The way is a way of great simplicity. And it was those second generation of Christian disciples that we call the Mothers and Fathers of the Desert, those early monks, who have given us this very simple method of the prayer of the heart that every one of us here can practise. It’s not for an elite, it’s not for the holy; it’s for people like us. Christian meditation as we practise it is rooted in the teaching of Jesus on prayer and his teaching on discipleship – you can’t separate them. We have to find Christ within if we are to be able to follow him in our daily lives. So it’s what those early teachers of the desert gave us, and this is what John Main discovered, the founder of our community. He simply discovered or rediscovered this teaching, but he also recognised that it was of immense value to modern Christians like us who are trying to be disciples in a very different kind of world, a world of great distraction, of great materialism, of great consumerism, of great stress.
(Christian Life in the Light of Christian Meditation 1: Discipleship by Laurence Freeman OSB )
