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Some pre-meditative thoughts to snack on while you wait to be shown to your table!
“Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
While it is not of strict necessity for salvation ― which prayer in general is — the specific exercise of mental prayer is,
to quote Fr. Adolphe Tanquerey, from his book, The Spiritual Life: “the most effective means of assuring one’s salvation.”
St. Teresa of Avila, who seems almost fanatical in her insistence on mental prayer, goes further:
“He who neglects mental prayer needs not a devil to carry him to Hell, but he brings himself there with his own hands.”
St. Teresa's fellow Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, said:
“Without the aid of mental prayer, the soul cannot triumph over the forces of the demon.”
“Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
While it is not of strict necessity for salvation ― which prayer in general is — the specific exercise of mental prayer is,
to quote Fr. Adolphe Tanquerey, from his book, The Spiritual Life: “the most effective means of assuring one’s salvation.”
St. Teresa of Avila, who seems almost fanatical in her insistence on mental prayer, goes further:
“He who neglects mental prayer needs not a devil to carry him to Hell, but he brings himself there with his own hands.”
St. Teresa's fellow Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, said:
“Without the aid of mental prayer, the soul cannot triumph over the forces of the demon.”
INTRODUCTION ON MEDITATION
Give and Take—Breathing-In and Breathing-Out
Normally, when we pray, we like to speak a lot, but we don’t like to listen―we don’t even think of listening! All that preoccupies our “prayer-mind” is telling God what we want from Him! To Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity, Our Lord asked that souls “listen to Me more than to speak to Me … , if you endeavor to speak to Me, your voice might drown Mine ... It is better to keep a respectful silence that allows you to listen to Me … After a time, I am the last in your thoughts. My help is asked, yes, but it is seldom that My wishes are consulted, and that I am listened to. I am given what it pleases you to give Me; it appears as if it would be time wasted to find out whether it is what I ask and desire. And yet that is the first thing that must fill your time ... “To speak, or to listen to Me, are two different kinds of prayer.” [When she asked:] “My Lord Jesus, which do You prefer?” [Jesus replied:] “That which listens to Me!” (Fr. Gottemoller, Words of Love).
Prayer in itself is as necessary for our spiritual life as breathing is necessary for our bodily life. When we breathe, we do two chief things—we breathe-in and then we breathe-out. Some saints have compared prayer to the breathing of air—something that has to be going on at all times—which is why Holy Scripture says: “Pray without ceasing!” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and Our Lord tells us “that we ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). If we stop breathing, we will quickly grow faint and die. This is also so true of so many souls in the spiritual life—they pray less and less, and soon they feel spiritual weak and collapse. Our spiritual life depends on God’s Grace, and he has, so to speak, given us the power to breathe it in prayer. Not to pray will have the same results for the life of the soul as not to breathe would have for the life of the body, that is sickness and death.
There are many different ways of praying and meditation is one of them. Actually, you could compare meditation to “deep breathing”, while our vocal prayers could be compared to “shallow breathing”. We all know that “deep breathing” is far better than “shallow breathing”—both physically and spiritually. Yet there are so few souls who actually meditate. Many are put-off by the thought of “meditation”—they feel that it is a skill that is far beyond their capabilities. Nobody has ever really taught them how to meditate—and so this most powerful of tools for our salvation goes unused. This should not be so! Therefore, we shall begin a series of pages dedicated to help you with your meditations by answering some basic questions, laying down some basic principles given by some of the saints and masters of the spiritual life, and helping you get started in this most valuable of tools to the spiritual life and for the salvation of our soul.
Meditation is a Life-Giving Soul to Prayer
Meditation is, therefore, something much “deeper” and more “effective” than mere vocal prayer—Our Fathers, Hail Marys, or other such prayers. That is why Our Lady wants us, not just to say the Rosary, but to PRAY it, or rather, MEDITATE it. Our Lady herself explained that the MEDITATION of the Rosary mysteries is the SOUL OF THE ROSARY. The Rosary, for modern folk, is probably the best introduction to meditation, for it already supplies them with something familiar and simple to think about.
The Rosary Should Be Meditated—Meditation is the Soul of the Rosary
St. Louis de Montfort, in his book The Secret of the Rosary, mentions this: “Our Lady taught Saint Dominic this excellent method of praying and ordered him to preach it far and wide … She also taught it to Blessed Alan de la Roche and said to him in a vision: ‘When people say 150 Hail Marys, that prayer is very helpful to them and a most pleasing tribute to me. But they will do better still and will please me more if they say these salutations while MEDITATING on the life, death, and passion of Jesus Christ, for this meditation is the soul of this prayer.’ For the Rosary said, without the meditation on the sacred mysteries of our salvation, would almost be a body without a soul, excellent matter, but without the form, which is the meditation, and which distinguishes it from other devotions” (St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary, §61).
