Christ on the Cross is the fount of all art because He is the Word, the fount of all grace and wisdom. He is the center of everything, of the whole economy of the natural and supernatural orders. Everything points to this anointed King of Creation Who is the splendor of the eternal light and the mirror of the Godhead without stain. He is the “image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature… in Him were all things created, by Him and in Him… He is before all and by Him all things consist… in Whom it hath pleased the Father that all things should dwell… for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead corporeally,

Christ is our inspiration, and Christ is at the center of the contemplative life. Therefore, it would seem fairly evident that the one thing that will most contribute to the perfection of Catholic literature in general and poetry in particular will be for our writers and poets to start leading lives of active contemplation….prayer will become the life of our soul, and we will be able to carry on affective prayer everywhere.  

…He insists that the highest experience of the artist penetrates not only beyond the sensible surface of things into their inmost reality, but even beyond that to God Himself.  More than that, the analogy with mystical experience is deeper and closer still because, as he says, the intuition of the artist sets in motion the very same psychological processes which accompany infused contemplation.

The Augustinian psychology, which forms the traditional substratum of Christian mystical theology, distinguishes between an inferior and superior soul….the soul (inferior) acts through its faculties, making decisions and practical judgments concerning temporal external things…The  ‘superior’  soul  is  the same soul..the  principle or actus primus…flow  from…inner principle…the superior soul…strictly the image of God within…if we are to contemplate God at all, this internal image must be reformed by grace…we must enter within ourselves by recollection, withdrawing our faculties from external things into this inner sanctuary which is the substance of the soul itself. The majority of people, even those who possess the gift of sanctifying grace, never enter into this inward self, which is an abode of silence and peace and where the diversified activities of the intellect and will are collected, so to speak, into one intense and smooth and spiritualized activity which far exceeds in its fruitfulness the plodding efforts of reason working on external reality with its analyses and syllogisms.

…The artist, the poet, the metaphysician is, then, in some sense already naturally prepared and disposed to remove  some of  the principal  obstacles to the light of infused contemplation. He will be less tempted than the ordinary man to reach out for sensible satisfactions and imaginable thrills. He will be more ready to keep himself detached from the level of feeling and emotionalism which so easily make the devotion of less wary souls degenerate into sentimentality….

Mystical contemplation is absolutely beyond the reach of man’s activity. There is nothing he can do to obtain it by himself. It is a pure gift of God. God gives it to whom He wills, when He wills, and in the way and degree in which He wills….the voiding  and  emptying  of  the  soul, clearing it of all images, all  likenesses  of  and  attachments  to  created things so that it may be clean and pure to receive the obscure  light of God’s own presence. The  soul  must  be  stripped  of  all  its  desires  for natural  satisfactions, no matter how high, how noble or how excellent in themselves….As long as it rests in creatures, it cannot possess God and be possessed by Him…once again a case of God’s light shining in the darkness, “and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1.5)

…poetry can, indeed, help to bring us rapidly through that part of the journey to contemplation that is called active: but when we are entering the realm of true contemplation, where  eternal  happiness  begins, it may turn around and bar our way….Mystical prayer, on the contrary, enriches man a hundredfold more both in time and in eternity…

Online article from Commonweal. Linked to complete article. Background of Commonweal from Wikipedia: American and liberal journal of opinion, edited and managed by lay Catholics, headquartered in The Interchurch Center in New York City. It is the oldest independent Catholic journal of opinion in the United States. The word “commonweal” is a reference to an important term in the political philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, who argued that legitimate leaders must prioritize the “common good” of the “commonweal” in making political decisions. A perfect way of expressing the wisdom espoused by Rush Limbaugh.

An Ending Poem: Abrogate

A writer who had to cease, desist,
In order, proper to form, foregoing,
Appropriately,
To be in fullness human,
Completing image and likeness,
Fulfilling the superior,
He had to stop putting words to screen,
Sacrificing effort and art,
End the poetry,
Burn the books,
Terminate imagination,
Halt,
Even the image of Christ being crucified abandon,
Abnegate to subordinate,
Stop seeing,
An inner scream of silence release,
Into Your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit
Left unsaid, nothing written,
Infusion, patiently, prayerfully, await.