Revolutionary Contemplation

Thanks to a Richard Rohr pointer, this post's title and morning's reading is from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams's address to the Synod of Bishops in Rome from 2012; this is the first address by an Archbishop to that community (see video below).

Like Fr Rohr, I find some interesting passages in the address that really apply to my current journey, such as (emphasis mine):

To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter. [8]

Thomas Merton describes [a time when he] had contracted flu, and was confined to the infirmary [and] felt a ‘secret joy’ at the opportunity this gave him for prayer – and ‘to do everything that I want to do, without having to run all over the place answering bells.’ He is forced to recognise that this attitude reveals that ‘All my bad habits…had sneaked into the monastery with me and had received the religious vesture along with me: spiritual gluttony, spiritual sensuality, spiritual pride.’ In other words, he is trying to live the Christian life with the emotional equipment of someone still deeply wedded to the search for individual satisfaction. It is a powerful warning: we have to be every careful in our evangelisation not simply to persuade people to apply to God and the life of the spirit all the longings for drama, excitement and self-congratulation that we so often indulge in our daily lives. [9]

Invoking the Holy Spirit is a matter of asking the third person of the Trinity to enter my spirit and bring the clarity I need to see where I am in slavery to cravings and fantasies and to give me patience and stillness as God’s light and love penetrate my inner life. Only as this begins to happen will I be delivered from treating the gifts of God as yet another set of things I may acquire to make me happy, or to dominate other people. [10]

I will leave the "works vs faith" undertone/commentary for a later date, though I tend to agree very much with this:

It should not need saying that this is not at all to argue that ‘internal’ transformation is more important than action for justice; rather, it is to insist that the clarity and energy we need for doing justice requires us to make space for the truth, for God’s reality to come through. Otherwise our search for justice or for peace becomes another exercise of human will, undermined by human self-deception. ... True prayer purifies the motive, true justice is the necessary work of sharing and liberating in others the humanity we have discovered in our contemplative encounter. [11]

It's really quite easy to let this be all about my ego! I don't know that doing action (works) and contemplation (faith) together is a panacea about that ... very likely not. But as Fr Rohr writes, action and contemplation "must be brought together or neither one would make sense."