Musings: Notes From My Daybook

Thomas Merton offers some basic and sane instruction: "Meditation is not merely the intellectual effort to master certain ideas about God or even to impress upon our minds the mysteries of our Catholic faith. Conceptual knowledge of religious truth has a definite place in our life, and that place is an important one. Study plays an essential part in the life of prayer. The spiritual life needs strong intellectual foundations. The study of theology is a necessary accompaniment to a life of meditation. But meditation itself is not"study" and is not a purely intellectual activity. The purpose of meditation is not merely to acquire or to deepen objective and speculative knowledge of God and of the truth revealed by him."