Christian Meditation

St Andrew’s is affiliated with WCCM Australia, part of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM). Our meditation group meets in person and online each Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm. We also have a shorter meditation in the service of Morning Prayer online Monday to Friday at 7:15 am. See our service times for online meeting details. All are welcome!

Meditation is a universal spiritual wisdom and a practice found at the core of all the great religious traditions, leading from the mind to the heart. It is a way of simplicity, silence and stillness. It can be practised by anyone, wherever you are on your life’s journey. It is only necessary to be clear about the practice and then to begin – and to keep on beginning.

In Christianity this tradition of contemplation, the prayer of the heart or ‘apophatic prayer’, became marginalised and even sometimes treated with suspicion. But in recent times a major recovery of the contemplative dimension of Christian faith -and prayer – has been happening. This is transforming the different faces of the Church and revealing the way the Gospel integrates the mystical and the social. 

Central to this process now is the rediscovery of how to pray in this dimension and at this depth: finding a practice of meditation in the Christian tradition. The World Community teaches a practice derived from the Gospel teaching of Jesus and the advice of early Christian monks. The Desert Fathers and Mothers teach a Christian spirituality of powerful relevance for those today who want to live their discipleship to Jesus in a radical and simple way. John Main (1926-1982), who began a renewal of the Christian Meditation Movement, expresses the practice in this way:

“To know ourselves, to understand ourselves and to … get ourselves and our problems in perspective, we must make contact with our spirit. All self-understanding arises from understanding ourselves as spiritual beings, and it is only contact with the universal Holy Spirit that can give us the depth and the breadth to understand … The way to this is not difficult. It is very simple. But it does require serious commitment … All each of us has to do is to be as still as possible in body and in spirit … Learning to meditate is learning to let go of your thoughts, ideas and imagination and to rest in the depths of your own being. Always remember that. Don’t think, don’t use any words other than your own word, don’t imagine anything. Just sound, say the word in the depths of your spirit and listen to it. Concentrate upon it with all your attention. Why is this so powerful? Basically, because it gives us the space that our spirit needs to breathe. It gives each of us the space to be ourselves. When you are meditating you don’t need to apologize for yourself and you don’t need to justify yourself. All you need to do is to be yourself, to accept from the hands of God the gift of your own being.” 

John Main OSB, “Space to Be,” MOMENT OF CHRIST (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 92-93.