The contemplative journey can be appreciated through many different images and ways of understanding. Here we present it as a process of growth through five phases as one journeys in the land of unfamiliarity. The descriptions of the five phases were adapted from one of the many articles by Marie Beha OSC from the Review For Religious.  Most of this content was assembled by Sr. Helen Banyai SJC on my suggestion. The last third of this content ( most of phase 5) was assembled by Vicky Chen, M.D.**.  Several people including Ruth McLean **  helped me bring this to you. 

           Since all calls to deeper relationship with God embrace a common core of values and attitudes, we offer this meditative material as a possible support. Individuals can use this meditation resource to understand, accept and respond to the struggles going on in their own prayer experience.

-- John Veltri 

          For a long time I experience nothing but distaste, dislike, aridity in my prayer, yet such a great desire to meet you, Lord. The very presence of you that once flooded my being in deep affective prayer and in contact with the world, now seems to be utterly absent. It is as if I had lost you. Dryness is now the outcome of fixing my senses upon subjects which formerly provided satisfaction. The light I had before appears as darkness itself.

          God divests the faculties, affections and senses, both spiritual and sensory, interior and exterior. He leaves the intellect in darkness, the will in aridity, the memory in emptiness and the affections in supreme afflictions, bitterness and anguish, by depriving the soul of the feeling and satisfaction it previously obtained from spiritual blessings.⁽²⁾

          The night seems very dense and dark. I feel that I will never find you again. Yet, I do not experience true panic or disquietude. I experience only a deep abiding trust that you will come, that in a way you are present in your absence.
 

       Where once you breathed your loving breath
         upon my cheek, my neck, my ear ...
           now, you are gone.

        Where once you stroked my waiting palm
                   laid open to your flaming touch ...
           now, you are gone.

                  an empty womb
                  the stillness hangs   upon
                                    within
                                   around.
                  your absence aches
                  its shadow sears      my mind
                                    my heart
                                   my soul.

         Where once you filled my vacant stares,
                  my empty rooms ...
           now darkness pounds.

         Where once you tamed my rampant storms,
                  unleashed with fury in the night ...
           now darkness pounds.

                  i am the babe
                  abandoned to      the emptiness
                                 the thick, dark black
                                the hollow arms.
                  i am the babe
                  set free amidst    the tunnels of aridity
                                 the spirals of unending
                                      space
                                the waves of incongruity.

         Where once you danced before my eyes
                  in raptured strains of liturgy ...
           now, sorrow reigns.

         Where once you dressed my soul in love
                  in orbs of fragile reverence ...
           now, sorrow reigns.

                  Lost keys   Lost doors   Lost light
                   Lost me      Lost You

                      Standing on the trail at sunset
                          i await your next caress.⁽³⁾

          It seems to me that God calls me to leave behind the past the ways I hold dear in relating to him, and meet him, experience him in new ways. It is like being called to a foreign country where I must learn all over again.

          The privation of the senses is one of the conditions required, that the spiritual form, which is the union of love, may be introduced in the spirit and united with it. The Holy One works all of this in the soul by means of a pure and dark contemplation.⁽⁴⁾
 

            i awoke, one morning,
                    from shades of sleep,
                    to find my world had changed ...

            the ground on which i had always placed my feet,
                    had subtly shifted with the darkness.

            the firm beliefs and solid suppositions
                    that ordered my daily decisions
            had evaporated before my eyes ...
            the images of God
                    which sketched my thoughts
                    and traced my days
            now seemed anachronistic to my mind ...

            comfortable pillows
                    that held my head
                      and spoke of warm security
                 in familiar ways
            were slipping silently from my bed ...

            the props i  used
                    to keep me strong
                 now seemed obsolete
            and strangely out of synchronization.

                      submerged in pools of doubt
                     lay the buoys i'd worn
                 to hold me up in times of trial.

                 caught and helpless,
                     uprooted and airborne,
                         i existed ...

                 dangling in space
                     between the old
                         and the new ...

            one eye was fixed with longing to the past,
               the other,
               with an urgent expectancy,
                   to what might lay ahead ...

            one hand was clutching
                    at what had been so easy and certain,
                    the other
                        grasped at what might fill
                        the freshly-opened void.

                      i had a new space within myself
                          which i had not discerned before ...
                 it begged designs to form its cast.

            a voice emerged      deep in my heart
                    which called me to an alien land.
           it tugged and pulled
                    and bade me come
                    to risk and grow
                       in tune with it.

            i felt the promise
                    of a more profound love
                    and communion with      divinity ...
            if i could only
                    shirk my fear
                    and put my trust
                       in what beckoned me ...⁽⁵⁾

Fear And Resistance
          New beginning involves a wrench, a break, perhaps a repudiation. The total, final break with all I hold dear is not achieved without tears. Your call, my God, is both fascinating and terrifying. I relate to it with mixed feelings. I sense fear and resistance.

