Is There a Spirituality of Study?
In the history of spirituality there is definitely an anti-intellectual trend, found particularly in the Devotio Moderna movement of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.1 As the new millennium begins, such a problem does not exist but rather the reverse: an over-reliance on the intellect's ability to fathom the contents of faith and morals, reducing holy teaching to mere academics or a study of what others have said about particular questions. What seems to be needed in this time of media and cyber explosion is a spirituality of study that enables the intellectual to steer clear of certain temptations that go with the desire to think about creation and the faith.
The spiritual life consists in cooperating with the Holy Spirit so that the graces and charisms offered by the Holy Spirit will pervade one's human acts. What this means is that virtues are established from within the situation one is in as long as one is seeking the glory of God in one's particular vocation.2 Yet another way of putting it conceptually is that spirituality means to seek and live by the grace of holiness offered to a person in any condition or state of life. As circumstances change, one must seek to please or glorify God in both the simplest and most sublime responsibilities of one's state in life.3 Moreover, what is absolutely essential for progress in the spiritual life is that one attempts to infuse into all intrinsically good and even indifferent acts (like barbecuing ribs) the spirit of charity in a conscious way as well as doing what is possible to eliminate grave or even deliberate venial sins.
Faith Seeking Understanding Produces More Divine Love
When writing about the "missions" of the Son and the Holy Spirit to the baptized person. St. Thomas noted that any new knowledge of penetrating the faith is meant to "do" something to the human person:
By grace the soul takes on a God-like form. That a divine person he sent to someone through grace, therefore, requires a likening to the person sent through some particular gift of grace. Since the Holy Spirit is Love, the likening of the soul occurs through the gift of charity and so the Holy Spirit's mission is accounted for by reason of charity. The Son in turn is the Word: not, however, just any word, but the Word breathing love… Consequently not just any enhancing of the mind indicates being sent, but only that sort of enlightening that bursts forth into love . . . (ST I, 435 ad 2).4
What all this means is that the study or meditation or contemplation of sacred truth under the ordinary grace of the Holy Spirit should so enlighten one that any lights received stimulate acts of divine love for God and neighbor.
Infused Charity The Form Or Inspirer Of All The Virtues
St. Therese of Lisieux said somewhere that "you can save a soul by picking up a needle." What she meant was that in the spiritual life the infused charity/love of God one has in one's heart and activities is more important than actual deeds done, because any ordinary act inspired by charity can merit graces for oneself and/or others.5 Or better, someone washing a floor or a car may do so with greater charity/love than someone teaching a class in a university or writing a book.
If infused divine love is the mainstay of growing in a relationship with God, then it can inspire an ordinary act of study or of thinking, since this activity is allied to the possession of natural and supernatural truth.6 Truth is the goodness of the intellect and also a potential mover of the will (depending upon its content). So then, on the natural level, if one's motives and circumstances are good, the act of study is morally good and virtuous. And, if one's principal motive is to please God and save souls and this is done in the state of sanctifying grace, then the simple act of studying can also be meritorious. However, if someone is studying for all the wrong motives such as love or glorification of the self, or even power over others and the like, then instead of being a virtue, it becomes a vice. St. Augustine said something similar when he wrote in his rule: "For this is the peculiar feature of pride, that whereas every other kind of wickedness is exercised in the accomplishment of his deeds, pride creeps stealthily in and destroys even good deeds…"7
Study As A Vice
In his treatment of the vice of study, called by Aquinas curiositas (ST II-II 167, 1), he makes the point that discovering truth can be incidentally bad because of a bad consequence such as pride or when someone uses the truth in order to commit a sin. He also notes that certain inordinateness can occur in the desire for knowledge when someone studies "the less profitable" and this interferes with the studies "incumbent on their office." Second, some may even seek to gain knowledge from sinful sources like turning to the devil to foretell the future.8 Third, a person may desire to know about nature without seeking to know about God. Finally, someone can seek to know things beyond his capacity and so easily fall into error.
In article two, the angelic doctor will add to the previous list that "curiositas" can lead one to seek knowledge which has no useful purpose and may serve to defeat it as, for example, using a contemporary illustration, the excessive watching of movies which distract from religious contemplation either because they are only interesting or entertaining and lack depth, or worse, lead one to commit acts of lechery or cruelty by watching certain scenes (ad 2). He concludes that some types of knowledge can be evil due to "prying into the doings of others lead[ing] to detraction."
More examples come to mind after pondering Aquinas's teaching. For instance, if a priest so loves study that he ignores his other duties of hearing confessions and preparing his homilies, then such study in this case is not morally good. If a husband loves his scientific experiments or mathematical equations and rarely speaks with his children as a consequence, then such study is not morally good, even though good in itself as a fulfillment of the intellect of the scientist—even if the results of his theories save lives.
