For Christians Jesus himself is the prime example of the practice of contemplation. According to early Christian contemplatives, this example is not the healing of the demoniac, the rebuking of the winds, or the Transfiguration, but Jesus’ own temptation in the desert (Mt 4:1-11). The ordeal in prayer is fundamentally a battle with thoughts, and the early contemplatives noticed something vitally important in how Jesus dealt with the thoughts by which Satan tried to ensnare him. The fourth-century monk Evagrius spoke for generations of early Christian contemplatives when he observed that Jesus “passed on to us what he did when tempted by Satan. In the moment of struggle, when the demons attack us with pricks and darts, we must answer them with a verse from Holy Scripture.” Listening attentively to the account of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, Evagrius and others like him observed that Jesus avoided getting caught up in any sort of conversation with Satan. Instead, Jesus quoted lines of Scripture (from Deuteronomy), in order to break the cycle of inner chatter that would only hold his attention captive the more he listened to it and indulged it.
Jesus’ own battle with thoughts becomes, then, the Christian foundation of the practice of contemplation: the quiet repetition of a scriptural phrase in order to keep the attention focused. This became a common practice among the desert fathers and mothers who memorized passages of Scripture (sometimes lengthy passages) in order to break free of this snare of thoughts. Saint Augustine referred to these as “arrow prayers.” Scripture also claims, however, that the name of Jesus itself casts out demons (Lk 10:17) and implies the presence of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3). Thus the quiet repetition of “Jesus” as an anchor in the midst of a storm, what today we might call a prayer word, has come to be known as the Jesus Prayer. Down through the centuries, the Jesus Prayer has taken various forms, from a single word, “Jesus,” to the lengthier “Jesus Christ, Son of [the living] God, have mercy on me [a sinner].” Saint John Climacus provides some of the most succinct instruction of all, “Let the remembrance of Jesus be with your every breath. Then indeed you will appreciate the value of stillness.””
The practice of contemplation in the Christian tradition tends to emphasize the cultivation of concentration through the use of a short phrase or prayer word (versiculum), often inspired by Scripture. But this is not the only way to dispose ourselves to the gift of contemplation. The Carthusian monk Guigo II explains in his Ladder of Monks something he inherited as a way of reading and resting in Scripture in such a way that we are ultimately drawn into repose in the silence of Scripture. This is known as lectio divina and is a style of prayer with deep roots in the Christian tradition. Saint John of the Cross does not appear to focus on the use of a prayer word to concentrate the mind, but instead on the cultivation of awareness: “Preserve a loving attentiveness to God with no desire to feel or understand any particular thing concerning him.”These general approaches to the practice of contemplation, however, are not opposed to each other; for the interior silence that all contemplative practices cultivate finally blossoms as luminous, flowing awareness, not awareness of objects that come and go in the mind like changing weather, but the simple opening up from within of the ground of awareness, before it becomes awareness of this or that object. For many, prayer will simply become (whether or not the prayer word is used) just being; simple sitting in awareness. This is a luminous and solid seat. But most find, at least early on, the use of some sort of anchor like the prayer word to be a great support in reining in the wandering roving mind.
~Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