Our Lady repeated her desire that the Rosary should be meditated―and not just said―when she appeared to Sister Lucia of Fatima on December 10th, 1925, at Pontevedra, Spain. The Most Holy Virgin said, among other things: “… recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary.”
Sister Lucia adds: “My impression is that the Rosary is of the greatest value not only according to the words of Our Lady of Fatima, but according to the effects of the Rosary one sees throughout history. My impression is that Our Lady wanted to give ordinary people, who might not know how to pray, this simple method of getting closer to God” (Sister Lucia, one of the seers of Fatima).
There is a vast array of appropriate topics for meditation to be found in the Rosary mysteries. Pope Leo XIII wrote about the benefits of using the Rosary as a tool for meditation in several of his encyclicals; in his Laetitiae Sanctae (Commending Devotion to the Rosary) he says that the Rosary is “a powerful means of renewing our courage,” and counsels us “to dwell upon the sorrowful mysteries of Our Lord’s life, and to drink in their meaning by sweet and silent meditation.” In Providentissimus Deus (On the Study of Holy Scripture) Pope Leo also suggests the reading of Scripture, saying that “the best preachers of all ages… have gratefully acknowledged that they owed their repute chiefly to the assiduous use of the Bible, and to devout meditation on its pages”--and many of the mysteries of the Rosary are found in Holy Scripture. The Catechism goes on to list “…holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history the page on which the ‘today’ of God is written,” as other sources of inspiration to use during this time.
The Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen stated: “The Rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the substance of the next. The power of the Rosary is beyond description!”
Today, the Rosary is still the easiest way to acquire the ancient skills of meditative prayer, and it is the most effective way to gain the graces that this most powerful way of prayer can obtain. By using the mysteries of the Rosary as topics for our meditation, we partially remove the false assumption that meditation is something beyond our capabilities. We are already “halfway there” because we already possess a great knowledge about the most of the mysteries of the Rosary. We have the “raw material”, now we only have to work upon it to produce a beautiful fruit or product.
”But it’s so boring!” some will protest. Not if you are praying it correctly. Your Rosary should be a meditative Rosary, not a “Rosary Ramble”! To start with, pay more attention to the words that you are saying―the words of vocal prayers are not meaningless―it is a fault to babble them out without paying any attention to them: ”Well did Isaias prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me!’” (Mark 7:6). Even the Our Father and Hail Mary are rich sources for meditation―as St. Louis de Montfort shows in his book, The Secret of Rosary, (“Twelfth Rose” to the “Sixteenth Rose”). Words have meaning and, because the human mind operates in terms of language, words have the power to change the way you think. As St. Cyprian of Carthage asked back in the third century, how can you expect God to listen to you, if you are not even listening to yourself?
Resolute Meditations Are Meditations With Resolutions
What makes meditation different to mere spiritual reflection or pious thinking is that meditation makes resolutions. There is a concrete goal or target with which a soul emerges from its meditation—without that resolution, you cannot truly call it a meditation. Resolutions might fail—and fail they will, for the devil and the world will work hard against any spiritual advance on our part. Yet, success comes through failure and the longer God makes us wait to achieve our resolutions, the more powerful a grace will be given to us. St. Monica—the mother of the great sinner turned great saints, St. Augustine—is a marvelous example of the tremendous generosity of God that shows itself after putting a soul through seeming endless years of ‘apparent’ failure.
Normally, when we pray, we like to speak a lot, but we don’t like to listen―we don’t even think of listening! All that preoccupies our “prayer-mind” is telling God what we want from Him! To Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity, Our Lord asked that souls “listen to Me more than to speak to Me … , if you endeavor to speak to Me, your voice might drown Mine ... It is better to keep a respectful silence that allows you to listen to Me … After a time, I am the last in your thoughts. My help is asked, yes, but it is seldom that My wishes are consulted, and that I am listened to. I am given what it pleases you to give Me; it appears as if it would be time wasted to find out whether it is what I ask and desire. And yet that is the first thing that must fill your time ... “To speak, or to listen to Me, are two different kinds of prayer.” [When she asked:] “My Lord Jesus, which do You prefer?” [Jesus replied:] “That which listens to Me!” (Fr. Gottemoller, Words of Love).
Prayer in itself is as necessary for our spiritual life as breathing is necessary for our bodily life. When we breathe, we do two chief things—we breathe-in and then we breathe-out. Some saints have compared prayer to the breathing of air—something that has to be going on at all times—which is why Holy Scripture says: “Pray without ceasing!” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and Our Lord tells us “that we ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). If we stop breathing, we will quickly grow faint and die. This is also so true of so many souls in the spiritual life—they pray less and less, and soon they feel spiritual weak and collapse. Our spiritual life depends on God’s Grace, and he has, so to speak, given us the power to breathe it in prayer. Not to pray will have the same results for the life of the soul as not to breathe would have for the life of the body, that is sickness and death.
