Thoughts on Contemplative Prayer

    “Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy.  And yet in a certain sense, we must truly begin to hear God when we have ceased to listen.  What is the explanation of this paradox? Perhaps only that there is  a higher kind of listening, which is not an attentiveness to some special wave length, a receptivity to a certain kind of message, but a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void.  In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light.  He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation.  He does not demand light instead of darkness.  He waits on the word of God in silence, and when he is “answered,” it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence.  It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him in a word of great power, full of the voice of God.”

     Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, pg. 90