          The attempt to flee from reality, to deny your call, puts me in a kind of vacuum. It is like being nowhere, having no place to stand. Your call, my God, to pure and dark contemplation has already made a difference, and that difference is irreversible. I realize that the return to former ways is no longer a possibility, much less an option. Yet, I am afraid. I must choose to break through the fear and come to new life or try to escape from your disturbing call. To escape would be a way of self-defeat. I acknowledge that I am afraid and fear begins to retreat. I am freer now to go into surrender.
 

                               i plod the land of ancient time
                                where faceless days and voiceless nights
                                   rest anaesthetized
                                beneath the hand
                                   of willed and bland oblivion.

                               descending burrowed abysses
                                where memory plays its instant frames,
                               i step into the tangled mesh
                                of mortal patterns etched in ice;
                               i crouch surrounded
                                   by   my   self
                                and feel the web encircle me.

                               peering into mirrored pools
                                i see the past disrobe and speak
                                of crusted blood and careless tears
                               that filtered through my roaring streams;
                                i see my thoughts undress and hide
                                  along the empty paths i ran.

                               i try to wash the pain away
                                        and
                                slice the ropes that keep me bound,
                               but razor edges of my sin
                                   slide deep into the fleshy part,
                                   wedge firm within my fleshy part.....
                                  i taste the cutting with my tongue
                                  and bite the harshness as they sink.

                               i throw myself against the wall
                                and dash my head with jagged stones,
                                in efforts to escape this purge
                                   of looking at my nakedness,
                                   of sewing on my barren limbs,
                                accepting them as part of me.

                               i lie awake upon the floor
                                amidst the crumbs of who i am,
                                and dig the lava from my eyes
                               that blinded me to sacred light,
                                and tear the blanket from my heart
                               that let me sleep contentedly.

                               i plod the land of present time
                                with fearless days and voiceless nights
                               and raise my arms
                               in anguished call.....
                               i stand and bellow
                                  . . . . .           to my God.(6)
 

Surrender
          Out of my fear comes the acceptance of surrender. It will be a gradual and progressive revelation in me and it will be total. I am called to let go of what has been familiar to me, of that "very self" by which I have identified myself. I am resolved to seek nothing and do nothing but what is willed by my God. I know it is all love.

          I am drawn into a phase of looking back on my life. I allow myself to experience and be aware of my weakness and my giftedness. My God, you call me to acceptance and appreciation of my unique self. You call me to a greater freedom in being with you.

Re-experience Of One's Sinfulness
          You draw me into the desert where I am brought face to face with myself in all my nakedness. A re-experince of my past here tells me who I am at present. I re-live my many sins. I feel them as they cut into my bones.
 
 

A Sense Of Quiet And Peace In Between
          Through the pain, despite the turbulence, I become less anxious, more at one with myself, more at peace. I have been loved into accepting your forgiveness.
 

A Fresh Insight Into God's Mercy And Goodness
          In this desert, I am brought face to face with God. While an overwhelming perception of my past sins brings me almost to despair, he is leading me to a fresh insight into his mercy and goodness.
 
 

A New  Awareness Of God's Giftedness
          I am being led to a new awareness of my giftedness. I re-experience in my heart my whole life as a gift. The recognition of your very least gift within me, Lord, is an experience so new and so intense that it overwhelms me and directs me to you.

          The awareness of the mystery in all your gifts is an inkling of the mystery of you. It is an inkling of the love of your divine heart longing to be accepted so that you can bestow on me your life and your joy. I rejoice over the experience of my nothingness that enables me to await all from God as little children await all from their parent. How can I repay all that you have given me?
 

Acceptance Of Oneself As Sinner And As One Being Forgiven
          This period of life review is one of turbulence. One day I am plunged almost into despair; another day I am lifted up by a deeper realization of God's love to me. In between, I experience quiet and peace. Through the purification of my life review, I am brought to a deep acceptance of myself as sinner and as one loved into accepting forgiveness.
          I find myself growing into greater freedom and humanism. I am feeling more comfortable with my own uniqueness and in becoming most truly myself. 
The transformation of my weakness into self-acceptance is emerging. I understand that this very openness to receive redemption is true humility. I am learning to allow the power of your grace to transform me.
 