There are many different ways of praying and meditation is one of them. Actually, you could compare meditation to “deep breathing”, while our vocal prayers could be compared to “shallow breathing”. We all know that “deep breathing” is far better than “shallow breathing”—both physically and spiritually. Yet there are so few souls who actually meditate. Many are put-off by the thought of “meditation”—they feel that it is a skill that is far beyond their capabilities. Nobody has ever really taught them how to meditate—and so this most powerful of tools for our salvation goes unused. This should not be so! Therefore, we shall begin a series of pages dedicated to help you with your meditations by answering some basic questions, laying down some basic principles given by some of the saints and masters of the spiritual life, and helping you get started in this most valuable of tools to the spiritual life and for the salvation of our soul.
Meditation is a Life-Giving Soul to Prayer
Meditation is, therefore, something much “deeper” and more “effective” than mere vocal prayer—Our Fathers, Hail Marys, or other such prayers. That is why Our Lady wants us, not just to say the Rosary, but to PRAY it, or rather, MEDITATE it. Our Lady herself explained that the MEDITATION of the Rosary mysteries is the SOUL OF THE ROSARY. The Rosary, for modern folk, is probably the best introduction to meditation, for it already supplies them with something familiar and simple to think about.
The Rosary Should Be Meditated—Meditation is the Soul of the Rosary
St. Louis de Montfort, in his book The Secret of the Rosary, mentions this: “Our Lady taught Saint Dominic this excellent method of praying and ordered him to preach it far and wide … She also taught it to Blessed Alan de la Roche and said to him in a vision: ‘When people say 150 Hail Marys, that prayer is very helpful to them and a most pleasing tribute to me. But they will do better still and will please me more if they say these salutations while MEDITATING on the life, death, and passion of Jesus Christ, for this meditation is the soul of this prayer.’ For the Rosary said, without the meditation on the sacred mysteries of our salvation, would almost be a body without a soul, excellent matter, but without the form, which is the meditation, and which distinguishes it from other devotions” (St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of the Rosary, §61).
Our Lady repeated her desire that the Rosary should be meditated―and not just said―when she appeared to Sister Lucia of Fatima on December 10th, 1925, at Pontevedra, Spain. The Most Holy Virgin said, among other things: “… recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary.”
Sister Lucia adds: “My impression is that the Rosary is of the greatest value not only according to the words of Our Lady of Fatima, but according to the effects of the Rosary one sees throughout history. My impression is that Our Lady wanted to give ordinary people, who might not know how to pray, this simple method of getting closer to God” (Sister Lucia, one of the seers of Fatima).
There is a vast array of appropriate topics for meditation to be found in the Rosary mysteries. Pope Leo XIII wrote about the benefits of using the Rosary as a tool for meditation in several of his encyclicals; in his Laetitiae Sanctae (Commending Devotion to the Rosary) he says that the Rosary is “a powerful means of renewing our courage,” and counsels us “to dwell upon the sorrowful mysteries of Our Lord’s life, and to drink in their meaning by sweet and silent meditation.” In Providentissimus Deus (On the Study of Holy Scripture) Pope Leo also suggests the reading of Scripture, saying that “the best preachers of all ages… have gratefully acknowledged that they owed their repute chiefly to the assiduous use of the Bible, and to devout meditation on its pages”--and many of the mysteries of the Rosary are found in Holy Scripture. The Catechism goes on to list “…holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history the page on which the ‘today’ of God is written,” as other sources of inspiration to use during this time.
The Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen stated: “The Rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the substance of the next. The power of the Rosary is beyond description!”
Today, the Rosary is still the easiest way to acquire the ancient skills of meditative prayer, and it is the most effective way to gain the graces that this most powerful way of prayer can obtain. By using the mysteries of the Rosary as topics for our meditation, we partially remove the false assumption that meditation is something beyond our capabilities. We are already “halfway there” because we already possess a great knowledge about the most of the mysteries of the Rosary. We have the “raw material”, now we only have to work upon it to produce a beautiful fruit or product.
”But it’s so boring!” some will protest. Not if you are praying it correctly. Your Rosary should be a meditative Rosary, not a “Rosary Ramble”! To start with, pay more attention to the words that you are saying―the words of vocal prayers are not meaningless―it is a fault to babble them out without paying any attention to them: ”Well did Isaias prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me!’” (Mark 7:6). Even the Our Father and Hail Mary are rich sources for meditation―as St. Louis de Montfort shows in his book, The Secret of Rosary, (“Twelfth Rose” to the “Sixteenth Rose”). Words have meaning and, because the human mind operates in terms of language, words have the power to change the way you think. As St. Cyprian of Carthage asked back in the third century, how can you expect God to listen to you, if you are not even listening to yourself?
