Active and Comtemplative Life
179. The Types of Life
1. We often call the "life" of a person that upon which he is most intent and in which he finds the greatest delight. Of one man, we say that his life is art; of another, study; of another, travel, and so on. Now, some men are especially bent upon the contemplation of truth; others are given wholeheartedly to external activity. Thus, a person's life may be described as contemplative or as active.
2. Just as the intellect is speculative or contemplative in knowing truth about things, and practical or active in its grasp of what one is to do, so life itself is suitably classified as the contemplative life and the active life.
180. The Contemplative Life
1. The contemplative life is not one of cold study and consideration of eternal truth. It is not sheerly intellectual. It involves will and appetites; it includes love and attachment to what is studied. For the very intention to contemplate truth is an act of the will, and the contemplative person is led by all pertinent appetitive forces to love the work of contemplation and to repose happily in it.
2. The contemplative life, however, does consist essentially in the consideration of truth, and such consideration belongs to the intellect. The moral virtues (that is the will-virtues) dispose the soul for contemplation by curbing distracting passions and by allaying the disturbance caused by outward occupation, but these virtues do not enter the essence of contemplation itself. We say, therefore, that the moral virtues belong dispositively but not essentially to the contemplative life.
3. The contemplative life is not a kind of schedule of related acts; contemplation is one act. Still, the process of arriving at the truth to be contemplated involves, for man the wayfarer (that is, for man in his earthly life), a variety of acts. Thus, a man must grasp principles, and he must reason upon them to know what is implied in them. The last and perfect act, after the full discovery of truth, is contemplation, the steady gazing upon truth. This is one act, not several.
4. Contemplation considers God; it dwells upon the supreme intelligible Truth. The perfect contemplation which beholds the divine essence in the beatific vision is not to be had this side of heaven. Here on earth, however, we can achieve imperfect contemplation: "We see now through a glass in a dark manner" (I Cor. 13:12). Here we consider creatures in so far as they lead us to contemplate the Creator. Four things pertain, in a fixed order, to the contemplative life: (a) the disposing moral virtues; (b) preparatory acts of attention, study, reasoning; (c) contemplation of divine effects, that is, of creatures which manifest God; (d) the contemplation of divine truth itself.
5. Since, in this life, we cannot gaze directly upon the divine essence, the highest degree of contemplation possible is that which we find exemplified in the rapture of St. Paul (II Cor. 12).
6. The operation of the intellect is called a movement. In contemplation, the intellect's movement of fixing and focusing on a topic is called curved movement; the movement of reasoning or thinking a thing out in connected steps is called straight movement; the union of the two movements in a movement which combines uniformity of gaze with progress through the various reasoned points, is called oblique movement.
7. There are in contemplation the delight of engaging in a suitable and congenial operation and the delight of knowing and gazing upon a beloved object. This spiritual delight surpasses all other human joys.
8. True contemplation is not interrupted for other sustained employments of the mind. It is continuous: perfectly so in its unchanging object, and truly so in the unabandoned purpose and effort of the contemplative person.
181. The Active Life
1. The active life is given to works rather than to contemplation. Since the moral virtues are mainly pertinent to operation, they belong essentially to the active life.
2. And the virtue of prudence, which is speculative in essence and practical in many of its applications, is, as a practical or moral virtue, directly pertinent to the active life.
3. Teaching as actively exercised belongs to the active life. St. Gregory (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) says that "the active life is to feed the hungry, and to teach words of wisdom to the ignorant." Yet the teacher, considering truth in his own mind and loving it, is contemplative. Therefore teaching has a twofold aspect, one active, one contemplative.
4. The life of external action ends with earthly existence. If there be any external actions at all in heaven, they will have contemplation as their aim and end, and thus will belong to contemplation itself. St. Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.): "The active life ends with this world, but the contemplative life begins here and is perfected in heaven."
182. Active and Contemplative Life Compared
1. The contemplative life, taken simply, is more excellent than the active life. Yet what is in itself more excellent is not, by that fact, more excellent in relation to every person or to all the demands and the circumstances of earthly existence. If Mary chose the best part, Martha did not choose a bad or unnecessary part. The order of human existence could not be served were all persons dedicated to contemplation and none to action.
2. The contemplative life is, in itself, more meritorious than the active life. For the contemplative life is wholly concerned with God, whereas the active life must necessarily deal much with creatures. But it may happen that, in particular cases, one person merits more by the works of the active life than another person merits by the works of the contemplative life.
3. The active life, in so far as it demands attention to externals and care in their use and practice, hinders contemplation. But it can happen that active life contributes to the quelling of internal passions which arouse imaginings that distract and hamper the concentration of the soul; in such a case the active life itself contributes to contemplation.
4. Action precedes contemplation. For what is common to all precedes what is perfect and attainable by some. As St. Gregory points out (Hom. xiv in Ezech.), we can get to heaven without the contemplative life if we do all that we should do. But if we neglect doing what we should do (that is, if we neglect the active life), we cannot get to heaven.