On Prayer and the Contemplative Life
1914
Aquinas wrote for an age anxious about the place of the sacred in a rational world. That anxiety has only intensified. This distillation from the Summa Theologica offers something rarer than comfort: a rigorous, unflinching examination of how the human soul reaches toward God. Aquinas does not merely describe prayer; he anatomizes it, tracing the movement from ritual observance to intimate union, from the discipline of virtue to the quiet abyss of contemplative stillness. Here mysticism is not eccentricity but architecture, the deliberate construction of a life oriented toward the divine. The text moves through prayer as both conversation and transformation, the relationship between outward worship and interior stillness, and the dangers of spiritual ambition unmoored from reason and tradition. Aquinas draws on the great mystics while warning against their misuse, synthesizing centuries of spiritual wisdom into a coherent path. This is not casual reading. It is an invitation to take the interior life seriously.
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“Many cry to the Lord that they may win riches, that they may avoid losses; they cry that their family may be established, they ask for temporal happiness, for worldly dignities; and, lastly, they cry for bodily health, which is the patrimony of the poor. For these and suchlike things many cry to the Lord; hardly one cries for the Lord Himself! How easy it is for a man to desire all manner of things from the Lord and yet not desire the Lord Himself! As though the gift could be sweeter than the Giver!””
— Aquinas, Saint Thomas
“It has become the fashion to talk about Mysticism, even to pose as Mystics, and”
— Aquinas, Saint Thomas
“Religion, then, is not limited to our relation to God, but embraces, our neighbour as well.””
— Aquinas, Saint Thomas
“the Apostle say: Pray without ceasing. [147] Yet can we genuflect without ceasing? Can we prostrate without ceasing? Can we lift up our hands without ceasing? How, then, does he say: Pray without ceasing? If by prayer he meant such things as these then I think we could not pray without ceasing. But there is another prayer, an interior prayer, which is without ceasing”
— Aquinas, Saint Thomas
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Aquinas, Saint Thomas. On Prayer and the Contemplative Life. Lex, lex-books.com/book/on-prayer-and-the-contemplative-life-e95440ab-2fea-4982-ace3-fc4fa5d1a169.Aquinas, S. T. (1914). On Prayer and the Contemplative Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/on-prayer-and-the-contemplative-life-e95440ab-2fea-4982-ace3-fc4fa5d1a169Aquinas, Saint Thomas. On Prayer and the Contemplative Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/on-prayer-and-the-contemplative-life-e95440ab-2fea-4982-ace3-fc4fa5d1a169.
