The essence of contemplation is not prayer. It's obedience. In the root sense -- from the Latin -- that to obey is to listen.

Obedience is the first obligation of the contemplative. This is the universal teaching of the tradition. Prayer is secondary.

This is not the tradition by reason of tradition; it is the tradition because it is the truth. The death of one's own will as a master unto itself -- which death is the cross -- is the prerequisite of contemplation.

But if we say that obedience is to listen, we must not dilute that as is the habit of moderns. Obedience means this: if your superior asks you to clean the toilets, you clean the toilets.

To listen means to hear not your own will isolated unto itself, but to hear and then will the good willed by God for you, which is inseparable from the good willed by God for your neighbor.

It means being free to hear God, and then -- with God inseparably -- to hear the person you are with.

It means that you must die so that you may love.

It is the cross.