Resolute Meditations Are Meditations With Resolutions
What makes meditation different to mere spiritual reflection or pious thinking is that meditation makes resolutions. There is a concrete goal or target with which a soul emerges from its meditation—without that resolution, you cannot truly call it a meditation. Resolutions might fail—and fail they will, for the devil and the world will work hard against any spiritual advance on our part. Yet, success comes through failure and the longer God makes us wait to achieve our resolutions, the more powerful a grace will be given to us. St. Monica—the mother of the great sinner turned great saints, St. Augustine—is a marvelous example of the tremendous generosity of God that shows itself after putting a soul through seeming endless years of ‘apparent’ failure.
Article 1
THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDITATION & THE CONSEQUENCES OF ITS NEGLECT
Taken from Fr. Paul O'Suliivan's book, An Easy Way to Become a Saint
Chapter 10 : Meditation
THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDITATION & THE CONSEQUENCES OF ITS NEGLECT
Taken from Fr. Paul O'Suliivan's book, An Easy Way to Become a Saint
Chapter 10 : Meditation
We here deal with the most important subject of our lives, namely, daily meditation. Many Catholics do not even know that they are bound to meditate!
Our Lord Himself tells us why so few become holy, why so few become saints. “The whole world,” He says, “is gone astray because no one thinks in his heart.” Remark the words of Our Lord, “No one thinks in his heart,” that is, no one bothers to understand, to realize, to grasp in all their fullness the wonderful, the most consoling truths of our Religion. Willful blindness!
As we have already said, God has given us a most lovely Religion, which He made expressly to help us, to console us, to make us happy. It is not a difficult Religion, made only for saints. It was made for us, poor sinners, to strengthen our poor weak natures, to console these hearts of ours which are thirsting for peace and happiness. This Religion, if only properly understood, will help us to overcome all our sins, all our defects, and it will make us solidly happy and really holy. How is it that we do not understand this? Simply because we neglect our great duty of daily meditation, and therefore our ideas are vague and hazy and of little or no use to us. One clear idea is worth a thousand hazy ones.
The easiest and best way—the only way—to have clear ideas is to make a short daily meditation.
Meditation does not consist in thinking all the time. We read a little, think a little, and make short little acts, as we shall now explain. Nothing is easier.
Why Must We Make Meditation?
► First. Every Catholic should make daily meditation. St. Teresa says that the person who does not meditate needs no devil to throw him into Hell; he is going there himself.
► Second. Meditation is by no means hard to make, if only we learn how to make it, and this presents no difficulty.
► Third. If we do not meditate, we never see our faults, and so we never correct them.
► Fourth. If we do not meditate, we can form no idea of the malice of sin, and as a consequence, we do not feel sorry for it; we do not avoid it.
► Fifth. If we do not meditate, we do not see the awful danger we are in of falling into Hell. For this reason, thousands of men and women—men and women like ourselves—are falling into Hell every day.
► Sixth. If we do not meditate, we do not prepare for death; we are afraid of death; we are afraid to think of it. That is just the reason why so many have bad deaths. Those who know how to meditate on death are no longer afraid of it, and moreover, they are sure to have happy deaths. “Think of your last end and you shall never sin,” are God's own words.
► Seventh. The greatest happiness anyone can have on this earth is to have a good friend, a true friend, a friend who can and is ready to help him.
God is really and truly our Friend in the truest sense of that word. He is our most loving Father, a most tender Father. Never was there a father or mother on this Earth who loved a child as God loves us. The day we understand this truth will be the happiest day of our lives.
We must always think of God as a God of tenderest love. Then we must love Him. The only reason why we do not love God is that we do not meditate; we do not see how good God is; we do not pray to God to help us to love Him.
If we do not meditate, we shall never see how good, how sweet God is; we shall never be holy, and we shall never be happy.
Meditation is so important that nothing can take its place
Why do so few go to daily Mass? Mass has exactly the same value as the Death of Christ on Mount Calvary. Why do they not go frequently to Holy Communion, which is the greatest grace God can give them?
Why do they not enjoy Holy Communion? Why do they not visit God in the Blessed Sacrament, though they pass the open door of the church so often, perhaps many times a day?
They lose all these helps, all these consolations, all the strength, all the happiness God offers them simply because they do not make daily meditation.
It is not in itself as holy an act as Mass or Holy Communion, but it is more important because we cannot hear Mass properly nor receive Holy Communion devoutly unless we meditate. We cannot pray as we should; in fact, we can do nothing well unless we meditate. All the vocal prayers we can say will not take the place of meditation.
Everyone must banish the thought that meditation is difficult or disagreeable. That is the great temptation of the devil and is an utterly false idea.
