Contemplation Schoenstatt Scotland

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No2

Our Launch on the 4th April of the School of Meditation at Schoenstatt features the method of John Main. John was born in London. In the 1940s he joined the Canons Regular of the Lateran and studied at St. Edmund's College, in England before pursuing theological studies at the Pontifical Athenaeum Angelicum, Rome. He began to doubt his vocation to the priesthood and decided to leave his order to go to Dublin (where his family then lived), where he studied law at Trinity College. He graduated in 1954 and joined the British Colonial Service. He was later assigned to Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, where he met Swami Satyananda, who taught him meditation using a mantra as the means to arrive at meditative stillness. The swami taught Main to meditate by giving him a Christian mantra. In 1956, he returned to Dublin and taught law at Trinity College. In 1959 he decided to join the Benedictines at Ealing Abbey in London. He was ordained a priest in 1963 and following his ordination he taught at St Benedict's School, Ealing. In 1970, he was appointed the headmaster of St. Anselm's Abbey School in Washington, D.C., and began studying the writings of the desert father John Cassian for the first time. Fr. John saw parallels between the spiritual practice taught by Cassian and the meditative practice he had been taught by the swami in Kuala Lumpur. In 1974, Main left the Abbey in Washington and returned to Ealing Abbey in London, where he began Christian meditation groups. He was assisted by Laurence Freeman, also an Ealing monk. In 1977, Main and Freeman established a new Benedictine monastery in Montreal. There too, they taught Christian meditation groups. Main died December 30th, 1982 and Freeman continued Main's work, travelling widely to establish Christian meditation groups across the world. In 1991, these Christian meditation groups were networked together into the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM).

If you are attending the launch of the School, in preparation you are simply asked to relax, there is nothing to bother you. Turn up and enjoy a wonderful half-day retreat, set in 17 acres of stillness and quiet, for Schoenstatt is a true ‘spa for the soul’. How would we explain your day? Quite simply, as an act of kindness to yourself, and a most wonderful introduction to the rest of your existence. Interested? You will be! Contemplate that!

Schoenstatt Scotland Press.