The Benedictine monk John Main was one of the most profoundly influential spiritual teachers of our age. His belief that the desert tradition of meditative prayer practised by the earliest monastic communities had an immediate and contemporary relevance gave rise to the vision of a totally new kind of community, one made up of men and women scattered throughout the world yet united in their daily practice of Christian meditation.
To this fledgling family – which today has grown to over 100.000 members in over 100 countries – John Main wrote a series of intimate letters notable for their deep coherence and simplicity. Tradition and personal experience, church and society, meditation and prayer are the themes that weave in and out of these letters, but at their centre is a sense of the presence of Christ permeating every dimension of living – solitary and relational.
Monastery Without Walls is a complete and annotated edition of all of John Main’s letters which together constitute a volume of remarkable spiritual wisdom and insight, as fresh and relevant today as when they were first written.