We repeat that meditation is easy, is pleasant and brings us graces and blessings that we otherwise shall never get. Every Catholic is bound to meditate.
Our Lord Himself tells us why so few become holy, why so few become saints. “The whole world,” He says, “is gone astray because no one thinks in his heart.” Remark the words of Our Lord, “No one thinks in his heart,” that is, no one bothers to understand, to realize, to grasp in all their fullness the wonderful, the most consoling truths of our Religion. Willful blindness!
As we have already said, God has given us a most lovely Religion, which He made expressly to help us, to console us, to make us happy. It is not a difficult Religion, made only for saints. It was made for us, poor sinners, to strengthen our poor weak natures, to console these hearts of ours which are thirsting for peace and happiness. This Religion, if only properly understood, will help us to overcome all our sins, all our defects, and it will make us solidly happy and really holy. How is it that we do not understand this? Simply because we neglect our great duty of daily meditation, and therefore our ideas are vague and hazy and of little or no use to us. One clear idea is worth a thousand hazy ones.
The easiest and best way—the only way—to have clear ideas is to make a short daily meditation.
Meditation does not consist in thinking all the time. We read a little, think a little, and make short little acts, as we shall now explain. Nothing is easier.
Why Must We Make Meditation?
► First. Every Catholic should make daily meditation. St. Teresa says that the person who does not meditate needs no devil to throw him into Hell; he is going there himself.
► Second. Meditation is by no means hard to make, if only we learn how to make it, and this presents no difficulty.
► Third. If we do not meditate, we never see our faults, and so we never correct them.
► Fourth. If we do not meditate, we can form no idea of the malice of sin, and as a consequence, we do not feel sorry for it; we do not avoid it.
► Fifth. If we do not meditate, we do not see the awful danger we are in of falling into Hell. For this reason, thousands of men and women—men and women like ourselves—are falling into Hell every day.
► Sixth. If we do not meditate, we do not prepare for death; we are afraid of death; we are afraid to think of it. That is just the reason why so many have bad deaths. Those who know how to meditate on death are no longer afraid of it, and moreover, they are sure to have happy deaths. “Think of your last end and you shall never sin,” are God's own words.
► Seventh. The greatest happiness anyone can have on this earth is to have a good friend, a true friend, a friend who can and is ready to help him.
God is really and truly our Friend in the truest sense of that word. He is our most loving Father, a most tender Father. Never was there a father or mother on this Earth who loved a child as God loves us. The day we understand this truth will be the happiest day of our lives.
We must always think of God as a God of tenderest love. Then we must love Him. The only reason why we do not love God is that we do not meditate; we do not see how good God is; we do not pray to God to help us to love Him.
If we do not meditate, we shall never see how good, how sweet God is; we shall never be holy, and we shall never be happy.
Meditation is so important that nothing can take its place
Why do so few go to daily Mass? Mass has exactly the same value as the Death of Christ on Mount Calvary. Why do they not go frequently to Holy Communion, which is the greatest grace God can give them?
Why do they not enjoy Holy Communion? Why do they not visit God in the Blessed Sacrament, though they pass the open door of the church so often, perhaps many times a day?
They lose all these helps, all these consolations, all the strength, all the happiness God offers them simply because they do not make daily meditation.
It is not in itself as holy an act as Mass or Holy Communion, but it is more important because we cannot hear Mass properly nor receive Holy Communion devoutly unless we meditate. We cannot pray as we should; in fact, we can do nothing well unless we meditate. All the vocal prayers we can say will not take the place of meditation.
Everyone must banish the thought that meditation is difficult or disagreeable. That is the great temptation of the devil and is an utterly false idea.
We repeat that meditation is easy, is pleasant and brings us graces and blessings that we otherwise shall never get. Every Catholic is bound to meditate.
THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION
You Get What You Give!
As you sow, so shall you reap. There is no doubt that meditation is a higher and much more powerful form of prayer than mere automatic repetition of vocal prayers parrot fashion with much routine and little thought.
If you are seeking to restore your physical health and find a cure for any serious illness, then you will seek out the best doctor that you can afford. Sometimes, even you cannot afford to use that doctor, you will make cut-backs in this and that area, just to scrimp and save enough money to pay him.
When it comes to the dangers of the sickness of sin and the risk of losing eternal life, we should be paying far more attention and should be willing to ‘pay’ much more for the restoration and/or preservation our spiritual health. We ‘pay’ by spending more time on the matter—for, as the modern saying goes: “Time means money!” So we make time for the spiritual remedies, without which we risk losing our souls.
Meditation is—after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist and Confession—one of the most powerful remedies and nourishments available to us. Even the Rosary is enormously enhanced in its power if we meditate it, rather than merely ‘say’ its vocal prayers—the Our Fathers, Hail Marys, etc.
