{"id":98,"date":"2010-07-27T13:03:50","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T12:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/?page_id=98"},"modified":"2010-08-16T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T10:57:10","slug":"the-contemplative-christian-tradition","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/contemplative-practices\/the-contemplative-christian-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Contemplative Christian Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the first 1,600 years, contemplation was the goal of Christian prayer.\u00a0 St. Gregory the Great at the end of the 6<sup>th<\/sup> Century described contemplation as \u201cthe deep knowledge of God impregnated with love.\u201d\u00a0 For Gregory, contemplation was both the fruit of reflecting on the word of God in scripture and a precious gift of God.\u00a0 He called it \u201cresting in God.\u201d\u00a0 In this \u201cresting\u201d the mind and heart are not so much seeking God as beginning \u201cto taste\u201d what they have been seeking.\u00a0 This state is not the suspension of all activity, but the reduction of many acts and reflections to a single act or thought to consent to God\u2019s presence and action at the depths of ones being during the time of prayer.<\/p>\n<p>We may sometimes think of prayer as thoughts or feelings expressed in words.\u00a0 But this is only one expression of prayer.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/?page_id=67\">Contemplative prayer<\/a> is really the opening of the mind and heart, our whole being to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, beyond words, beyond feelings and emotions.\u00a0 We open our awareness to God whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself.\u00a0 As Father Keating points out in his book <em>Manifesting God<\/em>,\u201d God of course does not actually come closer; rather, God\u2019s actual closeness at all times and in every place begins to penetrate our ordinary consciousness.\u201d\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contemplativeoutreach.org\/category\/category\/lectio-divina  \">Lectio Divina<\/a> is the most traditional way of cultivating <a href=\"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/?page_id=67\">contemplative prayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Extract from Thomas Keating \u201c<em><a href=\"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/?page_id=9\">Centering Prayer<\/a> Workbook<\/em>\u201d (Contemplative Outreach: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soundstrue.com\/shop\/Welcome.do\">Sounds True Inc<\/a>, 2009) <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first 1,600 years, contemplation was the goal of Christian prayer.\u00a0 St. Gregory the Great at the end of the 6th Century described contemplation as \u201cthe deep knowledge of God impregnated with love.\u201d\u00a0 For Gregory, contemplation was both the fruit of reflecting on the word of God in scripture and a precious gift of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/contemplative-practices\/the-contemplative-christian-tradition\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Contemplative Christian Tradition<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":67,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-98","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions\/276"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/contemplativeoutreachireland.com\/coi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}