Transforming Church

With the instruments of models God has given to us, part of their focus is always on our relationship directly with God and part is on our shared relationship with others. For example, within the Ten Commandments we see three that focus on our relationship with God and seven focus on our shared relationship with others. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus gave His apostles the first three petitions focus on God and the remaining four on us and others.

While all seven faith practices connect with Christ, three connect in a vertical way with Him directly: to pray, to study and to worship, three connect with Him in a horizontal way through others: to witness, to encourage (mentor) and to serve, and finally with the seventh practice, to give, we experience Christ vertically and horizontally at the same time.

Now, turn your attention again to the first three practices that let us dial up directly with Jesus. All three of these conduits open to us in a group or corporate setting, but to pray and to study connect also as individual conduits. It is when those two are yoked together or blended together that we find Lectio Divina. According to Jean Leclercq, OSB, the founders of this medieval tradition were St. Benedict and Pope Gregory I. A biblical text that highlights the blend is Romans 10:8, where Paul refers to the presence of God’s Word in the believer’s “mouth or heart.” Recitation of the biblical text combined with prayer is the rationale for Lectio Divina.

It was Guigo II, a Carthusian monk and prior of Grande Chartreuse in the 12th Century, who named the four steps of this “ladder” of prayer with the Latin terms lectio (read), meditation (think about), oratio (pray about) and contemplatio (the quiet stillness in the presence of God), detailing a process that easily takes about an hour. Wikipedia details these steps as follows:

Lectio
This first moment consists in reading the scriptural passage slowly, attentively several times. Many write down words in the scripture that stick out to them or grasp their attention during this moment.

Contemplatio
This moment is characterized by a simple, loving focus on God. In other words, it is a beautiful, wordless contemplation of God, a joyful rest in His presence.

The application of Lectio Divina, Wikipedia says, was historically placed on being able to creatively engage with scripture on various levels, depending on one’s educational background and spiritual strengths. Until that last phrase the historical application of this spiritual discipline was spot on. However, since ultimately prayer and study of God’s Word are faith practices open to anyone, and since faith is not a product of knowledge and intellect, dependence is not to be placed on educational background. Faith practices are the ways Christ has chosen to grow all of us in discipleship.

I would identify the application of Lectio Divina instead as flirting with a spiritual clairvoyancy that experiences Christ as the Word, the mind of Christ, as never before. Faith itself can certainly be experienced on various levels and Lectio Divina can lead us into ever deeper spirituality regarding scripture, ourself, others and God.

Some of the conversations we daily have with others fall short of the potential they had for communication. It has always been our understanding that anyone can read God’s Word, but without the assistance of the Holy Spirit it will likely be taken to mean many different things. We have always understood that prayer is conversation of the believing heart with God, even though so many try to make it one way, telling God not only what to do but how to do it. When you do yoke the conduits of prayer and study together as Christ intended them, Lectio Divina opens with the greatest clarity direct lines of communication with Jesus Himself.