Meditation is most commonly understood in terms of various disciplines of mental and spiritual cultivation, typically derived from Eastern traditions such as Yoga and Buddhism. Many people, including some practising Christians, are often surprised, therefore, to discover that there is a well-established and ancient tradition of meditation and contemplative spirituality within Christianity.
However, the earliest forms of Christian meditation might have seemed quite different to what many people think of as meditation today. Typically, it would have involved repeating short prayers or passages of scripture, such as verses from the psalms, over and over again, usually out loud in a low mumble. This was a typical practice among the so-called ‘desert fathers’ who, we are told, would memorise the entire collection of psalms, and recite them in full during the course of a single day.
The early Christian monastic movement, which emerged in the deserts of Egypt during the third and fourth centuries, took its inspiration from the story of the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness (Matthew 4.1-11; Luke 4.1-13), in which Jesus rebuffs the distracting thoughts presented by the devil with short sentences from the scriptures.
From this example, monastic theologians such as John Cassian (c. 360–435) developed the practice of what came to be known as ‘monologic prayer’, which entails repeating a short, sometimes one word, prayer, over and over again. Cassian recommended the opening verse of Psalm 70: ‘O God, make speed to save me; O Lord make haste to help me.’ Indeed, echoing Paul injunction to pray without unceasing (1 Thessalonians 5.17), he exhorts us to repeat this prayer continuously – even in our sleep – until it becomes our constant companion: ‘You should, I say, meditate constantly on this verse in your heart. You should not stop repeating it when you are doing any kind of work or performing some service or are on a journey. Meditate on it while sleeping and eating and attending to the least needs of nature.’
The writings of Cassian are commended in The Rule of St Benedict, which has ensured their continuing influence within the western monastic tradition right up until the present day. Similarly, in the medieval period, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, who may have been a Carthusian monk, advocated the use of short prayers, preferably of just one syllable: ‘if they are in words’, he says ‘then they are in very few words – yes, the fewer the better’. A prayer of one syllable, he goes on to explain, ‘when it is not just spoken or thought but secretly intended in the depth of the spirit (…) pierces the ears of almighty God sooner than any long psalm mindlessly mumbled in the mouth. That is why it is written that short prayers pierce heaven.’
Repetition of a prayer word, or ‘mantra’, is thus clearly an ancient and authentically Christian practice, but is it prayer or is it meditation? The answer is it’s both: in the Christian context, meditation is a form of prayer.
Most people probably think about prayer in terms of a verbal entreaty, addressed to God, by means of which we express our concerns, cry for help, or offer thanks and praise. Prayer of this sort is often made with a specific intention in mind, for or on behalf of someone or a particular situation. Meditation, on the other hand, is generally understood by most people these days to be something rather different, and which – apart from anything else – usually entails silence.
But the Christian tradition recognises a number of different types of prayer, which can be divided into vocal prayer (i.e. with words), on the one hand, and mental prayer (i.e. without words), on the other. Vocal prayer can be further divided into petitionary and intercessory prayer. The former includes the sorts of personal prayers where we might ask for something ourselves, while the latter denotes those prayers we offer on behalf of others. In both cases, we are talking about prayers that are verbalised, whether out loud and publicly, or silently and privately. The category of mental prayer can also be sub-divided into meditation and contemplation. However, this is where it can get slightly confusing, because the way we use the word meditation these days has been influenced by eastern spiritual traditions such as yoga and Buddhism, so it might be useful to unpack these terms in a little more detail.
The actual word ‘meditation’ comes from the Latin meditatio, which refers to the act of thinking or pondering. Hence, in ordinary English, to meditate simply means ‘to think deeply’ about something. It is also sometimes suggested that the Latin verb meditari, to think or contemplate, is related to both mederi, to heal, and metiri, to measure, both of which provide us with fruitful ways of thinking about meditation. The former, which gives us words like medical and medicine, emphasises the obvious connection between spiritual practice and healing. The latter, from which we get words for measuring, such as meter and metric, as well as ‘mete’ – as in mete out judgement – suggests that meditation may have something to do with putting things into perspective and seeing things as they really are. Thus, thinking about meditation in terms of healing indicates that it is about restoring balance and wholeness in our lives, whilst the notion of measuring reminds us of how we talk about getting the measure of something to mean coming to an understanding of it.
Thus, strictly speaking, within the Christian tradition, meditation typically refers to thinking deeply about a passage from the Bible, such as a verse from the psalms, or an episode in the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Sometimes also known as lectio divina, this can perhaps best be described as chewing over the word of God in Holy Scripture – a kind of mental rumination – in order to extract its inner meaning.
The other form of mental prayer is contemplation, or contemplative prayer. This is a word whose meaning is more to do with seeing rather than thinking, and in the Christian tradition it is used to describe a wordless state of spiritual awareness or communion with the divine. Understood this way, contemplation is arguably the term that more accurately corresponds to the popular understanding of meditation, whilst meditation in the Christian tradition has historically meant something rather different to what most people understand as meditation nowadays.
That said, the widespread popularity of meditation, in both secular and religious contexts, means that this is the word most people use, and indeed movements like the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), and Centering Prayer, have done a great deal to bring meditation and contemplative spirituality out of the cloister and into the mainstream of contemporary Christian faith and practice.
All our services in the chapel at St Antony’s Priory incorporate significant periods of silent prayer. For more about Christian meditation, see: World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) https://wccm.org; and Contemplative Outreach (Centering Prayer) https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org