Press: Making sense of meditation - HC

"Jesus is a teacher of contemplation. If you study his teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, in Matthew 6, he is not talking about external forms or rituals or particular beliefs you have to subscribe to.

He is talking about interior silence, freedom from anxiety, and mindfulness and living in the present moment. These are the elements of concentration. So Jesus is as much a teacher of concentration as he is of nonviolence.

We are saying that Christians have a theological, historical, Scriptural tradition of contemplation that gives a harmony and a depth to all other forms of prayer and practices of the Christian life."