An Opportunity for Deep Personal Prayer
The Prayerful Reading of the Bible: Lectio Divina
Vatican II brought the word of God in the Bible to the center of all Christian spirituality. This revival has led to a growing practice of prayer that has had a long tradition in the church. This is called lectio divina. Literally, this means divine reading. Another description would be the prayerful reading of the Bible.
This prayerful reading seeks to listen to what God has to say to us. It will lead us to know and embrace God’s will. It is all about the transforming encounter with God’s special means of revelation, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.
When approaching the Mystery unveiled in the Scriptures, we need the attitude of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10).
There are four steps to this prayerful reading of the Bible:
- A slow meditative reading of a selected text of the Scriptures.
- A reflection on the text that connects it with our life experience.
- A response in prayer to this reflective activity.
- Finally, a quiet resting in the Mystery of this encounter.
Four Steps
It is essential to prepare for this serious time of prayer. We need to create an atmosphere of silence, with minimal outside distractions. Next, we select the text. We then invoke the Holy Spirit.In the initial step, we have to seek out the meaning: What does the text say? Silence is important for listening and avoiding the trap of making the text say what we want. We need to bring the heart into the process as well as the mind. A particular phrase or sentence may burst out as a light, sometimes gently, sometimes with great force. Hold on to it.
In the second step, we want to ask: What does the text say to us? We enter into a dialogue with the text. Here we want to make the connection to our life. The reflection leads to building a bridge between God’s word and our life situation at this moment. In this process, the distractions will never be far away. To cast out these disruptions in the mind, always return to the text. The all-important matter here is that we must return to the text and away from the mind’s ever-present wanderings. This discipline maintains a recollected and focused approach to the job of reflection in the second step.
In the third step, we try to discover what the text leads us to say to God. We are moved to prayer. We speak to God of how we know that we want to change. We acknowledge the struggle. We cannot do it by ourselves. Honesty is the true gold of this form of prayer. We seek help perhaps in healing a flawed relationship or getting rid of a bad habit. We ask assistance and guidance. We make resolutions to be more generous in walking with Jesus. Patience is truly important. This is always a slow journey from the head to the heart to life. This is about self-knowledge, a topic decisive to any authentic effort at prayer.
The fourth step, quiet listening and resting in the Lord, generates a contemplative mood. This is the goal of the prayerful reading of the Bible: opening ourselves up to the transforming love of God. Silence is the language of God. We slowly grow in the wonder that God loves us. While we do not always have this deep encounter of loving silence, it remains the goal. It is the gift that transforms us into the image of Christ.
Spiritual Transformation
When we approach the prayerful reading of the Bible in lectio divina, we should see ourselves as the one to whom the Bible is directed. It was formulated to address us here and now. However, we are always a member of a community. The Bible is not a personal prayer book but God’s gift to the community.Our search for the meaning of the Scriptures needs to include the church’s guidance in biblical studies. Praying the Scriptures should lead us to seek an understanding of the biblical meaning. Prayer and study need to steer us away from making the Bible fit our demands and desires.
We need to keep the concrete reality of our life, our family, our community, and the larger circumstances of the political, economic, and social reality front and center. The first three steps are an encounter with Christ-for-us. He is our Savior calling us to new life. In the final, and most important step, we meet Christ-in-us. This presence grows in the gradual transformation of our being that results from our faithful and generous reading of the Bible. We are truly walking with Jesus.
The faithful practice of lectio divina helps us move out of our false self and to seek the gift of our true self. We slowly grow out of illusions of self-importance. We recognize the destructive power of self-absorption. This often-painful growth surprisingly is a growth in humility. This draws us toward the goal of the human journey, being one with God.
