Nowhere has the very tissue of contemplation been depicted in more tangible terms than in the conclusion of St. Augustine’s great work, De civitate Dei (22.30), which treats of eternal life; “There we shall rest and we shall see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end without end!”

Contemplation is the proper form of our spiritual life

In life eternal, alt our being will be contemplation. That bears evident witness to the truth that contemplation as against action represents the higher, more final, and more proper form of our spiritual life. That which “shall be in the end without end,” which embodies the crowning perfection of our being, which constitutes our eternal goal, the object of our longing and the content of our eternal happiness—that must be the higher, the ultimate good.

Undoubtedly, in statu viae it is not for us to abandon ourselves exclusively to contemplation. Even in the lives of men and women who, in answer to a specific call, have vowed themselves to a life of contemplation—the Carmelite Sisters, for example—a certain measure of action is indispensable. The outward process of life itself demands, to a degree, a rhythm of pragmatic activities. Beyond that, however, work proper must not be wholly foregone even in contemplative orders—a principle expressed in the monastic device ora et labora (“pray and work”). Our nature in statu viae is so ordained for action that the latter cannot be wholly eschewed without spiritual injury. But to mankind in general, God has entrusted a more definite task of activity. “Subdue the earth,” the Lord said to Adam and Eve. Even in Paradise, man was destined for activity; only, in that state, it would have been toilless activity. It lies in the divine plan that in statu viae (a state of unfolding and actualization), man should intervene creatively in the processes of nature and should build up a culture. We are thus called on to acquire an increasing knowledge of the world; to create material and spiritual goods; to elaborate and order a life in common.

Action has both dignity and necessity in our lives

Action, too, possesses a high dignity of its own; it embodies a specific mode of representing God. That man is an effigy of God is also manifest in the fact that of all earthly creatures he alone is able to change and to shape his environment by a free and conscious choice of purposes; that the right has been conferred on him to perfect outward nature and to share in the creative rulership of God. This is implicit in all action as such; in a specifically high and pure form it is expressed in moral conduct on the one hand, in creative art on the other.