Being Drawn Into A Union Of Love
          I accept your call, Lord, to stay in the desert where I may further realize my own nothingness and utter weakness. I may learn to let go of the last hold I have on my own controlled knowledge of you, of myself and of the world.

          It seems to me that through the dread of the purification of the senses, faculties and affections, you have taken me to a new threshold of union with you. I sense the being drawn into a union of love, that is so much beyond me, that it can only be received as an unearned gift. You come and go, yet always remain.

Yes, it is truly the Beloved who visits thee. But He comes invisible, hidden, incomprehensible. He comes to touch thee, not to be seen; to intimate His presence to thee, not to be understood; to make thee taste of Him, not to pour Himself out in His entirety; to draw thy affection, not to satisfy thy desire; to bestow the first fruits of His love, not to communicate it in its' fullness.⁽⁹⁾

Solitude, Silence: Inner Necessities
          Solitude and silence are inner necessities for me. I am invited to come to a lonely place all by myself and rest awhile.I am to surrender myself in silencing my own powers to become utterly receptive to God's mysterious gift of love.

          In the silence it will not be long before you are visited by God. He came to Elisha on Horeb at a moment of such silence that the murmuring of the slightest breeze could be heard (1K 19:12). When the Lord wants to raise a soul to contemplation, he obliges all its faculties to be silent, so as to commit itself to him alone. Stop bothering about yourself ... when, in a word, you have habitually lost sight of self, you will have penetrated the silent Holy of Holies, the inviolable sanctuary of your soul where God resides and whither he invites you. Of you as of Moses he will say:

          On the steppe there is only one sound: the moaning of the wind. "This is," runs an Arabic proverb, "the desert weeping because it would like to be a meadow" ... Only the breathing of the Spirit should be heard.⁽¹²⁾I perceive penance also as an inner necessity for the union of love to which I am being called. By renouncing creatures I acknowledge their nothingness before God's greatness. By renouncing the joys which they offer I acknowledge the sufficiency of God who is my Supreme Joy.
 

          What occurs at this phase is so beyond me, that it can only be received as unearned gift. God's revelation of self in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, changes my fear into loving attraction and my self-acceptance into self-forgetfulness. I am empowered with the capacity for communion.

Awareness Of One's Own Ignorance Of God
          You are transforming my whole life, Lord. As part of this contemplative transformation, you destroy the idols and images I have had of you, so that I may receive your fresh revelation.

          Only God Himself can let the bucket down into the depths in us. And on the other side, He must constantly work as the iconoclast. Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter. The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking, "but I never knew before. I never dreamed ..." I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas of Aquinas said of all of his theology: "It reminds me of straw".⁽¹³⁾ To truly know God, in all God's awesomeness, we must meet on God's terms. This asks of me a kenosis, an emptying.

... and then It (God's presence in darkness) breaks forth, even from the things that are beheld and from those that behold them, and plunges the true initiate into the Darkness of Unknowing, wherein he renounces all the apprehensions of his understanding and is enwrapped in that which is wholly intangible and invisible, belonging wholly to Him that is beyond all things and to none else (whether himself or another), and being through the passive stillness of all his reasoning powers united by his highest faculty to Him that is wholly Unknowable, of whom thus by a rejection of all knowledge, he possesses a knowledge that exceeds his understanding.⁽¹⁴⁾

True Knowledge Of God Is Complete Trust
          The soul, having entered the vast solitude of the Godhead, happily loses itself; and enlightened by the brightness of most lucid darkness, becomes through knowledge as if without knowledge, and dwells in a sort of wise ignorance. And although it knows not what God is, to whom it is united by pure charity, although it sees not God as He is in His glory, it yet learns by experience that He infinitely transcends all sensible things, and all that can be apprehended by the human intellect concerning Him. It knows God by this intimate embrace and contact better than the eyes of the body know the visible sun. This soul well knows what true contemplation is.⁽¹⁵⁾

          In this embrace you make me understand Lord, that to know you is to trust you, to abandon myself to you; to want nothing but you. To have found God, to have experienced Him in the intimacy of our being, to have lived even for one hour in the fire of His Trinity and the bliss of His Unity clearly makes us say: "Now I understand. You alone are enough for me".⁽¹⁶⁾

          Now I know that you love me Lord, and you can be trusted in all circumstances of life. I am being led to a joyous assent. A growing experience of your tenderness, care and concern beyond anything I could ask or imagine, draws and motivates me.
 

