Benedictine monks are professional God seekers and they deliberately model to others how they seek God. Those who are considering becoming monks are inducted into the monastery as guests. Then, under the guidance of an abbot, they become a novice as they learn to mediate and pray.

Augustine Baker was a Benedictine monk who has been called a Teacher of Prayer. He explains that in the monastery the tradition is to set aside thirty minutes of contemplative prayer every day. This prayer shouldn’t be full of “rigid methodologies.” Instead, he says, “prayer is very much the work of the Spirit in a person’s heart.”

Beginning with the prayers of others, like the Psalms or the “Lord’s Prayer” (Matthew 6:9-13), we can be led into our own words of thanksgiving, offering, and repentance. Then a moment will come when we feel free to simply sit quietly in God’s presence.

Meditating on Jesus, His words, His deeds, His suffering, softens our stony hearts. “Our hearts… must be broken up like ground” advises the Victorian apologist John Henry Newman, “and dug, and watered and tended, and cultivated till they become as gardens, gardens of Eden.”

Our perspective and actions will more easily follow the One we look to and meditate upon.