to Him."
(from the Silent Lamp: the Thomas Merton Story by William Shannon)
“Contemplation is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source.”
Contemplation is spontaneous awe, wonder, and gratitude.
Contemplation knows the Source obscure, but with a certainty that goes beyond reason and simple belief
Knows beyond words and symbols
“Contemplation is the highest fulfillment of every form of intuition and experience” and in the “actual experience of contemplation all other experiences are momentarily lost.”
It is a sudden gift of awareness
“An awareness of our contingent reality as received, as a present from God, a pure gift of love.”
Finally, contemplation is total receptivity. John of the Cross
It is NOT the fruit of effort, but a gift from God
“Contemplation is the awareness, realization and even in some sense experience of what every Christian obscurely knows, “I live no longer I but Christ lives in me.”
