Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina is an ancient spiritual practice of divine reading. It originated in Christian monasticism, where monks would take time each day to prayerfully ponder the Word of God. The practice involves four steps: reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating. Reading helps us become familiar with the text, meditating helps us understand it, praying opens our understanding to the Holy Spirit, and contemplation allows us to experience personal union with God. Lectio Divina is not a science but more of an art, a sacred dance of circling deeper into the Scriptures. Through this practice, we can reclaim a living faith in God's word and have a dialogue with the living God who is present to us. Greetings, friends. What a joy to share the Gospel. Underlying the reflections I share with you in these podcasts is the ancient spiritual practice known as Lectio Divina. From time to time I hope to share with you some brief, yet what are for me significant pieces of insight concerning this spiritual discipline of Lectio Divina. In doing so, I hope to make our time together more fruitful, helping us all to move more deeply into our relationship with the Living God through the Sacred Scriptures. Lectio Divina is Latin for divine reading or spiritual reading. It has its roots in Christian monasticism. Monks would take an intentional time each day, alone in their monastic cells, to prayerfully ponder the Word of God. A wonderful little aside here. In the 6th century rule of St. Benedict, the great founder of Western monasticism, he reminds his monks to read so as not to disturb anyone else. Note, the practice was to read to oneself out loud. The Word, my friends, is meant for hearing. It comes to us from the outside as a generous revelation from God. The Word is a precious gift, one to be received with open hearts, open ears. The first systematic outline of Lectio Divina, as it is typically practiced today, is found in the 12th century writing called Ladder of Monks, written by Guigio the Carthusian. Here Guigio identifies four steps, reading, meditating, praying, contemplating, that make a ladder for us by which we are lifted up from earth to heaven, as he says. I can think of no better introduction to this wonderful prayer practice than offering you a couple of beautiful quotes that shed light on these four rungs of the heavenly ladder. Guigio the Carthusian explains, quote, reading is the careful study of the scriptures, consecrating all our powers on it. Meditation is the busy application of the mind to seek with the help of one's own reason for knowledge of hidden truth. Prayer is the heart's devoted turning to God to drive away evil and obtain what is good. Contemplation is when the mind is in some sort lifted up to God and held above itself so that it tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness, close quote. So we read to gain familiarity with the text. In meditating, we use whatever tools we have to understand what the author is saying. By praying, we open our understanding to the Holy Spirit, asking the Spirit to give us the insight we can't gain on our own. Contemplation is the surrendering of our spirits to God, setting aside the human effort that God might give us his very self, not simply understanding, but personal union. A little further along, Guigio expresses the four steps like this, quote, reading seeks for the sweetness of a blessed life. Meditation perceives it. Prayer asks for it. Contemplation tastes it. He goes on now, reading, as it were, puts food whole into the mouth. Meditation chews it and breaks it up. Prayer extracts its flavor. Contemplation is the sweetness itself, which gladdens and refreshes. And still again, Guigio adds, reading works on the outside, meditation on the pith, prayer asks for what we long for, contemplation gives us delight in the sweetness which we have found, close quote. Notice, in Guigio's very way of describing the practice of Lectio, it should be obvious we are dealing with something more like art than a science. There is a movement to it, a circling and going into to come out again, to circle around again, this time plunging deeper. It is, you might say, something of a sacred dance. In his marvelous little book, Praying the Bible, Mariano Magrassi explains so powerfully the reason for pursuing this spiritual discipline, taking this ladder step by step. Magrassi says that through Lectio Divina we might reclaim, quote, a living and coherent faith in the transcendence of God's word, a sense of scripture's infinite fruitfulness and inexhaustible riches, a deep admiration for the biblical world where beauty is a reflection of God's face and truth a foretaste of the vision toward which he is leading us. Finally Magrassi adds, above all, Lectio offers us a way to read scripture as a word that is present and puts me in dialogue with the God who is living and present, close quote. This my dear friends is the hope I have in sharing this podcast, joy in sharing the gospel with all of you, yes, to prayerfully ponder the scriptures together, but, and this is the whole of it, to avail ourselves to that encounter they make possible, the encounter with the living God present to us here and now. And friends, it is indeed a joy to share the gospel with you.