One's Concern: 

         The more I lose myself in you, Lord, the more I am able to dance to the rhythm of your redeeming grace. Like the snake that swims in darkness between the crevices of rocks in order to shed its skin, I too, slowly strip off my old self to allow the Christ in me come through as I grow. My sole concern in this life is to be more and more at one with you.

It is the whole of my being, Lord Jesus, that you would have me give you, tree and fruit alike, the finished work as well as the harnessed power, the opus together with the operatio. To allay your hunger and slake your thirst, to nourish your body and bring it to its full stature, you need to find in us a substance which will truly be food for you. And this food ready to be transformed into you, this nourishment for your flesh, I will prepare for you by liberating the spirit in myself and in everything: through an effort to learn the truth, to live the good, to create the beautiful; through cutting away all inferior and evil energies; through practicing that charity towards all men which alone can gather up the multitude into a single soul....
To promote, in however small a degree, the awakening of spirit in the world is to offer to the incarnate Word an increase of reality and stability; it is to allow his influence to grow in intensity around us.17

Experiencing Divine Adoption As Being Realized In Oneself

           Imagine myself as a newborn lamb, my mother has died in giving birth to me. Soon I too will die without fresh milk. The shepherd matches me with a ewe that has just lost her newborn by smearing the blood and fluid from the afterbirth of the ewe’s dead baby on me. The ewe sniffs me over and then accepts me as her own. I am nourished by her and grow up by her side. 

           Jesus, your blood has redeemed me. You have taught me to call God my father. Though we are 2000 years apart I have become part of your family, sharing the same gift of faith, hope and love. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

O eternal God, light surpassing all other light because all light comes forth from you! O fire surpassing every fire because you alone are the fire that burns without consuming! You consume whatever sin and selfishness you find in the soul. Yet your consuming does not distress the soul but fattens her with insatiable love, for though you satisfy her she is never sated but longs for you constantly. The more she possesses you the more she seeks you, and the more she seeks and desires you the more she finds and enjoys you, high eternal fire, abyss of charity! ¹⁸

Call To A Fresh Leap Of Faith

           Like the Israelites travelling in the desert, I search for the path to you. You seem to have forgotten me, yet each time I am at a low point you appear. In my weakest moment you strengthen me. How can I not walk through the parted sea, or follow the pillar of fire, or trust that the manna will be there again the next morning?

            Then again did Abraham and Sarah not question the possibility of having a child when they were both so advanced in years? Did Zechariah and Elizabeth not doubt the same way? Finally was young Mary of Nazareth not puzzled by how would it be possible for her to have a son since she had no knowledge of man? I too have many questions, when I am aware of God’s presence. Yet, how can I not take that leap into the invisible arms of God?

Can there possibly be any soul, O Lord, that reaches the stage where you grant it such graces and favours, and understands that you rejoice to be with it, and yet falls back into sin after so many favours and such great demonstrations of the love you bear it? Of this love there can be no doubt, since its effects are visible. Yes, there is indeed such a soul; I have fallen back in this way not once but many times. May it please your goodness, Lord, that I may be the only thankless one, the only one who has committed this great wrong, and behaved with such excessive ingratitude. Yet your infinite goodness has produced some good even from that; the wickeder I have been, the more the glory of your great mercies has shone out. What great reason I have to sing of them forever! 21

It is true that the presence of God in contemplation always brings peace and strength to the soul, but sometimes that peace is buried under pain and darkness and aridity. Strength is given to us, sometimes, only when we have been reduced to an extreme sense of our own helplessness and incapacity........
          Infused contemplation, then, sooner or later brings with it a terrible interior revolution. Gone is the sweetness of prayer. Meditation becomes impossible, even hateful. Liturgical functions seem to be an insupportable burden. The mind cannot think. The will seems unable to love. The interior life is filled with darkness and dryness and pain. The soul is tempted to think that all is over and that, in punishment for its infidelities, all spiritual life has come to an end.....
          Generally they remain faithful to God: they try to serve Him. But they turn away from interior things and express their service in externals. They externalize themselves in pious practices, or they immerse themselves in work in order to escape the pain and sense of defeat they have experienced in what seem, to them, to be the collapse of all contemplation. The light shineth in darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. (Jn 1:5) 22

A Renewal of Hope

           Praying the rosaries of my life, ²⁴ at each turn I am mindful of the many gifts you have given me, of my turning away from you repeatedly, and of how you lovingly embrace me again. I ponder, I weep and I smile. Indeed I may be lost in the dark forest now, yet I know with the next turn, I will see your ray of light, and will come to the edge of a clearing. Yes, the sun will shine through the thick morning fog and I will come to another landing.

