'Meditation being the soul of prayer': Jeremy Taylor on the feast of the Presentation as an invitation to meditation
In The Great Exemplar , following his 'Considerations Upon the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple', Jeremy Taylor appropriately offers a discourse 'Of Meditation'. This reflects, of course, the faithful, prayerful waiting of Simeon and Anna, and also how the Gospel of the feast tells that the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph "marvelled at those things which were spoken" of the Christ Child. Taylor says of this, "and treasured them in their hearts; and they became matter of devotion and mental prayer, or meditation". Likewise, Taylor's urging that "meditation is the duty of all", echoes his earlier description of Simeon and Anna: "of diverse sexes, and like piety, Simeon and Anna, the one who lived an active and secular, the other a retired and contemplative life". Today's feast, therefore, is, for Taylor, an invitation to meditation, to a prayerful dwelling upon the life of Christ - in which "the greatest mysteries ...