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The Contemplative Life & Friendship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Paul Philippe O.P.
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While the active life is the life of the soul acting as the form of the body (that is, the life of the individual as a member of the human race), the contemplative life is the life of the soul in its purely spiritual reality,, the life of the person, the complete being, the ‘whole'. For by definition the ‘whole’ suffices to itself. It has all.

It lacks nothing. The contemplative life is the perfect life: in itself it has neediof no assistance. It can be entirely solitary.

But, it being granted that the human person is a person created, a part of the divine ‘whole'; it being granted also that it has been multiplied by the Creator, are we not going to discover that the nature of the person implies an ‘order’ or organisation, a ‘spiritual society'? It is certainly true that there exists an ‘order’ of persons, and even an order of creatures purely spiritual—the angelic hierarchies. But it is only a question there of a ‘communicatio in forma', an analogical similitude, in the fact that all these creatures possess an intelligence which has for its final perfection the contemplation of God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 3 , Issue 31 , January 1949 , pp. 296 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © 1949 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Being section 1 of Chapter 4 of Le Role de l'Amitie dans la Vie Chritienne selon Saint Thomas d'Aquin. (Angelicum). Translated by R. M. Wildy.

2 'Totum et perfectum sunt penitus idem'. III Physic, xi.

3 Supematurally speaking, the problem remains the same. There will be an ‘affective unity* joining itself to the ‘intentional unity'.

4 'Nulla natura beata potest communicare suam beatitudinem alteri'. I-II, 5, 6 ad 1.

5 'Illuminare nihil aliud est quam manifestationcin agnitae veritatis alii tradere'. I, 106, 1. Cf. ad 2, and article 2.

6 ‘Vita contemplativa praecipue consistit in eontemplatione Dei; et quantum ad hoc unus angelus alium non docet. Sod de his quae pertinet ad dispensationem mysteriorum Dei. unus angelus docet alium purgando, illuminando et perficiendo; et secundum hoc habent aliquid do vita activa qnamdiu mundus durat…. Et in eis non distinguitur vita activa a contemplativa sicut in nobis qui per opera vitae activae impedimur a contemplatione1. II-II, 181, 4 ad 2.

7 ‘Sola natura rationalis crcata habet immediatum ordinem ad Deum quia… natura rationalis, in quantum cognoscit universalem boni et entis rationem, habet immediatum ordinem ad universale essendi principium'. II-II, 2, 3.

8 'Solitudo non est ipsa essentia perfectionis sed perfectionis instrumentum. Id quod est solitarium debet esse sibi per se sufficiens. Hoc autem est cui nihil deest, quod pertinet ad rationem perfecti… . Et ideo vita socialis necessaria est ad exercitium Perfectionis. Solitudo autem compelit iam perfectis. Sicut ergo id quod iam perfectum est praceminet ei quod ad perfectionem exercetur, ita vita solitariorum si debite assumatur praeeminet vita sociali. Si autem absque praecedenti exercitio talis vita assumatur, est periculosissima, nisi per divinam gratiam suppleatur quod in aliis per exercitum acquiritur, sicut patet de beatis Antonio et Benedicto'. II-II, 188, 8.

9 ‘Homo potest solitarius vivere dupliciter, uno modo, quasi societatcin humanam non ferens, propter animi saevitiam et hoc est bestiale, alio modo per hoc quod totaliter divinis rebus inhaeret et hoc est supra hominem. Et ideo Philosophus dicit I Politicorum (cf. S. Tb. Lee. 1) quod ille qui aliis non coinmunicat est bestia aut deus, id est divinus vir'. Id. ad 5.

10 ‘Rationem esse semper in actu rectae contemplationis in statu viae ita quod omnium operum ratio sit Deus est impossible'. De Verit. q. 24 a 9. cf. II-II, 24, 8; 184, 2 on the impossibility of a charity always in act here below.

11 The Salmanticenses note (Curs. Theo. De Statu reliigioso, disp. ii dub. iii n. 36) that there has never been officially in the church a ‘religion’ (vowed order) of hermits who made profession to live in solitude.

12 It is in this sense that Pope Pius XI in his Letter to the Carthusians of the 8th July, 1924, affirms the superiority of the Carthusian life to every other form of religious life (cf. Ada Apost. Sedis, 1924. p. 385 sq.; cited by J. Maritain, Primaute du Spirituel. Paris, 1927. pp. 312-313).

13 ‘In contemplatione sapientiae, tanto aliquis efficacius operatur, quanto magis solitarius secum commoratur'. In Boeth. de Hebdom. Prolog.