VirTrue: Contemplation (Contemplatio) a Part of Hope скачать в хорошем качестве

VirTrue: Contemplation (Contemplatio) a Part of Hope

🎙️ Intro Welcome to VirTrue, where we work together to turn away from vice and adopt the virtuous life we are all called to.I’m your host, Jethro Higgins. 🌿 Virtue Description Today on VirTrue, we’re talking about the virtue of Heavenly Contemplation (Contemplatio Supernorum), a sub-virtue of Hope, which directs the intellect and will toward God and the eternal realities of Heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, II–II, Q18) teaches that contemplation involves meditating on divine truths, the beatific vision, and our ultimate fulfillment in union with God. Contemplation isn’t an escape from the world — it is strength to act within it. Heavenly Contemplation: Orients us toward God as the source of truth and fulfillment Deepens faith and strengthens perseverance Produces moral clarity and detachment from temporal distraction Invites stillness that leads to surrender, not self-focus True contemplation lifts our soul beyond passing desires to what is eternal, aligning our lives with God’s will and leading to a virtuous life grounded in eternal perspective. ⚠️ Vice of Deficiency: Worldliness Definition:Worldliness is an excessive attachment to temporal things and concerns that blinds the soul to eternal realities. It focuses on pleasing the senses, pursuing comfort, and chasing status at the expense of the soul. Why it fits:Where Heavenly Contemplation lifts the soul toward God, worldliness drags it downward — chaining the mind to distractions, ambitions, and pleasures that vanish like smoke.Like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, the worldly soul finds itself bound in chains of its own making. Description:Worldliness forgets that life is a pilgrimage. It turns comfort into an idol, success into a false god, and stillness into boredom.It avoids silence, dreads prayer, and fills every moment with noise, screens, and striving.Rather than contemplate God, it contemplates trends, profits, and appearances.At its heart, worldliness is a rejection of the eternal for the immediate. “Do not love the world or the things of the world... The world is passing away with all its desires, but whoever does the will of God remains forever.”— 1 John 2:15–17 🔥 Vice of Excess: Immanentism Definition:Immanentism is the vice of seeking spiritual fulfillment, truth, or peace entirely within the self or the created world, rather than through relationship and communion with the transcendent God. Why it fits:Heavenly Contemplation lifts the heart upward — to love, to listen, to receive.Immanentism turns inward. It collapses the divine into the self, seeking peace through consciousness, emotion, or nature — not grace. It replaces revelation with sensation, adoration with introspection, and faith with personal technique. Description:Immanentism appears in many forms: Meditation aimed at emptying the mind of all thought Fourfold logic that dissolves the real distinctions of God’s creation Yoga or mindfulness that seeks inner peace or self-realization Chakra alignment, crystals, and communion with “universal energies” Any spirituality that praises stillness while avoiding the Cross These practices may seem peaceful, but their aim is to find meaning within the self or cosmos — rather than from the God who transcends them both. “In the religious sense [of the Modernist], God is no more than a product of the inner sense of man... not something objective and distinct from man.”— Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, §7 The immanentist may feel enlightened, but their soul is enclosed.As Plato might say, they meditate on shadows, not the real.Where Christian contemplation receives truth, immanentism constructs it. The mystic prays, “Thy will be done.”The immanentist whispers, “I am enough.” 🙋‍♂️ We Interrupt These Notes to Ask for Your Support VirTrue is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber at socialcatholic.substack.com (https://socialcatholic.substack.com) to help us to continue to make new episodes. Or support us directly through: PayPal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/TheSo...) : @TheSocialCatholic (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/TheSo...) Venmo (https://venmo.com/code?user_id=256549...) : @jethrohiggins (https://venmo.com/code?user_id=256549...) Zelle: @SocialCatholic Your gift — no matter how small — helps us continue our mission to fill the world with virtue. 🛍️ Also check out this week’s sponsor:The Mariner-Themed Hope Rosary — a handcrafted devotional from our collection of paracord rosaries. 🪞 My Life My personal struggle lies more with worldliness than with mystical errors. I was raised in a secular college town in Oregon, where the noise of the world is constant and contagious. But in my work — even within Catholic apostolates like Oregon Catholic Press — I’ve al...