CBB Review – A Guide to Christian Meditation

Prayer should be the cornerstone of one’s faith. It comes in many forms from vocal prayer to meditative prayer to contemplative prayer. You will learn about all of these in Father John Bartunek’s A Guide to Christian Meditation: How to Engage More Deeply in Personal Prayer.

Early in the book Father John explains what prayer is. “Prayer at its most basic level is conversation with God. This seems obvious, but it harbors an awesome reality. To converse with someone implies that that someone wants to pay attention to you, otherwise you have a monologue, not a conversation. The mere existence of prayer, then, implies that God is paying attention, that he is interested in spending time with you. Christian prayer is an invitation from God to the one who prays – it starts with Him, not with you.”

That relationship is something that requires work and attention to grow just like our personal relationships with those we know. Prayer for a Christian “is a friendship with God in Christ. It’s being led by the Good Shepherd to ever richer pastures in the Father’s kingdom.” Ultimately that friendship is something we should all be working on cultivating. How you go about doing that can seem a daunting task but this book helps make that achievable.

At the core of this book is a four step process for meditation that Father John explains in detail.

Step 1: Concentrate – This involves turning your attention away from daily distractions and turning your full attention to God.

Step 2: Consider –Choose a scripture passage either via a reading plan or the guidance of a spiritual director. You slowly and thoughtfully read the text, reflect on it, examine it, and dig into it.

Step 3: Converse – Prayer should not be a one-sided affair. Though God is the one ultimately calling us into prayer he does so wanting it to be a relationship.

Step 4: Commit –At the end of this period  of meditation you may commit to an action that God may have been leading to. One example may be if you have been neglecting your prayer life, you may commit to giving more attention to a daily Rosary.

“Concentrate, Consider, Converse, and Commit.These are the four elements of Christian meditation. There are many books available on prayer that enrich our Christian heritage offer numerous aids to meditations,and you should familiarize yourself with them and take advantage of them, buying the end, the methods and aids all tie I to these four steps of prayer.”

Meditation is not easy and certainly presents some challenges. Father John reviews these difficulties and addresses their reality in a manner that gives us hope. Distractions during prayer and periods of sloth are going to happen to the best of us. Father gives some sound advice on how to overcome these periods including a review section which provides reflection on “My meditation went badly when I….” or “My meditation went well when I…”

The book closes out with a sample meditation. The reader is taken through the four steps mentioned earlier so they have a clear understanding of how the method works. An invaluable lesson that can benefit the reader for a lifetime.

A Guide to Christian Meditation is a short book coming in at 78pages. The content, as mentioned, is invaluable. Having a personal relationship with God should be our ultimate goal in this life to prepare for the ultimate prize in the next. Father John Bartunek has provided the tool to help us on this journey. Take advantage of it.

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