December 15, 2007

MEDITATION

1. Meditation is a power of the mind which controls any distraction and gathers all thoughts. At the beginning it is burdensome but at the end it leads to abundant fruits.

2. For a distracted person every thought leads to distraction. For the truly meditative person every imagining becomes meditation.

3. Meditation enables discerning the precious from the despicable, and leads one closer to the truth.

4. Meditation is more familiar to man than prayer, contemplation, and rapture.

5. Meditation on virtue is the means to reach prayer and contemplation. Contemplation is the means to reach rapture.

6. A person who meditates seeking advantageous situations, like avoiding adverse things, tribulations and death, will eventually incure these things with even greater misery.

7. Meditation is the beginning of interior preference and of a change in life for the better. It is the opening of the road to knowledge and victory over oneself. It enlightens the mind to discern one’s own thoughts.

8. Sometimes it is better to stop meditating and come back to it later with greater awareness.

9. Many things lead us to meditate such as; the intention to love God, the memory of Christ's life, and of the Saints, the memory of the divine presence, which always and everywhere looks over us, the memory of death and of those things which are after death.

10. Meditation over death is refrain from vices, an incentive toward virtues, a spur for the negligent, and hope for the penitents.

11. Meditation over death is renunciation of any corporal pleasure and of one's own will. It is an assiduous crying which changes the soul for the better. It makes one forget the worries of the world and triumphs over one’s own passions.

12. The profound meditation over death eliminates the fear of it and drives away the sadness of the world. It leads to fulfillment.

13. The one who knows the virtuous aspect of death knows the difference between the fear of it, which comes from nature, and the one that comes from grace.

14. The one who, in any place, at any time or occasion waits patiently for death is good. However, the one who desires it out of humility can be called a saint.

15. As the body dies if deprived of nourishment for a longtime, so the soul dies if deprived of meditation over death and the afterlife.

16. Meditation over death in the beginning is burdensome. Then there is a fertile phase which leads to the scorn of oneself and of the whole world, and finality it is joyful because it aspires freedom and the vision of God.

17. The one who would purposely decide not to die is totally outside the realm of charity, because charity wants to be at the presence of God. stop here

18. The one who desires death to avoid tribulations or because he fears penalty, has not successfully meditated over death, and would gladly run away from this meditation.

19. Many seem to be servants of God, but as they approach death they would like to postpone it. These people clearly did not meditate over death.

20. Although an awareness of the certainty of death is useful, the knowledge of the last day would be harmful to many because it would nourish sin under the hope of the future penance.

21. You would be negligent if, through meditation, you did not make the effort to appreciate that every day might be your last one.

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