It can also happen that someone obliged to study such as a Dominican student, or any student for the priesthood or a faculty member, may not be virtuous in his study if he only reads theological books for their own sake, or memorizes certain reasoning processes simply to pass examinations, or worse, fails to ponder or contemplate lovingly over truth discovered in them. For St. Thomas, theology is sacred or holy teaching whose conclusions must be gazed upon, even to the extent of relating the truth of other sciences to God's natural or supernatural revelation. The young theologian may unfortunately read books primarily for the pleasure of reading rather than for the work of memorizing and gleaning light about God and the things related to God for the salvation of others. This is why it is essential that the spirit of contemplative prayer also enter into the work of study of divine revelation, lest the theologian or the ordinary believer begin to think that his power of reasoning is greater than the faith he is trying to understand or fathom. Likewise, prayer must be at the heart of any religious contemplation so that doubts, confusions, and ignorance of faith do not overwhelm the person contemplating. In this way, the truth understood in mystery is seen as a gift of God rather than a creation of the theologian or of any human mind, flowing more from the spirit of presumption than from the spirit of prayer.
The Act Of Study And "Studiositas"
The studying of books or nature, or reflecting on experience, has several parts: understanding the data of one's subject, judging its truthfulness, and contemplating its conclusions, whether it be mathematics or political science, history or biology, philosophy or theology. Since study is a human act at least indifferent in itself, caused by exercising the faculties of the intellect, memory and imagination, it can be part of a virtue or a vice, depending upon one's motives and circumstances.
So, it took St. Thomas Aquinas to discover a virtue that applies to study or devotion to learning. He treats these matters under the over-arching virtue of temperance, since spiritual pleasures are involved which must be "regulated" or directed by reason and faith. He calls the virtue of study "studiositas" which can be translated as "studiousness," which is also translated by the Blackfriar's edition of the Summa as "devotion to learning"9 and its corresponding vice "curiositas," which is almost untranslatable since in the English speaking world "curiosity" or "inquisitiveness" can also mean something good synonymous with "studiousness." In any case, every student, whether of theology or chemistry, who applies the mind rightly can sanctify self and others by acting with "studiositas" in so far as he works at the desk trying to fathom a particular subject matter as part of his vocation to love God. If the primary and immediate subject matter of study also happens to be God or the things of God, then the truth pondered or contemplated will also augment divine love, and quite often this divine love will usually stimulate a greater search for truth.
Contemplation of divine truth, then, is a special virtue related to the theological virtues and can also inspire the moral virtues. St. Thomas teaches such when he says that when the moral virtues become more and more rooted in the human person, so the act of contemplation is facilitated.10 But to say that infused contemplation is the sole purpose of the spiritual life would be erroneous.
In his monumental work, The Way of the Lord Jesus, General Moral Principles,11 Germain Grisez criticized the Augustinian obsession with contemplation, as if it were the only virtue in the life of Christ. Rightly, Grisez speaks of Christian life as something wider. However, having made his point, he seemed to go too far by implying that religious contemplation is a special form of religious life, whereas St. Thomas in the Summa treats action (the cardinal virtues) and contemplation (clearly a cluster of different virtues), as both open to all Christians.12 St. Thomas is quite clear that moral virtues of lay people (action), religious or clerics are at the root of any contemplative virtue:
Isidore says, All vices must first be eradicated by the practice of good works in the active life, so that, the mind's eye being purified, one may advance to the contemplation of God in the contemplative life. But all vices are uprooted only by the acts of the moral virtues. Consequently the acts of the moral virtues fit into the active life (ST II-II 182,1 sed contra).13
Hence the practice of the active life (of virtue) is conducive to the contemplative life because it quells the internal passions from which arise the images that impede contemplation (ST II-II 182, 3). 14
In the thomistic explanation, the reason why many do not live by the gifts of the Holy Spirit or possess infused contemplation (wisdom, understanding or knowledge) is not that they are only granted as favors for a few, but that most people are not yet so advanced in virtue that God can act habitually in this way in their souls. To live by the gifts of the Holy Spirit should be the normal and logical outcome of living the ordinary virtues in the first place.
But unfortunately either by personal fault or psychological and involuntary circumstances outside of their control, most Christians are not yet ready for such a habitual life of complete transformation by the Holy Spirit.
Prayer Or Meditation?