Darkness that is really light; dryness that is living water – our natural way of seeing and experiencing fails us here. We are left only with faith and hope and love. But gradually, mysteriously and incredibly, we come to discover even in this life that this darkness is the only true light, that only the apparently dry well can really slake our thirst. ²⁵ 

Love In Darkness: In Communion With God And With All Creation

           Not with blazing heat or fireworks, not with celebratory bells or trumpet blast, not with passionate embrace or ecstatic union; no, now I feel you in the soft breeze of the cool morning air, I see you in the warm glow of the setting sun and I know you in the many ordinary people I encounter from day to day. Yes, you are guiding me to love subtly & silently, like some old married couples. No longer do I accept you only in the good, but I also accept you in what seems to be bad. I am not in control of myself, of others or of circumstances. Powerlessly and patiently I wait, I sigh, I pine.....for that rare moment of your consolation. Slowly I am learning to be content with being loved by you in darkness, perhaps never see you again....except always knowing that you are there, close by.

Christian contemplation, being produced in the soul by the most sublime and delicate action of infused love, makes the soul perfect in the love of God while perfecting all the other virtues in that same contemplative love......Be content to remain in loneliness and isolation and dryness and anguish waiting upon God in darkness. Your inarticulate longing for Him in the night of suffering will be your most eloquent prayer and will be more valuable to you and to the Church and will give more glory to God than the highest natural flights of the intelligence or the imagination.......... By pouring His Wisdom into your soul He is accomplishing the greatest work of His love and forming the perfect likeness of Christ, His incarnate Word, in you and perfecting His Church through everything that you allow Him to perform by the agency of your free will transformed and elevated in Him.²⁷

2. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Kieran Kavanagh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., trans. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1973) Vol. 2, p.333

3. Ruth McLean

4. St. John of the Cross, p.333

5. Ruth McLean

6. Ruth McLean

7. George A. Maloney, S.J., Invaded God (Denville, N.J.: Dimension Books, 1979) p.176

8. St. Patrick

9. Hugh of Victor in The Soul Afire, H.A. Reinhold, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Image Books, 1973) p.290

10. Ruth McLean

11. A Monk, The Hermitage Within, Alan Neame, trans. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977), p.14

12. Ibid, pp.13-14

13. C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (Harcourt, N.Y.: Brace and World, 1964), p.84

14. "Pseudo Dionysius, Mystical Theology", The Soul Afire, H.A. Reinhold, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973) p.49

15. Louis de Blois in The Soul Afire, H.A. Reinhold, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973) pp. 358-59

16. Carlo Caretto, The God Who Comes, R.M. Hancock, trans. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1974), p.93

17. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, Simon Bartholomew, trans. (Harper & Row, Publishers, New York & Evanston, 1965), p.134

18. St. Catherine of Sienna, The Dialogue, Suzanne Noffke, O.P., trans. ( Paulist Press, New York & Mahwah, 1980), p. 273

19. St. Therese of Lisieux, excerpt from Living on Love, The Poetry of  St. Therese of Lisieux, Donald Kinney, O.C.ED. trans. (ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, DC, 1996) p. 89-92

20. St. Augustine, Book X, 27, Confessions, R. S. Pine-Coffin, trans. ( Penguin Books Ltd, London England, 1961) p. 231-232

21. St. Teresa of Avila, Singing the Same Song, The Life of St. Teresa of Avila by Herself, J. M. Cohen trans. ( Penguin Books Ltd. London, England,1957) p.102

22. Thomas Merton, What is Contemplation? (Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois, revised 1981) p.40, 42, 45-46

23. St. Augustine

24. John Veltri S.J., Healing of Memories for Oneself, Orientations Vol. 1: Collection of Helps for Prayer, (Loyola House, Guelph, Ontario, revised 1996) p. 41-43

25. Thomas H.Green S.J., Drinking From A Dry Well, (Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame,  Indiana, 1991) p.65 

26. John Henry Newman

27. Thomas Merton, What is Contemplation? (Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois, revised 1981) p. 72, 74, 77

28. Vicky Chen ( Burlington, Ontario) Last stanza from a prayer of St Therese of Lisieux.

a. Ruth Mclean's Website can be found at: http://www.poemsforyou.org

b. Vicky Chen's Website can be found at: http://tidbits.0catch.com/