John Main was born in London as Douglas Main, the fourth of six children of David and Eileen Main. In the 1940s he joined the
Canons Regular of the Lateran and studied at the diocesan seminary of
St Edmund's College, Ware in England before being chosen to pursue theology studies at the
Pontifical Athenaeum Angelicum, Rome. He began to doubt his vocation to the priesthood and decided to leave his order to go to
Dublin (where his family then lived), where he studied law at
Trinity College. He graduated in 1954 and joined the
British Colonial Service, working as a civil servant. Main became a strictest and was assigned to
Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, where he met Dr Swami Satyananda (1909-1961), who taught him meditation using a
mantra as the means to arrive at meditative stillness. The swami taught Main to meditate by giving him a Christian mantra. Main through his own work understood that mantra was also an ancient Christian tradition. The mantra he recommended was ‘Maranatha’, an ancient Aramaic phrase meaning ‘Come Lord’. In 1956, Main returned to Dublin and taught law at Trinity College. In 1959 he decided to join the
Benedictines at Ealing Abbey in London. He took the name of John, in honour of St
John the Apostle. He was ordained a priest in 1963. Following his ordination he taught at
St Benedict's School, Ealing, which is governed by the monastic community of Ealing Abbey. In 1970, Main was appointed the headmaster of
St. Anselm's Abbey School in Washington, D.C., where he began to study seriously the writings of the
desert father John Cassian for the first time. In 1977, Main and Freeman were sent to establish a new Benedictine monastery in
Montreal, Quebec. Main died of cancer, at the Benedictine monastery in Montreal in 1982 and is buried at
Mount Saviour Monastery, Elmira, NY. He was succeeded by Laurence Freeman. Freeman continued Main's work, travelling widely to establish Christian meditation groups across the world. In 1991, these Christian meditation groups were networked together into the
World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM). ==Books==