In Chapter 25
Anonymous continues his clarification of the contemplative’s experience of love
within contemplative prayer: “That the perfect soul never thinks about anyone
in particular during contemplative prayer.”
In this
five-paragraph chapter, our Spiritual Guide first assures us that amazing
things happen when we come out of contemplative prayer, that is, when we
“mingle with the world again, coming down from contemplation to converse with
or pray for [our] neighbor.”
Contemplative prayer changes us.
Because we experience being with God intimately, that oneness changes
our hearts, and such “oneing” carries us into an appreciative oneness with
people. We see and love slanderers as
friends and strangers become like loved relatives. At time we even become “more partical to
[our] enemy than to [our] friend” (63).
By being sure not to either abandon contemplative prayer nor to stay in
it too long, we learn to “shift gears” from contemplative prayer to mingling
with people so we can genuinely care for others.
Our tendency to
analyze others and put people into categories like “friend or enemy, relative
or stranger” goes by the wayside. Yes,
we continue to feel closer to some people than to others; that’s natural and
good. After all, Jesus had deeper affections
for several friends like John, Mary, and Peter. But when all is said and done,
as contemplatives we come to “feel the same intimate love for everyone because
[our] only reason to love is God” (64).
What happens in contemplative prayer with God affects what happens in
life with people.
Experiencing
wholeness, we “wish wholeness on everyone [we] know.” Just as our blodies feel whole all the
various parts of our body are healthy, so it is with our spiritual body; when
our spiritual arms and lets are working with Christ, our head, then we “live
and love in love” as St. Paul describes such life in I Corinthians 12, a
passage that Butcher recommends we read (note 1, page 250):
12-13 You can easily enough see how this kind of thing
works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs,
organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body.
It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said
good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call
our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything.
(This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of
us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one
fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to
identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer
useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14-18 I want you to think about how all this makes you
more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into
something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and
functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished
with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear
said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place
on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all
eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that
God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
19-24 But I also want
you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into
self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of
what you are a part of. An
enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have
is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No
part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I
don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased
out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the
part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for
instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are
concerned with, it makes no
difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it
dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have
more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose,
wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
As Anonymous closes this chapter, he reminds us how Jesus loved and
loves. Our Lord did not play
favorites. “He didn’t sacrifice himself
only for his family, his friebnds, and the ones who loved him best, his closest
friends. He offered himself to all humanity.” The “little act of contemplation mysteriously”
moves us in that direction, moving us to “humility and charity, as well as all
the other virtues” (64).
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