How to Meditate and Why?
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As Catholics we meditate and engage in mental prayer to be able have an intimate conversation and relationship with God.
God is love, and the embodiment of truth.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that meditation is above all a quest. ”The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking” (CCC 2705 ).
To know God is to know what love is and to understand truth. The more you know who God is and the better relationship you have with Him, the better you know yourself as you are made in His image and likeness. Mental prayer is about growing in knowledge and admiration of God and in virtue.
There are as many and varied methods of meditation as there are spiritual masters. Christians owe it to themselves to develop the desire to meditate regularly, lest they come to resemble the three first kinds of soil in the parable of the sower. But a method is only a guide; the important thing is to advance, with the Holy Spirit, along the one way of prayer: Christ Jesus.Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. . . . Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.
—Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2707-2708