By our prayer we share the life of God. True prayer demands that we be more passive than active; it requires more silence than words, more adoration than study, more concentration than rushing about, more faith than reason. The highest state of prayer is to be children in the arms of Love: silent, loving, rejoicing.
–Carlo Carretto (1910-1988)
Contemplation is nothing else than a secret, peaceful, and loving infusion of God, which if admitted, will set the soul on fire with the Spirit of love.
–Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591)
The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
The pursuit of the contemplative life is something for which a great and sustained effort on the part of the powers of the soul is required, an effort to rise from earthly to heavenly things, an effort to keep one’s attention fixed on spiritual things, an effort to pass beyond and above the sphere of things visible to the eyes of flesh, an effort finally to hem oneself in, so to speak, in order to gain access to spaces that are broad and open. There are times indeed when one succeeds, overcoming the opposing obscurity of one’s blindness and catching at least a glimpse, be it ever so fleeting and superficial, of boundless light.
–Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
But there is another reason why God alone is the happiness of our souls, to which I wish rather to direct attention: The contemplation of Him, and nothing but it, is able fully to open and relieve the mind, to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections.
–Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
— GK Chesterton (1874-1936)
