Formation Session 4: Meditation

On October 3 we had the session on Meditation.  Daily meditation would bring us to sanctification.

To be united with God we must pray.  Prayer is having conversation with God.  How we pray is important because if we do not pray properly we will not gain merit.  As written in the Bible, many will call God in vain.  Not all who call "Lord, Lord..." shall be saved.

If we want to have effective communication with God, we must first learn to listen to God.  If we do all the talking (and not so respectfully at that), we cannot hear God and if we do not listen to Him, how can we hear His answer to our monologue of demands?

We can hear God speak through His very words in the Gospel.  We can listen to a good sermon, or read approved explanations of the Gospel, or read from the lives of Saints who have tried in human circumstances to translate the words of the Gospel into real human lives.  Their writings and their lives are effective translations of the Gospel.  When we have read, we will concentrate on one or two lines that strike us most.

And we will begin to reflect on it by recalling when, where, to whom, and how Our Lord spoke the words.  We will picture out the scene and try to understand what Our Lord Jesus was trying to say to the one He was speaking to.  What did He mean when He said His words?

Then we will imagine Him saying the same words to us.  And we will try to see how we can apply His words to our present situation.  We will see the obstacles that will make it difficult for us to follow His words and then we will make a step by step plan on how we can put His words in practice.  This step by step plan will be our resolution.

Then we will present to Our Lord our resolution and ask Him for guidance and strength.  We will tell Him our difficulties in reaching our goal, and we will ask Him for grace to keep us going.  We will tell Him our wishes and our problems.  We will tell Him we love Him and ask Him to inspire us on how we can be more pleasing to Him.  All these conversations will be our colloquy with God.  And then before we end our colloquy, we will ask our Blessed Mother and the saints to help us also in our resolution.

Then we will end with some vocal prayers and add a hymn to God if possible.

It goes without saying that we start our meditation with a prayer to the Holy Ghost.  Too many founders of sects and false religions started with some kind of mental exercise inspired by the evil spirit.  If we do not pray we may delude ourselves into some personal imaginative interpretation of the Gospel and then set up our own church.  If we hear voices and see lights... hah... we must fear that the devil is playing tricks on us!  Pride can make us want to be special people with special communication line with the divine, and the devil will then want to entertain us.