What Kinds of Benefits Does Meditation Give?
Well, “straight off the bat”, let us say that meditation will not help you win the lottery, get a pay rise, “strike it rich”, remove all your problems, wipe-out all your enemies, cure all your ills, etc. If that were to happen, then you would be walking along a path that was not recommended by Our Lord:
As for lotteries and riches, “Jesus said to His disciples: ‘Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!’” (Matthew 19:23-24).
As for removing all your problems and ills, “Jesus said to all: ‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me!’” (Luke 9:23).
As for destroying your enemies, Jesus said: “You have heard that it hath been said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy!’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you!’ That you may be the children of your Father Who is in Heaven, who maketh His sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust!’” (Matthew 5:43-45).
So if those are the kind of benefits you are seeking from meditation, then you will be largely disappointed!
There Are Physical and Psychological Benefits, But…
If you read the testimonies of followers of non-Christian meditative techniques—TM (Transcendental Meditation), Self-Centering Meditation, or any of the many Eastern pagan schools of meditation that seem to be so popular in the West these days and the findings of science in its study of the effects of meditation—then you will see that they are exuberant about the many physical and psychological benefits that can be garnered from meditation.
They will claim that meditation reduces stress and anxiety; decreases depression and increases happiness; improves your mood and psychological well-being; reduces social isolation; increases feelings of compassion and decreases worry; decreases feelings of loneliness; increases acceptance; improves your focus, concentration, attention, and ability to work under stress; increases energy; gives you mental strength, resilience and emotional intelligence; improves learning, memory and self-awareness; improves information processing and decision-making; increases self-awareness; slows aging; reduces emotional eating; benefits cardiovascular and immune health; reduces blood pressure; reduces risk of heart diseases and stroke; decreases inflammatory disorders; makes you stronger against pain; may make you live longer, etc.
WHAT?!! ALL THAT?!! Sign me up! Sign me up! Where do I go? What do I do? How’s it work? Tell me! Tell me!
Yes, meditation can and will do those things—always being dependent upon God’s will and providence for you personally—but that is not the purpose of meditation, nor are they the chief effects of meditation. Those are all mere by-products. What is the purpose and chief effect of meditation? The chief purpose of meditation is to seek out God and its most important effect is to grow in a love of God: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Luke 12:31). Why seek God? In order to love Him—for you cannot love what you do not know! “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength! This is the first commandment!” (Mark 12:30). You will not get to love Him very much if you spend very little time learning about Him—which is what meditation partially accomplishes: making us grow more and more in the knowledge and awareness of God. Limited time spent in thinking about God results in limited knowledge about God, which, in turn, results in little love of God due to little knowledge of God. Elementary, huh? Thus, St. Matthew repeats what St. Luke just said above: “Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).
The Ultimate Benefit
The more you think about God, the more you will get to know Him, the more you will appreciate Him, the more you will love Him, the more you will regret having offended Him, the more you will want to repay the damage caused by your offenses, the more you will want to do for Him, the more you will want to suffer for Him, and the more likely will be the possibility of you saving your soul—even though most souls are lost. IS NOT SALVATION THE ULTIMATE BENEFIT? That is why the saints speak so powerfully and eloquently and insistently of meditation.
“He who neglects mental prayer [meditation] needs not a devil to carry him to Hell, but he brings himself there with his own hands!” (St. Teresa of Avila). St. Alphonsus Liguori remarks that the saints owed their sanctity more to their prayers than to their works. St. Alphonsus teaches that a man may recite the Rosary or the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, or perform other devotions and yet continue in the state of mortal sin. But for one who MEDITATES, it is utterly impossible to persevere in sin, because he must of necessity eventually give up mental prayer or sin. He says: “Meditation and sin cannot exist together” for any length of time. Fr. Adolphe Tanquerey, in his book, The Spiritual Life, states that “Meditation is most useful and most profitable to all for salvation and perfection―to beginners, as well as to more advanced souls. It may be even said that it is the most effective means of assuring one’s salvation” (The Spiritual Life, §673).
The Scales Will Gradually Fall From Our Eyes
In meditation we “plumb the depths” of life. We start to better understand the workings of God—they “whys and wherefores” of what happens to us and around us. God is prepared to let us see the deeper side of things—if we would only take the time to sit in His presence, mull things over, think and listen and learn from what He will undoubtedly show us. It will give us new perspective on life, where our thoughts will begin to conform to His thoughts, and where our ways will start to follow His ways: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the Earth, so are My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaias 55:8-9).
Like Saul, who thought he was right in persecuting Christians, but whom God blinded on the road to Damascus, to show Saul how blind he was in his ideas—we too are blinded by our own self-will. We stupidly imagine that somehow our ways must be God’s ways!
