The Calling

Thursday, Seventh Week of Easter
Feast of St. Bernadine, Priest

“Paradoxical as it may seem, it would not even occur to a person – no, nor to an angel or saint – to desire contemplative love were it not already alive within him. I believe, too, that often our Lord deliberately chooses to work in those who have been habitual sinners rather than in those who, by comparison, have never grieved him at all. Yes, he seems to do this very often. For I think he wants us to realize that he is all-merciful and almighty, and that he is perfectly free to work as he pleases, where he pleases, and when he pleases.

“Yet he does not give his grace nor work this work in a person who has no aptitude for it. But a person lacking the capacity to receive his grace could never gain it through his own efforts either. No one at all, neither sinner nor innocent, can do so. For this grace is a gift, and it is not given for innocence nor withheld for sin…

“He who experiences God working the depths of his spirit has the aptitude for contemplation and no one else. For without God’s grace a person would be so completely insensitive to the reality of contemplative prayer that he would be unable to desire or long for it…you will never desire to posses it until that which is ineffable and unknowable moves you to desire the ineffable and unknowable. Do not be curious to know more, I beg you. Only become increasingly faith to this work until it becomes your whole life.”
—The Cloud of Unknowing


We who long for contemplation, though we feel unworthy and completely clueless as to how to be contemplatives, have been chosen for this work by God’s inexplicably mystery and grace. There is nothing to do but start cooperating.

Great Silence, still my racing mind, my searching heart. Allow me to accept this calling, and follow you into the cloud of unknowing, where we are truly, fully known. Amen.