January 2004 Christian Spirituality      Continued from previous issue By George A Lane SJ

Continue from ...... THE IDEAL OF CONTEMPLATION So prayer is an impassive state of existence free of all feeling and emotion. Prayer is an emptying of the mind. "Even if the intelligence raises itself above the contemplation of bodily nature, it has not yet perfect contemplation of God because it can still mingle with the intelligibles and share in their multiplicity." Finally prayer for Evagrius is an angelic activity. "You wish to pray?" he asks; "depart from here below and have your dwelling continually on high, not in name only but by a kind of angelic practice and by a knowledge more divine." Lastly it is important to note that the active life and the contemplative life in the doctrine of Evagrius do not intermingle with one another. One goes through a process of purification and gradually achieves a state of insensitivity. Once there is it possible to pass on to the contemplative life, and it is in this state that prayer is described as an emptying of the mind in order that God may be encountered free from any trace of what is human or worldly. This Evagrian doctrine of prayer is, in fact, a cult of contemplation. "Pure" prayer and perfection are identified. And this prayer (not the love and service of Christ) is the goal of the Christian life. The two most important transmitters of the Evagrian teaching are John Cassian and Pseudo-Dionysius. John Cassian was a close associate of Evagrius in the Egyptian desert. When Origenism was condemned in 399, Cassian fled for his life and gradually made his way to the West. There in southern France he established two religious communities, one for men and one for women. Most important, perhaps, he wrote two famous works. The Institutes and the Conferences. In these books Cassian transmitted Evagrius' doctrine to the West in a somewhat tempered form. However, the ideal of angelic contemplation was still presented as the goal and perfection of the Christian life. Anything else, any time taken from contemplation, was taken from God. The other transmitter, Pseudo-Dionysius, comes somewhat later. According to his own testimony, Dionysius was a confidant of the Apostles, was present at the crucifixion of Christ, was with St John at the time the Apocalypse was composed; he heard St Paul make his famous speech in the Areopagus, and he recounts many other such personal experiences which are obviously wide of the truth. One important fact, however, is that after St Augustine he is the most frequently quoted source of Thomas Aquinas. This is an indication of the influence he had upon the thinking of the Middle Ages.

- To Be Continued -