Like St. Peter, who wanted to prevent Our Lord from going through with His Passion and Death, we seek to prevent or avoid the sufferings of this life and see them as being evil. Our Lord said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! Thou art a scandal unto Me! Because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men!” (Matthew 16:23). Meditation makes us savor more and more the things of God and to understand that our ways and thoughts are not His ways and thoughts.
Likewise, the Apostles James and John, who wanted fire from Heaven to destroy a Samaritan town for having rejected Jesus: “They entered into a city of the Samaritans and they received Him not, because His face was of one going to Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John had seen this, they said: ‘Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from Heaven, and consume them?’ And turning, He rebuked them, saying: ‘You know not of what spirit you are! The Son of man came not to destroy souls, but to save!’” (Luke 9:52-56). Meditation helps us cast-off our too human spirit and way of thinking, and helps us clothe ourselves with the spirit of God.
No Real Love of God Without Meditation
We will never really get to know and love God without meditation. It places us in the presence of God in a more meaningful way than mere vocal prayers do. You could compare meditation to a serious, in-depth, intimate conversation with God, whereas vocal prayers are more like a passing, casual, surface, conversation with God. Or, meditation could likened to a conversation between two people who love each other, whereas vocal prayer could be said to be a conversation between two strangers or, at best, mere acquaintances.
It is hard to see how a person can sincerely say they love God, or want to love God, if they do not want to meditate upon God and the things of God. Everyone in this world meditates on many worldly things each day—even little children. They think about something deeply and then make a resolution—depending on what they have been thinking about—such as: “I am going to get this!” … “I am going to do this!” … “I am going to try this!? … “I am going to watch this!” … “I am going to listen to this!” … “I am going to say this!” … “I am going to go here/there!” … “I am going to avoid this!” … “I am going to change this!” etc., etc. Yet when it comes to God … then it all shuts down! Nothing is thought about, nothing is desired, nothing is done, nothing happens, no benefits are gained!
As you sow, so shall you reap. There is no doubt that meditation is a higher and much more powerful form of prayer than mere automatic repetition of vocal prayers parrot fashion with much routine and little thought.
If you are seeking to restore your physical health and find a cure for any serious illness, then you will seek out the best doctor that you can afford. Sometimes, even you cannot afford to use that doctor, you will make cut-backs in this and that area, just to scrimp and save enough money to pay him.
When it comes to the dangers of the sickness of sin and the risk of losing eternal life, we should be paying far more attention and should be willing to ‘pay’ much more for the restoration and/or preservation our spiritual health. We ‘pay’ by spending more time on the matter—for, as the modern saying goes: “Time means money!” So we make time for the spiritual remedies, without which we risk losing our souls.
Meditation is—after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist and Confession—one of the most powerful remedies and nourishments available to us. Even the Rosary is enormously enhanced in its power if we meditate it, rather than merely ‘say’ its vocal prayers—the Our Fathers, Hail Marys, etc.
What Kinds of Benefits Does Meditation Give?
Well, “straight off the bat”, let us say that meditation will not help you win the lottery, get a pay rise, “strike it rich”, remove all your problems, wipe-out all your enemies, cure all your ills, etc. If that were to happen, then you would be walking along a path that was not recommended by Our Lord:
As for lotteries and riches, “Jesus said to His disciples: ‘Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!’” (Matthew 19:23-24).
As for removing all your problems and ills, “Jesus said to all: ‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me!’” (Luke 9:23).
As for destroying your enemies, Jesus said: “You have heard that it hath been said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy!’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you!’ That you may be the children of your Father Who is in Heaven, who maketh His sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust!’” (Matthew 5:43-45).
So if those are the kind of benefits you are seeking from meditation, then you will be largely disappointed!
There Are Physical and Psychological Benefits, But…
If you read the testimonies of followers of non-Christian meditative techniques—TM (Transcendental Meditation), Self-Centering Meditation, or any of the many Eastern pagan schools of meditation that seem to be so popular in the West these days and the findings of science in its study of the effects of meditation—then you will see that they are exuberant about the many physical and psychological benefits that can be garnered from meditation.
They will claim that meditation reduces stress and anxiety; decreases depression and increases happiness; improves your mood and psychological well-being; reduces social isolation; increases feelings of compassion and decreases worry; decreases feelings of loneliness; increases acceptance; improves your focus, concentration, attention, and ability to work under stress; increases energy; gives you mental strength, resilience and emotional intelligence; improves learning, memory and self-awareness; improves information processing and decision-making; increases self-awareness; slows aging; reduces emotional eating; benefits cardiovascular and immune health; reduces blood pressure; reduces risk of heart diseases and stroke; decreases inflammatory disorders; makes you stronger against pain; may make you live longer, etc.
WHAT?!! ALL THAT?!! Sign me up! Sign me up! Where do I go? What do I do? How’s it work? Tell me! Tell me!
