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The National Black Catholic Congress
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Lectio Divina
A Grace-filled path to resting in God
By Thomas Keatin

The ancient practice of Lectio Divina--the prayerful reading of the Bible, the book Christians believe to be divinely inspired--is being rediscovered and renewed. We need to distinguish Lectio from Bible study, which provides a solid conceptual background for the practice of Lectio but should be done at another time. Lectio is also not the same as praying the scriptures in common, a contemporary development that is sometimes identified with Lectio. The ancient practice of Lectio was done in private and consisted in following the movement of the Holy Spirit in regard to the time one might devote to each step or stage of the process, as well as passing from one stage to another during the same period of prayer.

The practice of Lectio can be divided into two forms: the monastic and the scholastic. The scholastic form divides the process into stages in a hierarchical pattern. Following the reading of a passage of scripture, the first stage was to allow a phrase or word to arise out of the text and to focus on it. This stage was called Lectio. The second stage was the reflective and emphasized pondering upon the words of the sacred text, and was called meditatio, "meditation." The spontaneous movement of the will in response to these reflections was called oratio, "affective prayer", and constituted the third stage. As these reflections and acts of will simplified, one moved to a fourth and final stage, the interior state of resting in God, and that was called contemplatio, "contemplation." This way of doing Lectio developed in the Middle Ages at the beginning of the scholastic period with its tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual life as well as theology. It organized spiritual practices in a hierarchical order and relied on rational analysis more than the spontaneity of the Spirit.

The monastic form of Lectio was practiced by the Mothers and Fathers of the Desert in the fourth Century and later in monasteries both East and West. It is oriented more toward contemplative prayer than the scholastic form, especially when the latter developed into what we call today "discursive meditation", which is moving from one thought to another. That method is a good way of praying provided you don't get stuck there and fail to move on to contemplative prayer. Most Christians are trained to reflect and to multiply particular acts of the will in order to go to God and find it hard to imagine praying without a lot of words.

In the monastic way of doing Lectio we listen to God addressing us in a particular text of scripture. From this perspective there are no steps or stages, but rather four focal points or moments along the circumference of a circle. All the moments of the circle are joined to each other in a horizontal and interrelated manner as well as to the center, which is the Spirit of God speaking to us through the text and in our hearts. To pay attention to any one of the four moments is to be in direct relationship to all the others. In this perspective, one may begin one's prayer at any moment along the circle, as well as move easily from one moment to another, according to the inspiration of the Spirit.

Saint Paul writes, "Know you not that your bodies are the temples of God and that the Spirit of God dwells within you?" (1 Cor.3:16). Suppose you were intrigued by that question and felt nudged to let your attention linger over those words and to savor them. The early monks chose such a phrase or sentence that impressed them. They would sit with that phrase or sentence without thinking of stages or following some predetermined schema, but just listening, repeating occasionally the same short text. This receptive disposition enabled the Spirit to expand their capacity to listen. As they listened, they might perceive a new depth of meaning to the text. A particular insight might also be singularly appropriate for guidance in their immediate life situation. According to scripture, the Spirit speaks to us every day. "If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart" (Psalm 95). The monks listened, not to conceptualize or analyze the text, but just to hear it. And to hear it without any preconceived purpose of what they were going to do with it.

This is already a deep form of receptivity. Those who practice Lectio in this way are already moving toward the fourth moment of this dynamic process which is resting in God. In response to a new insight, they might be inclined to express silently interior movements of love, praise or gratitude. As this listening attitude stabilized, they might experience moments of contemplative prayer in which they are just present to God, or quietly engulfed in the divine presence. In this situation, one's attentiveness to God expands into sheer awareness of the divine presence. One breaks through the veil of one's own ways of thinking. The external word of God in scripture awakens one to the interior Word of God in one's deepest self. When that awareness dissipates, one may go back and read more of the text.

This monastic way of doing Lectio Divina begins with prayer to the Spirit. The four moments along the circumference of the circle are the same as in scholastic Lectio--reading in the presence of God, reflecting in the sense of pondering (not in the sense of discursive meditation), responding with spontaneous prayer, and resting in God beyond thoughts and particular acts of the will.

By "pondering" I mean sitting with a sentence, phrase or even a word that emerges while reading the text, allowing the Spirit to expand our listening capacity and to open us to its deeper meaning; in other words, to penetrate the spiritual sense of the scripture passage. This leads to listening with the heart, with one's whole being. This in turn leads to the experience of the living Christ and increases the practical love for others that flows from that relationship.

As we repeat the phrase, sentence, or word slowly, a deeper insight may arise. For example, take the words of Jesus, "I will not call you servants but friends." All of a sudden, it might dawn on us what it means to be the friend of Christ. Our awareness expands without our having done anything but allow the Spirit to act. We think the text but we do not think about the text. If we are thinking in the sense of reflecting, we are dominating the conversation. That can be done fruitfully at another time. Here it is a question of receiving the Spirit and resting in Christ's presence.

To benefit fully from Lectio its integrity has to be respected. The ripe fruit of the practice is assimilating the word of God and being assimilated by it. It is a movement from conversation with God to communion with God. It enables us to express our deep experience of union with God in words and symbols that are appropriate. There is thus a movement not only into silence, but from silence to expression and action.

In the Trinity, the Eternal Word is always emerging from the infinite silence of the Father, and always returning. The persons in the Trinity live in each other rather than in themselves. The Father knows himself only in the Son, the Son only in the Father, and the Spirit expresses their unity, bringing together in oneness relationships that are infinitely distinct. The Trinity is the basis for the oneness and diversity that we see around us. In this way of doing Lectio, one is recognizing the presence of the Word of God in everything and in every occurrence, experiencing what the author of Saint John's gospel wrote in the Prologue, "Without Him was made nothing that has been made." In contemplative prayer, we are in touch with the source of all creation; hence, we transcend ourselves and our limited worldviews. As a result, we feel at one with other people and enjoy a sense of belonging to the universe. The fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Jesus, according to Saint Paul. The Divinity dwells in us bodily in proportion to our capacity to receive it as we grow in union with Jesus, the Eternal Word of God made flesh. This process needs to be nourished both by the interior silence of contemplative prayer and the deep listening of Lectio Divina.

The scholastic method is a good way to learn Lectio Divina whether privately or in a group, but at a certain point when people have developed a certain ease doing it, we would do well to explain the monastic method of Lectio, which is oriented from the start toward resting in God and establishing us in a listening attitude. The dynamic interaction between the four "moments" of monastic Lectio--reading, reflecting (in the sense of pondering a particular text, phrase or word), responding with acts of the will, and resting in God--puts us more and more at the disposal of the Spirit.