Williams on de Lubac

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spoke in Rome recently very beautifully about contemplation and evangelization. The full text is here. In the course of a remarkable address, he mentions not just Henri de Lubac and St Edith Stein, but even Jacob Needleman's Lost Christianity. He says, “contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.”