The Catholic Tradition of Meditation

John Cassian (360 AD-435 AD): This way of stilling the mind and leaving aside all thoughts has been passed down from the earliest of the desert monks who themselves had received it from the apostolic fathers. Just as this was handed down to us by a few of the oldest fathers who were left, so also do we pass it on …to those who truly desire it.”

In response to Jesus words: “when you pray go into your room, shut the door and pray to your father who is there in secret,” Cassian suggests, when we “withdraw our hearts completely from the clatter of every thought and concern and disclose our prayer to the Lord in secret, we pray with the door shut. With closed lips and in total silence we pray to the searcher, not of voices but of hearts.