Recovering the Contemplative Dimension – by fr. Paul Murray, OP (July 12 2001, Providence, RI)

At the moment of reception into the Order of Preachers, each one of us was asked the
question: “What do you seek?”, and we replied: “The mercy of God and your mercy”. Finding myself here, this morning, at a General Chapter of the Order, about to speak to you on the subject of contemplation, I am conscious, as almost never before, of my own limitations, and of my great need, therefore, for my brothers’ forbearance and compassion. I am still, God knows, a mere novice in the life of prayer and contemplation. And this talk is, I have no doubt, the most difficult I will ever be asked to give. So I ask you straight out, my brothers, to have compassion on me, and on my words, as I begin.

A great fidelity to the life of prayer and contemplation has been a distinguishing mark of many of our best-known Dominican preachers and saints. But, within the Church, at least until recently, the Order has generally been noted more for its intellectual prowess than for its contemplative zeal. Today, however, all that is beginning to change. There are now widely available, for example, more translations than ever before of the writings of people like Johannes Tauler, Catherine of Siena, Henry Suso, and Meister Eckhart. And St Thomas Aquinas, who was always revered as a dogmatic theologian within the Church, is now being regarded also, by many people, as a spiritual master.

So it would seem that, all of a sudden, we have an opportunity to allow the contemplative dimension of our tradition to speak with a profound and impressive authority to a new generation. But our own immediate task, and no doubt the reason for this talk this morning, is to allow that tradition to speak first of all to ourselves, here and now, and to allow it to address not only our hearts and our minds but also the way in which we live our lives as preachers.

Of course, all of us here are indebted to the witness of our own Dominican contemplative sisters. I know I am more indebted than I can say to the community of sisters at Siena Convent in Droheda, Ireland. And some of you, if not all of you, will be aware that a full acknowledgment of the sisters’ contemplative witness and support has already been given by Master Timothy in his most recent letter to the Order.

Not all forms of contemplation, it has to be said, have been affirmed by our Dominican forbears. In fact, in the Vitae Fratrum, there has survived a vivid account of one unfortunate friar, who very nearly lost his faith from too much “contemplation”! In similar vein, Humbert of Romans, in his long treatise on preaching, openly complains about those people whose “sole passion is for contemplation”. These men seek out, he says, “a hidden life of quiet” or “a retired place for contemplation”, and then refuse “to respond to the summons to be useful to others by preaching”…

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