Cajetan: Those whose duty it is to instruct others in spiritual progress should note that they are bound to take great pains to exercise them in the active life before they urge them to ascend the heights of contemplation. For they must learn to subdue their passions by acquiring habits of meekness, patience, generosity, humility, and tranquillity of soul, before they ascend to the contemplative life. Through lack of this, many, not so much walking in the way of God as leaping along it, find themselves—after they have spent the greater portion of their life in contemplation—devoid of virtue, impatient, irascible, and proud, if one but so much as touch them on this point! Such people have neither the active nor the contemplative life, nor even a mixture of the two; they have built upon sand! And would that such cases were rare! (on 2. 182. 1 2.).
S. Augustine: Terrified by my sins and my weight of misery I was disturbed within my soul and meditated flight into solitude. But Thou didst forbid it and didst strengthen me and say: Christ died for all, that they also who live may not now live to themselves, but unto Him Who died for them and rose again.[457] Behold, O Lord, I cast my care upon Thee so that I may live, and I will meditate on the wondrous things of Thy law. Thou knowest my lack of skill and my weakness; teach me and heal me! He—Thine Only-Begotten Son—in Whom lie hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, He redeemed me with His blood. Let not the proud calumniate me! When I think of my Ransom then I eat and I drink, and I pray, and in my poverty I yearn to be filled with Him, to be among those who eat and are filled and they praise the Lord who seek Him (Conf., X., xliii. 70).
S. Augustine: He hath hid me in His tabernacle in the day of evils.[458]
Wherefore without any arrogance have I sought for That One Thing, neither doth my soul reproach me, saying: Why do you seek after It? From whom do you seek It? Do you, a sinner, wickedly dare to ask something of God? Do you, weak man, of unclean heart, dare to hope that you will one day attain to the contemplation of God? I dare! Not indeed of myself, but because of His pleasure in me; not out of presumptuous trust in myself, but from confidence in His promise. For will He Who gave such a pledge to the pilgrim desert him when he comes to Him? For He hath hid me in His tabernacle in the day of evils (Enarr. in Ps. xxvi.).
II
Is the Active Life more Meritorious than the Contemplative?
S. Gregory says[459]: "Great are the merits of the active life, but they are surpassed by those of the contemplative life."
The source of merit is charity. Charity, however, consists in the love of God and of our neighbour; and to love God is, in itself, more meritorious than to love our neighbour. Consequently that which more directly pertains to the love of God is more meritorious in its nature than something that directly pertains to the love of our neighbour for God's sake. The contemplative life, however, directly and immediately pertains to the love of God, as S. Augustine says[460]: "The love of truth asks for a holy leisure; that is the contemplative life," and this truth is the Divine Truth on Which the contemplative life is centred. The active life, on the other hand, is more immediately concerned with the love of our neighbour, it is busy about much serving.[461] Hence of its very nature the contemplative life is more meritorious than the active, as is well expressed by S. Gregory[462] when he says: "The contemplative life is more meritorious than the active, for the latter toils in the wear and tear of present work by which it must needs help its neighbour; whereas the former, by a certain inward savour, already has a foretaste of the repose to come"—that is, in the contemplation of God.