Contemplation

    The purpose of life is to know God.[1] says Saint Thomas Aquinas [2] and scripture says it directly as one of the beatitudes Mathew 5:8. [3] Saint Thomas also mentions the active life and the contemplative life here close to the beginning of his Summa, so we will delve a bit deeper into these two subjects starting with some mis-representations that can be commonly spoken.

Many believe that we must choose only one life to live. Either the active life or the contemplative life. There is good news. We can live both lives, and in fact, we must live both lives for our salvation as we only need to look at religious orders which require the members to live both lives. Many also believe that it is the contemplative life that brings us into the active life, but that is also not the case, in the sense that the active life will eventually lead you into the contemplative life because the active life disposes one to it.[4] If our disposition and free will allow it. If the contemplative life was the one that led you into the active life, we would not be free to use our free will and choose God.

With that said, the contemplative life will always be higher than the active life, [5] as without the contemplative life one will not be able to live a fruitful active life with others. The fruits that only an active life produces are not of the higher sweetness as the active life lived toghether with the contemplative life. The active life does assist us build on our virtues (sweetness) preparing us for the contemplative life using the resources that we have available on the active life. Yet, once the contemplative life reaches our soul that does not take resources and those sweet fruits can be given to God directly. The conteplative life also allows us to discern which fruits in the active life were sweet and which were unsweet fruits to allow us the ability to cut those out of our lives.

The contemplative life uses our soul and the souls of others [6]to apply back into our active life. It is therefore, worth it, for us to take time for us to bring out the monk inside each of us for as long as we can each day in our prayer corner at home and bring that monk into the world on our active lives.