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Christian meditation is the process of deliberately focusing on specific thoughts (such as a Bible passage) and reflecting on their meaning in the context of the love of God. [2] Christian meditation aims to heighten the personal relationship based on the love of God that marks Christian communion.
Guigi II (the 9th Carthusian prior) went beyond the meditations of Guigo I (the 5th prior). [15] For Guigo II, reading scripture is an "encounter with the word of God", meditation is "seeking the hidden meaning of this word", prayer is "turning one's heart to God" and contemplation is when "the mind is lifted up to God and held above itself". [9]
With the motto Ora et labora ("Pray and work"), daily life in a Benedictine monastery consisted of three elements: liturgical prayer, manual labor and Lectio Divina, a quiet prayerful reading of the Bible. [15] This slow and thoughtful reading of Scripture, and the ensuing pondering of its meaning, was their meditation.
Meditation is an activity of one's spirit by reading or otherwise, while contemplation is a spontaneous activity of that spirit. In meditation, man's imaginative and thinking power exert some effort. Contemplation then follows to relieve man of all effort. Contemplation is the soul's inward vision and the heart's simple repose in God. [73]
[citation needed] Meditation, on the other hand, for many centuries in the Western Church, referred to more cognitively active exercises, such as visualizations of Biblical scenes as in the Ignatian exercises or lectio divina in which the practitioner "listens to the text of the Bible with the 'ear of the heart', as if he or she is in ...
In his book Meditation and Kabbalah, Rav Aryeh Kaplan suggests that meditation is a practice that is meant to bring spiritual liberation through various methods that can loosen the bond of the physical, allowing the practitioner to reach the transcendental, spiritual realm and attain Ruach HaKodesh (Holy spirit), which he associates with enlightenment.
Christian meditation is the process of deliberately focusing on specific thoughts (such as a bible passage) and reflecting on their meaning in the context of the love of God. [69] Christian meditation aims to heighten the personal relationship based on the love of God that marks Christian communion. [70] [71]
The quiet time, in contrast, brought Bible study and meditation into the practice and placed the emphasis on listening to God. There was still time for requests, but they now were accompanied by Bible reading, prayers of praise, confession of sin, prayers of thanksgiving and listening to God. The quiet time was therefore quieter, hence the name.