What Is Contemplative Prayer?
Posted by Brother Oscar
What Is Contemplative Prayer?
A guide to silent, receptive prayer — what it is, where it came from, and how to begin
Most Christian prayer involves words — spoken or internal, directed at God or voiced in community. Contemplative prayer is something different. It is not the absence of prayer but a different mode: receptive rather than petitionary, silent rather than verbal, oriented toward presence rather than petition. It is, in the simplest description, prayer in which the primary activity is listening rather than speaking.
This guide covers what contemplative prayer is, where it comes from in the Christian tradition, how it differs from other kinds of prayer, and how to begin — including the practical questions that most introductions to the subject leave unaddressed.
Among the images that have anchored Christian contemplation across centuries, few are as concentrated in meaning as the Sacred Heart of Jesus — a single image that holds suffering, love, and divine invitation together.
What Contemplative Prayer Is
Contemplative prayer is the practice of resting in God’s presence without the mediation of words, images, or active thought. It is not meditation in the modern therapeutic sense — though it shares some external characteristics — but a specifically theological act: the consenting of the self to God, held open, attentive, and still.
The word “contemplation” comes from the Latin contemplari — to gaze, to observe. In the Christian tradition, it has come to mean a form of prayer in which the pray-er does not primarily speak or ask but attends: to the presence of God, to whatever is offered in that silence, to the quality of one’s own interior life as it meets the divine. It is, in this sense, the most passive form of prayer — and, paradoxically, often the most demanding.
Its Roots in the Christian Tradition
Contemplative prayer is not a modern innovation. Its roots run through the entire Christian tradition from the earliest centuries. The Desert Fathers and Mothers — the fourth-century monks and nuns who withdrew to the Egyptian desert to pursue a life of prayer — practised forms of silent, receptive prayer that would be recognisable to anyone who practises centering prayer today. Evagrius of Pontus, John Cassian, and later the author of The Cloud of Unknowing (a fourteenth-century anonymous English mystic) all articulate versions of the same insight: that the deepest prayer is not a human performance but a human receptivity.
The great Spanish mystics of the sixteenth century — Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross — developed the most systematic account of contemplative prayer in the tradition. Teresa’s Interior Castle describes the soul’s movement through stages of prayer, culminating in a “quiet prayer” and then a “unitive prayer” that is no longer something the person does but something they receive. John’s Dark Night of the Soul maps the experience of spiritual aridity — the sense that God has withdrawn, that one’s usual consolations in prayer have gone — as a necessary passage rather than a failure.
In the twentieth century, Thomas Merton brought contemplative prayer back into mainstream Catholic consciousness, and the Trappist monks of St Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, developed the method known as Centering Prayer — a structured approach to contemplative practice that has spread widely since the 1970s.
How It Differs from Other Prayer
Most prayer is active in some sense: it involves speaking, listening to Scripture, asking, thanking, interceding. Contemplative prayer is not opposed to these forms; it is their complement. Where active prayer moves from the person toward God — words, requests, attention directed outward — contemplative prayer inverts the orientation: it rests in God, alert to what is being offered, not generating content but receiving it.
The difference is sometimes described as the difference between speaking to God and resting with God. Both are legitimate. Both are forms of prayer. But they require different dispositions and different kinds of attention. Active prayer suits moments of need, praise, intercession, and liturgical participation. Contemplative prayer suits moments of extended silence, of spiritual aridity, of the desire to move beyond the busy surface of the interior life into something quieter.
Meditation — in the specifically Catholic sense — is also different from contemplation. Meditation, in the classical sense, is active: it involves the intellect working on Scripture or a mystery of the faith, moving through it, drawing out its implications, arriving at affections and resolutions. Contemplation is what sometimes follows meditation — or what is sought directly — when the active movement of the intellect stills and the person rests in what has been apprehended rather than continuing to work it.
Christian contemplation has always been understood as cooperation with the quiet work of the Holy Spirit, who gently draws the believer toward deeper communion with Christ.
The Rosary follows this same movement. While vocal prayers provide the rhythm, the meditation on each mystery gradually leads the heart beyond words toward quiet contemplation of Christ's life, death, and Resurrection.
The Rosary represents one of the most widely practised forms of structured contemplative prayer in Western Christianity — a method that uses repetition and Gospel imagery to draw the believer into sustained meditative presence. Our guide to how the Rosary functions as Scripture meditation examines this method specifically.
Centering Prayer — One Method
Centering Prayer, developed by Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Meninger in the 1970s, offers a practical method for entering contemplative prayer. Its structure is simple:
- Choose a sacred word as a symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action. The word should be simple: “Jesus,” “Abba,” “peace,” “surrender.” It is not a mantra to be repeated continuously but a gentle pointer.
- Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Spend a minute or two settling. Then introduce the sacred word inwardly, as a symbol of your intention.
- When you become aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, or images, return gently to the sacred word. Not to fight the thought, but to let it go and return.
- At the end of the prayer period — typically twenty minutes — remain in silence for a few minutes before returning to ordinary activity.
The sacred word is not the object of contemplative prayer. God is. The word is simply the way the person expresses, repeatedly, the intention to remain open. When thoughts arise — and they will, constantly, especially at the beginning — the return to the word is not a failure but the practice itself. The practice is the returning.
Lectio Divina — Another Entry Point
Lectio Divina — sacred reading — is a slower, older practice that can serve as an entry into contemplative prayer for people who find pure silence difficult to sustain. Its traditional structure moves through four stages:
- Lectio (reading) — A short passage of Scripture read slowly, aloud or silently, attended to as a word addressed personally.
- Meditatio (meditation) — Returning to the passage, allowing a word or phrase that catches attention to surface, and sitting with it.
- Oratio (prayer) — A response to what has been received — a movement of the heart toward God, however simple.
- Contemplatio (contemplation) — Resting in the presence of God, beyond words, in what has been given by the reading and the prayer that followed it.
The fourth stage is not always reached, and it cannot be forced. But Lectio Divina creates the conditions in which it sometimes arrives naturally — which is, in some ways, the most honest description of how contemplative prayer works.
Common Difficulties
The mind will not quiet. This is the most universal experience of anyone who attempts contemplative prayer. The mind does not want to be still; it generates thoughts the way the body generates breath. The contemplative tradition is unanimous: this is not a problem to be solved. It is the condition within which the practice happens. The practice is not the absence of thought but the consistent returning — gently, without frustration — to the intention of openness. After months and years of practice, the returning becomes easier and the periods of quiet longer. But even experienced practitioners experience distraction.
Nothing seems to happen. Contemplative prayer does not typically produce experiences — visions, consolations, notable feelings. Its effects are more often noticed in retrospect: a quality of patience that was not there before, a lessened compulsion to react, a capacity to rest in uncertainty. These effects accumulate slowly and cannot be measured during any single session.
It feels like a waste of time. This is perhaps the most telling objection, because it reveals the most clearly what contemplative prayer is asking: to spend time in a way that produces no measurable output. For people whose sense of self-worth is tied to productivity, this is genuinely difficult. The contemplative tradition’s answer is that this difficulty is precisely the point: it is the practice of valuing presence over production, being over doing, and receiving over achieving.
Many Christians first discover this quieter way of prayer while visiting the Holy Land, where the stillness of places such as the Judean Desert, the Sea of Galilee, and the Garden of Gethsemane naturally invites contemplation. Our guide to Christian pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land explores these sacred places and their enduring role in the Christian life of prayer.
If you are struggling with whether prayer is working at all — or finding that your interior life feels more arid than alive — our articles on why prayer feels difficult and how to pray when you feel lost address those experiences directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is contemplative prayer Catholic?
Yes — deeply so, though it has roots and parallel expressions in other Christian traditions as well. The contemplative tradition within Catholicism runs through the Desert Fathers, the medieval mystics, the Carmelite tradition of Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, and into the twentieth century through Thomas Merton and the Centering Prayer movement. It is not a fringe practice but a central strand of Catholic spirituality that has influenced every major tradition of Christian prayer.
How long should I pray contemplatively?
Twenty minutes is the standard recommendation for Centering Prayer, based on the time typically needed for the mind to begin to settle. Shorter sessions — ten to fifteen minutes — are a reasonable starting point for beginners. Twice daily is the recommendation of the Centering Prayer tradition; once daily is a realistic goal for most people.
Do I need a spiritual director to practise contemplative prayer?
Not to begin. The practices described here — Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina — can be undertaken without guidance. However, a spiritual director can be invaluable for navigating the more confusing stages of contemplative development — particularly periods of aridity, confusion about what is happening, or experiences that are difficult to interpret. If you do not have a spiritual director, the writings of Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, or Cynthia Bourgeault provide a reliable guide.
Is contemplative prayer the same as mindfulness meditation?
They share some external characteristics — both involve sustained, receptive attention; both work with thoughts by returning rather than engaging. But their orientations are different. Mindfulness meditation, in its therapeutic forms, is oriented toward psychological wellbeing and present-moment awareness without theological content. Contemplative prayer is oriented toward a personal God to whom the pray-er is consenting: its content is theologically specific, even when it takes no verbal form.
TOPIC:
SHARE:
