December 2003 Christian Spirituality      Continued from previous issue By George A Lane SJ

Continue from ...... THE IDEAL OF CONTEMPLATION Once perfect control over the body and material things is achieved, one moves to the contemplative stage where another kind of asceticism takes place, that of the mind. The mind is systematically purged of all images, symbols, and concepts, so that eventually it reaches a certain unconsciousness, anaesthesia. It is this unconsciousness that brings the very highest type of knowledge, knowledge in pure contact with God apart from any human or worldly content. Hence the object of the contemplative life is to gradually empty the mind in order for God to come in and fill it. And this, of course, is the very perfection of all Christian and human life. This concept of contemplation leads to Evagrius' understanding of prayer, a raising of the mind to God. Every single thing is to be sacrificed for the pursuit of prayer. "Go," he says, "sell all that you have and take up the Cross; deny yourself so that you can pray without distraction." Or again, "if you would pray worthily, deny yourself continually; if you undergo trials of all sorts, accept your lot philosophically out of love for prayer." Prayer is a chance for the soul to escape at least temporarily from the body. Evagrius says, "when your intelligence goes out of the body and rejects all thoughts that come from sense and memory and bodily humours and is filled with awe and joy, then it is allowable to think that you are close to the confines of prayer."

- To Be Continued -