Today we spent some time in a Trappist Abbey (the photo is of their tabernacle)  as sort of the celebration of this day, feast of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth. The quiet chapel reminded us of the article of Jim Arraj we read yesterday night  on Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange and two principles he stressed in his mystical theology, namely that all of us is called for contemplation and that contemplation is infused contemplation, free gift of God, not result of our active efforts:

" The universal call to contemplation, and this identification of contemplation with infused contemplation are the twin pillars that support Garrigou-LaGrange’s mystical theology, and instead of being forgotten, they ought to remain in the forefront of our minds when we look at the contemporary attempts to renew the contemplative life.... When a new interest in the contemplative life arose after the Second Vatican Council, these battles, when they were remembered at all, were remembered with distaste, and while Garrigou-LaGrange’s idea of the universal call to contemplation had gone mainstream, and thus survived, his insistence on contemplation as infused contemplation was forgotten.But how else can people be rather indiscriminately invited to practice contemplative prayer unless contemplation is understood as something within our power to do? But if it is something that we can do, then it is a matter of the exercise of the human faculties, however subtly we are urged to exercise them, and it is not the infused contemplation which Garrigou-LaGrange accepts at being at the heart of the Christian mystical tradition." (From "Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange

and the Renewal of the Contemplative Life" at http://www.innerexplorations.com/chmystext/reginald.htm )

Read this writing it is rather inspiring. Our take on contemplative life is more or less that we try to expose ourselves to God, giving our time and try to pray as at the moment we are capable and trust that somehow contemplation will be infused, given to us  with certainty. Or, as if all prayer had many dimensions and while we see only one - to say it is meditation, vocal prayer, centering prayer etc - all the other dimensions are present and so the infused contemplation, too. While doing many things with intention of searching God and what is good we are growing in love and knowledge of God and what else is infused prayer if not the infused love of God in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5).