The Staff's Twilight meeting on Tuesday 23rd August was looking at Christian Meditation and how to implement it into McAuley. One of the directives from the Archbishop, Christopher Prowse, is that Christian Meditation is to be practiced within each Archdiocesan class/school. 

“In Christian meditation we are actually allowing Jesus to speak in us, in our heart,” Archbishop Christopher Prowse.

Meditation is a universal spiritual wisdom. It is a practice found at the core of all the great religious traditions. In Christianity, this contemplative dimension of faith and prayer is rooted in the Gospel teaching of Jesus and the Christian mystical tradition. Over the past 40 years, there has been renewed interest in Christian meditation, largely led by The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM). Schools in approximately 30 countries have now introduced the practice.

The twilight was facilitated by Helen  Bramanathan, who is a Religious Education & Faith Formation Officer in CE. Helen Bramanathan has been awarded The Archbishop’s Evangelisation Award for 2020. This award recognised her work in promoting Christian Meditation. Helen is deeply committed to providing opportunities for the children in Archdiocese schools to experience God’s love through this form of contemplative prayer. Helen has been working with many teachers and students across the Archdiocese, providing support as they look to implement Christian Meditation into their classrooms.

The staff were excited to be able to learn more about Christian meditation and the benefits it can have on student wellbeing. Scientific research shows that practising meditation offers many potential benefits to children. These include clinical improvements in mental and physical health as well as strengthening emotional and behavioural regulation, stress management and concentration. While effect sizes vary, particularly for interventions offered universally in schools, there is now consistent evidence across studies that meditation in schools… …