Yes, meditation can and will do those things—always being dependent upon God’s will and providence for you personally—but that is not the purpose of meditation, nor are they the chief effects of meditation. Those are all mere by-products. What is the purpose and chief effect of meditation? The chief purpose of meditation is to seek out God and its most important effect is to grow in a love of God: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Luke 12:31). Why seek God? In order to love Him—for you cannot love what you do not know! “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength! This is the first commandment!” (Mark 12:30). You will not get to love Him very much if you spend very little time learning about Him—which is what meditation partially accomplishes: making us grow more and more in the knowledge and awareness of God. Limited time spent in thinking about God results in limited knowledge about God, which, in turn, results in little love of God due to little knowledge of God. Elementary, huh? Thus, St. Matthew repeats what St. Luke just said above: “Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).
The Ultimate Benefit
The more you think about God, the more you will get to know Him, the more you will appreciate Him, the more you will love Him, the more you will regret having offended Him, the more you will want to repay the damage caused by your offenses, the more you will want to do for Him, the more you will want to suffer for Him, and the more likely will be the possibility of you saving your soul—even though most souls are lost. IS NOT SALVATION THE ULTIMATE BENEFIT? That is why the saints speak so powerfully and eloquently and insistently of meditation.
“He who neglects mental prayer [meditation] needs not a devil to carry him to Hell, but he brings himself there with his own hands!” (St. Teresa of Avila). St. Alphonsus Liguori remarks that the saints owed their sanctity more to their prayers than to their works. St. Alphonsus teaches that a man may recite the Rosary or the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, or perform other devotions and yet continue in the state of mortal sin. But for one who MEDITATES, it is utterly impossible to persevere in sin, because he must of necessity eventually give up mental prayer or sin. He says: “Meditation and sin cannot exist together” for any length of time. Fr. Adolphe Tanquerey, in his book, The Spiritual Life, states that “Meditation is most useful and most profitable to all for salvation and perfection―to beginners, as well as to more advanced souls. It may be even said that it is the most effective means of assuring one’s salvation” (The Spiritual Life, §673).
The Scales Will Gradually Fall From Our Eyes
In meditation we “plumb the depths” of life. We start to better understand the workings of God—they “whys and wherefores” of what happens to us and around us. God is prepared to let us see the deeper side of things—if we would only take the time to sit in His presence, mull things over, think and listen and learn from what He will undoubtedly show us. It will give us new perspective on life, where our thoughts will begin to conform to His thoughts, and where our ways will start to follow His ways: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the Earth, so are My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaias 55:8-9).
Like Saul, who thought he was right in persecuting Christians, but whom God blinded on the road to Damascus, to show Saul how blind he was in his ideas—we too are blinded by our own self-will. We stupidly imagine that somehow our ways must be God’s ways!
Like St. Peter, who wanted to prevent Our Lord from going through with His Passion and Death, we seek to prevent or avoid the sufferings of this life and see them as being evil. Our Lord said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! Thou art a scandal unto Me! Because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men!” (Matthew 16:23). Meditation makes us savor more and more the things of God and to understand that our ways and thoughts are not His ways and thoughts.
Likewise, the Apostles James and John, who wanted fire from Heaven to destroy a Samaritan town for having rejected Jesus: “They entered into a city of the Samaritans and they received Him not, because His face was of one going to Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John had seen this, they said: ‘Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from Heaven, and consume them?’ And turning, He rebuked them, saying: ‘You know not of what spirit you are! The Son of man came not to destroy souls, but to save!’” (Luke 9:52-56). Meditation helps us cast-off our too human spirit and way of thinking, and helps us clothe ourselves with the spirit of God.
No Real Love of God Without Meditation
We will never really get to know and love God without meditation. It places us in the presence of God in a more meaningful way than mere vocal prayers do. You could compare meditation to a serious, in-depth, intimate conversation with God, whereas vocal prayers are more like a passing, casual, surface, conversation with God. Or, meditation could likened to a conversation between two people who love each other, whereas vocal prayer could be said to be a conversation between two strangers or, at best, mere acquaintances.
It is hard to see how a person can sincerely say they love God, or want to love God, if they do not want to meditate upon God and the things of God. Everyone in this world meditates on many worldly things each day—even little children. They think about something deeply and then make a resolution—depending on what they have been thinking about—such as: “I am going to get this!” … “I am going to do this!” … “I am going to try this!? … “I am going to watch this!” … “I am going to listen to this!” … “I am going to say this!” … “I am going to go here/there!” … “I am going to avoid this!” … “I am going to change this!” etc., etc. Yet when it comes to God … then it all shuts down! Nothing is thought about, nothing is desired, nothing is done, nothing happens, no benefits are gained!
DON'T PROCRASTINATE, BUT MEDITATE! YOUR SOUL DEPENDS ON IT!
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