The Burning Heart

After his death in 1982, John Main's personal copy of the New Testament was found to have many passages marked by him. He had highlighted words of encouragement and guidance that he came to use as the basis of his own teaching on the practice of meditation, and the selected passages strengthened his convictions on the value of wordless and imageless prayer.In The Burning Heart, Gregory Ryan matches those pieces of Scripture with extracts from many of John Main's own writings on the same verses, enabling our understanding of familiar words to be illuminated and revitalised by John Main's insights. They show how, by responding to Jesus' call to faith, we can open ourselves in meditation to the riches of divine reality; how the use of the mantra can enable us to dismiss our distracting thoughts and 'become like little children'; how we can only truly come to understand what it really means to have the Spirit of Christ in our hearts by patiently and regularly meditating and experiencing that silent Presence.Gregory Ryan has arranged this collection to make it suitable for short, selected readings either before or after morning or evening meditation in the centuries-old tradition of lectio divina. Practical guidance is also given on how to meditate for those who are new to the discipline, making the book ideal for newcomers as well as those already meditating.