Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine, and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of

St. Joseph, and this is Pines of the Quines.

In this episode, I'd like to talk a little bit about Christian meditation.

So you've probably heard the word meditation before.

Maybe you heard it in a secular context.

Maybe you heard it in the context of another religion.

But certainly we talk about Christian meditation within the Catholic church, and I imagine,

you know, without an orthodoxy and in Protestant ecclesial communions.

So what's distinct about it, you know?

Do we actually have a coherent tradition of prayer, are there different steps or methods

that you might follow, and if so, how do they lead to holiness?

So we'll just think about a little bit of that together as we journey further up and

further in to God's plan for our lives.

Here we go.

Okay, so there are a lot of sources in the tradition that we can use to kind of pull

together a theory and practice of Christian meditation.

Certainly a lot of folks will, you know, justly start with the sacred scriptures and with

the councils that our Lord gives and the instructions that He gives.

Another great source for our understanding Christian meditation is the monastic tradition.

So like in the third century and the fourth century, you start having individuals going

out into the desert, and we think here of like Egypt in particular, and then cultivating

certain practices of prayer as a way by which to kind of recollect themselves and cultivate

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