“Meditation” in the Roman Catholic Traditions is a completely different experience from the concepts of eastern religions, where “meditation” involves not thinking about things and exercises emptiness of the mind. Catholic (or Christian) meditation is simply the opposite: it is a very active mental task, a kind of prayer where we are trying to reach the depth of God’s message to us. The best meditation will be based on The Holy Scriptures and texts written when inspired by the Holy Bible.
The Goal.
Our goals in meditation are:
- experiencing deep presence of God,
- gaining understanding of God,
- gaining better understanding of God’s truths,
- development of our spiritual life,
- growth of our Faith,
- to bring full divine peace to our life.
Meditation is very effective in fighting depression, fear and uncertainty in our lives. It brings God’s order and develops trust in God. It helps us greatly to receive God’s help and advice. It helps us also to receive answers for our prayers. Simple reading of inspirations written for meditation will also greatly help you even if you will not go deeper into meditation practice and you won’t follow my advice (but if you follow results will be even better).
The place.
Place obviously will be your home or church. You can prepare one of the rooms in certain way to boost your meditation experience. Church when outside hours will give you also excellent meditation experience but less comfort and fewer possibilities. I strongly recommend that you meditate at home and follow my guidance for preparation. I write more about it in “Make your Home your Sanctuary “.
The time.
Meditation more then any other prayer requires dedicated time. When regular prayer and Catholic Spoken Meditation can be also done “on the go” (beside regular organized timely prayer not instead!). Traditional Catholic Meditation must have special time, far from other people and noise. Early morning hours (4-7pm) are the best especially when you live with other people or kids. Morning is also good because your mind is clear, fresh and your thoughts are just flowing. You will find more about it when you will register.
Topic of Meditation.
Topic is the most important element of the meditation. You can not just meditate on nothing or on purely chosen subjects. I’m preparing carefully chosen topics every week. We are doing it basing on experience, giving you the best possible subjects so your reword and results will be excellent. If you follow our catholic daily meditations you won’t regret i!
Reward of Meditation.
Catholic Meditation if done properly and based on right subjects may bring amazing results to your life. Your spiritual life will skyrocket, your understanding of God himself will quickly grow and your prayers finally will be answered! Meditation influences greatly way you pray and more of your prayers will be answered. Inside the website we write more about how to have your prayers answered. Even more powerful is Catholic Spoken Meditation which gives you not only above results but also real manifestation of things you are meditating about. For example if you meditating on perfect health subject that’s what you will get. Opposite is also true – if you meditate on the sickness you will be sick! Some people (it could be you) are using Spoken Meditation not knowing even about it and are bringing problems to their lives. More inside the website.
Meditation itself.
4 steps of Catholic-style meditation:
1. Place yourself in God’s presence.
God is Spirit and He is everywhere but you can experience his presence much stronger and even literally feel it if you follow certain steps. Sometimes He appears as a cloud flowing through your mind, sometimes you are in a cloud of His presence (most of the times you feel the cloud but don’t see it). Many times I had an experience when I was in such a presence of God that everything I could think of was extremely distant, all earthly problems were gone and my mind was in perfect peace. I could say that it was like in Heaven – state of pure joy, happiness and peace. I was in such a state even half an hour. Few times when I experienced that and afterwards I touched a person that person was experiencing the same presence I did and was falling on the ground! It was usually from few seconds to few minutes. It is actually very difficult to describe unless you experience it yourself. By the way when you are experiencing deep God’s presence you can be healed from many diseases including incurable ones! Inside the website I will give you steps to follow to experience God’s presence.
2. Ask for God’s help.
Ask God to lead you in your meditation, to give you right thoughts and protect from wrong ones. Honour God and give him all the credit for your success in meditation. I do not recommend asking Saints for help at this time because meditation is a process of direct connection with God Almighty; meditation is putting you into His presence. I have written adequate prayer for this occasion.
3. Actual meditation.
How we proceed during meditation depends on what is the subject and exact verse from the Holy Bible. If you are meditating about certain scene from Gospels you can follow 3 steps.
First step:
- imagine the scene you are meditate on,
- imagine the place: houses, street, mountain, trees, animals,
- imagine the weather: wind, sun, temperature,
- imagine the sounds and smells: voices, animals, noise, wind, flowers, plants, forest, sea, fish
- imagine the people involved: Jesus, Mary, Apostles, crowd, fishermen,
- imagine the situation: what people are doing, what they are talking about, body language, emotions,
Second step:
- imagine yourself in that place,
- imagine that you see what they see,
- imagine that you smell and feel what they do (smells, wind ),
- imagine yourself interacting with them, talking, asking questions,
- imagine talking to main person (Jesus, Mary, one of the Apostles),
Third step:
- talk with them and ask questions,
- hear the answer!
- ask further questions to get more precise answer,
- write down the questions and answers!
4. Give thanks.
First you thank God for helping you to meditate. Thank Him for revealing to you divine truths and giving you peace, advice, hope and help. Honour God and give him all the credit for your success in meditation.
The meditation is complete. God bless.