Why is meditation as distinct from mental prayer so important for the person whose vocation is to study? St. Thomas has a great deal to say about this matter because it is so integral to the life of virtue. First it is important to look at meditation from the point of view of pleasure:
(. . .) And because every man finds delight when he has attained what he loves, it follows that the contemplative life terminates in delight, which is in the will, and this in its turn intensifies love (ST 1801).15
We have seen that contemplation of truth is the greatest of all pleasures. We have seen too that every pleasure assuages pain. The contemplation of truth therefore assuages pain: and it does so the more, the more perfectly one loves wisdom. This is why men find joy in the midst of tribulation by contemplating the things of God and the happiness to come . . . (ST I-II 38, 4).16
Later in a similar article of question 180, Thomas makes the point that the will moves the intellect to seek the truth, sometimes out of love for things seen or investigated. For the celibate, this is important because giving up the pleasures of married and family life, he must still have some pleasures, but of a higher kind, to become fulfilled in his life, for no one can live without some pleasure.17
More importantly, however, meditation/contemplation (for St. Thomas they seem to be like a movement toward and a restful delight which initiate or influence each other) stirs up that necessary virtue of religion called "devotion":
… Clearly, however, the intrinsic or human cause of devotion is contemplation or meditation. Devotion is an act of the will by which a man promptly gives himself to the service of God. Every act of the will proceeds from some consideration of the intellect, since the object of the will is a known good: or as Augustine says, willing proceeds from understanding. Consequently, meditation is the cause of devotion since through meditation man conceives the idea of giving himself to the service of God (ST II-II 82,3).18
However, it should be noted that in the same article, Thomas teaches that even by considering our weaknesses, we can also be led to the realization that we must depend upon God: "Consideration of man's weaknesses leads a man to submit to God since it banishes presumption which leads man to trust in his own strength." Clearly, this is an aspect of meditation/contemplation.
The Further Virtues In The Life Of Study
St. Thomas recognizes that both meditation and contemplation can be initiated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, something, which cannot be legislated by either the Church or by any religious Rule of life. Yet in the Code of Canon Law 663 §1, we discover the following: "Contemplation of divine things and assiduous union with God in prayer is to be the first and foremost duty of all religious." How can this seeming contradiction be reconciled? Aquinas takes his teaching from Richard of St. Victor because it matches experience and common sense:
According to Richard of St. Victor, cogitation would seem to refer to the consideration of many things from which one intends to gather a simple truth. Consequently it can include sense perceptions for the knowledge of certain effects, also acts of the imagination, and the discursus of reasoning as well concerning the various signs of whatever will lead to a knowledge of certain effects, or whatever will lead to a knowledge of the truth which is sought. However, according to Augustine, any actual operation of the intellect can be called "cogitation."
Meditation would seem to refer to the process of reasoning from certain principles, which arrive at the contemplation of some truth. According to Bernard, consideration means the same thing, although, according to Aristotle, every operation of the intellect is called consideration.
Contemplation, however, refers to a simple gaze upon a truth. Hence, Richard of St. Victor states that contemplation is the souls’ penetrating and easy gaze on things perceived: meditation is the investigation of a mind occupied in the search of truth; cogitation is the concentration of a mind that is prone to wander. (ST II-II 180 3 ad 1). 19
These various acts, called cogitation, meditation and contemplation are within the power of the human person, though weakened somewhat by original sin. That is why in the religious life, there is meant to be a spirit of silence and a daily routine to strengthen one's innate ability to think more deeply in the line of Richard of St. Victor's analysis. So then, whether one be in the library, one's room or the chapel or even the TV room, it is possible to be prayerfully contemplating some aspect of faith or in a state of meditative or even mental prayer.
In some traditions such as the Carmelite school, periods of mental prayer are called for, others such as the Jesuits or Sulpicians call these time periods, "meditation." In the Dominican tradition, study of sacred truth embraces both because sacred truth is meant to fire up charity, devotion to God and neighbor, as well as fostering prayer of different kinds, from petition to praise or to love.
What Has The Catechism To Say About Study?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has the entire fourth pillar or section devoted to contemplative prayer, based upon what reason and the teachings of the faith concerning the human person can do for itself in the spiritual life with the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. From a certain point of view, the Catechism lacks a more complete treatment of contemplative study, though it hints at it in various numbers, probably leaving that task to theologians to articulate. Taking a look at the issue of study, the Catechism says:
2651 The tradition of Christian prayer is one of the ways in which the tradition of faith takes shape and grows, especially through the contemplation and study of believers who treasure in their hearts the events and words of the economy of salvation, and through their profound grasp of the spiritual realities they experience, [footnote deleted]
Here, prayer is seen as the result of both contemplation and study, but the Catechism also recognizes that one can also "experience" the spiritual realities as well. St. Thomas would say that these experiences would be due to the infused gifts of the Holy Spirit (not the charisms), especially wisdom, understanding or knowledge which are activated not by one's own personal efforts but by the will of the Holy Spirit alone and the human person consenting to his activations. Ordinary knowledge and understanding of the faith is a human mode of knowing, but under the special instigation of the Holy Spirit, the human person is now under the divine mode of knowing.20
Another aspect of study in the Catechism is its synthesis of reading, meditation, mental prayer and infused contemplation from a quotation of Guigo the Carthusian:
2654 The spiritual writers, paraphrasing Matthew 7:7, summarize in this way the dispositions of the heart nourished by the word of God in prayer "Seek in reading and you will find in meditating; knock in mental prayer and it will be opened to you by contemplation." [footnote deleted]
Again, one finds that the virtue of study is part of a much larger process in the spiritual life called meditation:
2705 Meditation is above all a quest. The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking. The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain. We are usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them: the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history the page on which the "today" of God is written.
