My Meditations: An Introduction

Last summer, I tried to do a line-by-line meditation on the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory be. I only managed to get through a few lines of the Our Father, before other things distracted me, and there were also a couple of other things that were going on during my meditation that holding me back. Eventually all the blog entries of meditation lines of Our Father got deleted along with a lot of other things, for reasons I won't go into here. Recently, I have been struggling with a lot of stuff, and have been advised to work on meditation and mental prayer some more. On top of that, I have learned a few more things from the writings of the Saints, and have also had a few thoughts of my own, that have the potential to be good meditations in and of themselves. I have now come up with several plans for good meditative practices, I'll list a few of these ideas now.


Hail Mary, Line-by-line:


I've decided to skip the Our Father, and head straight for the Hail Mary, and meditate on it, line-by-line. I'll try and get back to the Our Father some other time, for now, I think it's best for my soul to focus on the Hail Mary, and examine the rich meaning behind the lines of this prayer. I've been thinking about doing this prayer for some time now, and already have a few thoughts on some of the lines of the Hail Mary, I look forward to seeing how some of these thoughts develop, and I hope they will help me deepen my prayer life.


The Jesus Prayer, Line-by-line:


Another idea that came to me, while I was thinking about renewing my meditations was the Jesus prayer. At one point last summer I did think about doing a line-by-line quick meditation on it, but back then I was struggling with scrupulosity (which I still struggle with now) and could only see it as a penitential prayer. Now, as I start to overcome my scrupulosity and work on making serious advances in my spiritual journey, I see a lot more in the Jesus Prayer, and I think a line-by-line meditation on the Jesus prayer could prove to be really fruitful for deepening my prayer life.


Meditations on Our Lady of Hope:
This one is a bit more advanced than the other ones, I'm going try and do a meditative commentary on this statue of mine called Our Lady of Hope. I was found it to be a great blessing to order this statue of Our Lady Hope, and have it arrive right on the Feast of the Visitation. I have also seen other significant aspects behind this statue, for starters, this statue is called Our Lady of Hope, and I struggle a lot with that virtue. This statue of Our Lady, is of her pregnant, I struggle a lot with anger, and what could be more the antithesis of anger, strife and violence than a pregnant mother? Also, as I look closely at this statue, I noticed that there might been an attempt to represent Our Lady's unique Virgin Motherhood, where one side emphasizes her virginity, the other, maternity, if that is what the artist (or perhaps Our Lord, behind that artist) was going for, it's a really nice touch.


How I'm going to meditate:

In an effort to avoid error, as well as grow in other areas of my spiritual life, I plan on posting rough work of my meditations on the OBOB Chapel, where they are open to critique and advice from my fellow-Catholics. The final products of my meditations will then be posted on my blog here. Unlike my line-by-line Our Father meditation which published on a regular scheduled basis, these meditations will be published whenever they are finished and ready for publication, these meditations should ultimately be about my own spiritual growth, and not something I just showing them off to everyone here on CF. So, these are my plans so far for my meditations, I do have few other ideas I may try to work on in the future, but for now, I'll just work on these. I'll my fellow-Catholics in the OBOB Chapel, good-bye for now.



Glory to God
and
Hail Mary!

-JesusLovesOurLady