Contemplation and Transformation

Contemplation has been the life of the Carmelite order from its eremitical beginnings in the Holy Land eight centuries ago. Following their great sixteenth-century Spanish mystics, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Carmelites understand the contemplative life as a love affair with God that transforms human consciousness. Contemplatives see with God's eyes, love with Christ's heart, and respond to life with the Holy Spirit's guidance. 


The essays in this volume of Carmelite Studies, written by nine outstanding teachers of the Christian mysticism and Carmelite spirituality, trace the historical development of Carmel's contemplative tradition, elucidate it with contemporary theological and psychological insight, and explain its practice in concrete detail. The authors thus share Carmel's spiritual heritage with those today who hunger for a deeper understanding of the contemplative life and reliable guidance in its practice. 


This book, an effective response to the church's critical need of education for contemplation, points the way to the individual and social transformation required to build a new world in the new millennium. 


Contributors: Donald Buggert, Kevin Culligan, Keith Egan, Constance FitzGerald, Kieran Kavanaugh, Ernest Larkin, Bernard McGinn, Vilma Seelaus, and John Welch


"It (Contemplation) does nothing less, when accompanied by the necessary determination, than draw the Almighty so that He becomes one with our lowliness, transforms us into Himself, and effects a union of the Creator with the creature." 


St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection 32:11