In patristic tradition, the
usage of the word meditation was
confined to the ways in which the mind and heart were diligently handed over to
the word of God. This was done to renew the mind and heart through that word.
The fathers maintain that it is not proper for man to engage in meditating on
anything other than the written word of God, that is, the Bible. For inward
meditation can imprint its impression on the emotional and intellectual makeup
of man. Man, therefore, should not be so stamped except by the holy word of
God, which accords with God’s will and mind…
According to patristic
tradition, the first degree of meditation begins with reading the words slowly,
relishing them, and repeating them in an audible voice. Reading, to the
fathers, always meant doing so in an audible voice and relished in our inner
consciousness. In this manner, it can find rest in our innermost recesses.
Reiteration here is like rumination. After a while the words actually become
one’s own words. Man, then, becomes a faithful storehouse for the word of God.
His heart becomes a divine treasure for it… This is what is originally means by
‘keeping the gospel’ or ‘keeping the word.’
Matthew the Poor, Orthodox
Prayer Life
Reflection – OK, just a couple more days
with Matthew the Poor and meditation. Seriously, though, I am increasingly
convinced that the lack of meditation on God’s word underlies a great deal of
our spiritual malaise in the Church and (a
fortiori) in society at large.
Some may object
that meditation leaves them feeling a bit dry, that it can become too easily
just another head trip, an intellectual exercise that goes nowhere in
particular fast. While this is understandable, I think that reflects a certain
lack of understanding of the process of meditation as traditionally understood
in the Church.
We may think that
the idea in general is to read a Scripture passage and then think about it and
draw some helpful conclusion about it. That’s not quite it, and Matthew the
Poor is helpful here. The above description makes it sound like ‘reading’ and
then ‘thinking’ (which for us North Americans too quickly turns into
‘analysing’ or ‘dissecting’ which is useless for Scriptural prayer) are
parallel, that we read so as to move on to the analysis.
No. No way. Never.
Absolutely not. (Stop that right this instant!). First comes reading. Second
comes reading. Third comes… reading. Fourth comes (wait for it!) reading.
Meditation is first and foremost and above all a putting oneself in the presence
of God in his inspired living word. Before our ‘rational’ brain kicks in,
before we start pulling it to pieces and figuring out the difficult bits and
all that useless stuff, we have to bask, to soak, to savor the word, to roll it
around in our mouths like a fine wine, to revel in the very cadence of the
syllables, to spell it out, practically, letter by letter.
Only after a good
long time of that should our minds offer any kind of suggestion or reflection.
And even then, the thought process should be dialogic, a prayer, a conversation
with God: ‘Gee, Lord, I guess you really do like to heal blind people! Wonder
where I’m blind? What don’t I see here and now in my life? Maybe I don’t see my
own royal dignity, or your love, or the goodness of your creation or… OK, Son
of David, have mercy on me, and heal my blindness.’ That kind of thing, not
some dreadful dull sterile chain of thought which too often is quite literally
a chain.
God’s word is a
living word, you see, and when we bring ourselves into contact with it as I and
Matthew are trying to describe we are not simply doing an intellectual exercise.
We are in the presence of a Person, and that Person can act, then, our keeping of
the Word opening the door for that action and that movement.
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