All of this effort made by the Christian to understand the many dimensions of the Christian life has to be a cluster of virtues both infused and natural. In the following number of the Catechism, we see that meditation makes what we study something of our own or something very personal:
2706 To meditate on what we read helps us to make it our own by confronting it with ourselves. Here, another book is opened: the book of life. We pass from thoughts to reality. To the extent that we are humble and faithful, we discover in meditation the movements that stir the heart and we are able to discern them. It is a question of acting truthfully in order to come into the light: "Lord, what do you want me to do?"
In addition, this "quest" leads the individual to understand the various movements that ordinarily go on in the depths of the soul. This process is traditionally called "discernment of the spirits," for which both St. John of the Cross and St. Ignatius of Loyola were famous.
Finally, the Catechism attempts to show how the work of meditation is related to prayer and how prayer pours in its dynamism to meditation. It is clear for Thomists that the study of theology is meant to foster all that the Catechism says should be done in meditation:
2708 Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus to union with him
To think of study as a mere game of the mind which has no bearing on the life of prayer is an illusion, sometimes propagated by false or incomplete spiritualities. It is as dangerous to study too much, as Thomas makes note, as it is to study not at all from a certain contempt of this "little" virtue of "studiositas." The key to opening up the treasure of divine truth is not to simply spend hours before the Blessed Sacrament and abandon study, but to acquire this virtue of studiousness and integrate it with the theological virtues and prayer. When this happens, then a true spirituality of study is alive and active, not only in an individual, but in religious communities and seminaries, dioceses, and universities.
Endnotes
1 Jordan Aumann, O.P. Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1986) pp. 62-168.
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 294: see also Antonio Royo. O.P., Jordan Aumann, O.P. Theology of Christian Perfection, (Iowa: The Priory Press 1962) pp. 23-26.
3 Following the principles of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, several saints go so far to say that they want to "console" the Sacred Heart by their lives. Ample evidence exists in the writings of St. Therese, St. John Vianney, and the Blesseds Jacinta and Francisco of Fatima fame.
4 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, vol. 7, T. C. O'Brien (tr.), (New York: Blackfriars and McGraw-Hill Book Company 1976). [Hereafter all references will be to this edition under ST].
5 CCC 2010 Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.
6 CCC 1827 The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which "binds everything together in perfect harmony": [105] it is the form of the virtues: it articulates and orders them among themselves: it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love.
7 Rule of St. Augustine, Bishop as found in the Book of Constitutions and Ordinations of the Order of Friars Preachers. (Rome: General Curia 1984), p. xxi.
8 St. Thomas is also aware that one could seek knowledge from illicit sources such as fortune- tellers, tarot cards, and the like. See ST II-II 96,6- 8:97,1-4.
9 ST vol. 44, Well-Tempered Passion, Thomas Gilby (tr.).
10 See ST II-II 182, 3, vol. 46 Jordan Aumann, O.P. Action and Contemplation.
11 Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus: Christian Moral Principles, (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press 1983), p. 772.
12 ST II-II 180-182, Vole 46,Aumann.See especially p. xix and appendices.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 ST, vol. 20, Eric D'Arcy, (tr.) Pleasure 1974.
17 See my article "O Priest, Who Are You?" (part I), in The Priest, August 1994, 10-16.
18 ST vol. 39 Kevin D. O'Rourke, O.P. (tr.) Religion and Worship, 1964. 19 ST vol. 46 Aumann, O.P. (tr.).
20 See Royo and Aumann, Christian Perfection, a pp. 85-92.
Reverend Basil Cole, O.P., is an assistant professor of moral and spiritual theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D. C. He is the author of Music and Morals (Alba House, 1993) and the co-author of Christian Totality: Theology of Consecrated Life (Alba House, 1997). His last article in HPR appeared in the December 1999 issue.
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