STM hosts Chistian Meditation Workshop

Jul 22, 2015

By YC Hwang
The Church of St Thomas More (STM) hosted a workshop on Christian Meditation — Prayer of the Heart conducted by Fr Paul Cheong OFM Cap together with Dr Patricia Por and the team from the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) in Malaysia, June 27-28. There were forty participants for this weekend programme.

What is meditation and how does it work was in part the theme for the morning session on the first day by Fr Cheong. Participants were told that, when stripped of the noise and distractions that pervades our conscious surroundings, the meditative focus is an unembellished continuum to God, the prayer connective. In short, Christian meditation is a deep reaching prayer whose nuances are affected as much by its disciplines as well as its forms.

The second session looked at the multifaceted nature of prayer, of which meditation is one of many strands. The mechanics of meditation emphasises on discarding mental thoughts and images, and sustaining such a state with a repeated word This was followed with a session on meditation. Video instructions on the steps into and out of meditation were easy to follow, even for first timers. It was a session well received.

The afternoon started with a session on The Symbol of the Journey and how one progresses on such a journey. We were told that discipline remains the prime requisite to sustain such a journey, and substance remains subordinated.

Time was allocated for questions to the WCCM team. The first day ended with another “working meditation” session.

The second day started with meditation. Participants were, by this time, much more comfortable and drawn to the character of stillness in prayer. The third session addressed the foundation of the Christian meditation tradition which goes a long way back to the Desert Fathers. The practice was lost along some point in time but has now been re-discovered.

While Christian meditation is, foremost, a prayer to God, there are temporal results for the practitioner as well. This was discussed in the fourth session on Fruits of Meditation, with the mental and physical well-being as highlightes.

Most, if not all participants, were uplifted by their experience from the weekend. Helen Lip and Rachel Shem from the Church of St Francis Xavier PJ found their experience uplifting and so did Stanley Chan and Melina Boey of STM. Zachary Anthony had a mixed experience. Stefanie Chan found the weekend reenergizing while Mira Sharon who is preparing for her STPM exams will use the experience to cope with her stress and anxiety.

The National Coordinator for WCCM alluded to the formation of a Meditation Prayer Group at the Church of St Thomas More and an initiative towards this has been launched. The weekend concluded with a short meditation.