Christian meditation integrates faith into daily life

You only have to look at the role technology plays in our lives, particularly in the lives of young people, to recognize that we are in an age of instant response and gratification. It is an age of limited analysis where consumerism runs rampant and opinion masquerades as fact.

As American bestselling author Matthew Crawford put it: “In a culture saturated with technologies for appropriating our attention, our interior mental lives are laid bare as the resource to be harvested by others,” he wrote in The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in the Age of Distraction.

That is why the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board should be applauded for displaying leadership in developing a program of Christian meditation.

The board, which overlaps the Dioceses of Hamilton, London and St. Catharines, educates more than 10,000 students. Its Christian meditation program, which complements other forms of traditional prayer in schools, is an example of how smaller boards are providing leadership in Catholic education.

Christian prayer meditation is very different from mindful meditation or meditations rooted in other religious practices. It really is entering into prayer at its heart. It is but one type of prayer — along with prayers of blessing and adoration, prayers of petition, prayers of intercessions, prayers of thanksgiving and prayers of praise — and does not replace religious education classes or other forms of prayer or family life classes.