THE PEOPLE´S EXPERIENCE OF GOD-2

Study and Prayer 

Our approach to the Bible requires two distinct methods. One is to study the Bible to absorb the story and to grow in familiarity with the word of God. This should be done with a reverent spirit. However, it is an exercise of the intellect. We must develop a familiarity with the overall story. This should include a broad sense of the general themes, major events and the basic timeline from Abraham to Jesus. Pope Francis called for this bible study in his classic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel. He says, “The study of the sacred Scriptures must be a door opened to every believer. It is essential that the revealed word radically enrich our catechesis and all efforts to pass on the faith…Let us receive the sublime treasure of the revealed word.” (#175)

The second method is the prayerful reading of the Scriptures. This task goes beyond the mind to the depth of the spirit within us, a truly different tactic. The prayerful reading of the Bible seeks primarily to listen to what God has to say to us in the midst of our lives. This demands an openness and emptiness that echoes Samuel as we approach the Holy Word: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)

We need to always be aware that the text is more than fact. It is a symbol, a window, and a reflection that lets us see the past as a mirror of today’s experience. This prayerful reading of the word of God needs to lead us into our present historical reality in a way that it discloses the mystery of God’s saving presence here and now.

Our search has three goals:

  1. We want to acquire a personal understanding of God’s word.
  2. We want to let God’s will for our life situation to become clear and practical.
  3. We want to live the call to walk with Jesus.

These goals prepare us to face the challenge of the brokenness and confusion of our daily experience. In this prayerful reading of the Bible, we need to receive the message as if it is addressed to us personally at this specific time in history because it is.

In this time of prayerful reading of the scriptures, it is important to set aside any sense of study or preparation to share our understanding with others. We prayerfully read the Bible for one purpose. We want to grow in faith and simply be in the presence of the living God.

I

Lectio Divina: A Reading Leading to Prayer

Among the many gifts of Vatican II was a new emphasis on the Bible. It brought the Word of God 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.

Lectio Divina is all about the transforming encounter with God’s special means of revelation, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. This prayerful reading seeks to listen to what God has to say to us. Reflection and prayer will lead us to know and embrace God’s will.

When approaching the Mystery unveiled in the Scriptures, Samuel’s great insight is the key: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10).

There are four steps to this prayerful reading of the Bible. We can describe them as the four “Rs” of Reading, Reflecting, Responding and Resting.

  1. A slow meditative reading of a selected text of the Scriptures.
  2. A reflection on the text that connects it with our life experience.
  3. A response in prayer to this reflective activity.
  4. Finally, a quiet resting in the Mystery of this encounter.

II

Seeking God Through A Mediator

There is a fascinating story about the Jewish people in the Exodus and their fear in approaching God. Moses had been experiencing a series of encounters with God on Mt. Sinai. These experiences had been marked by some natural signs such as storms, thunder and lightning. God spoke from a cloud. The people had become terrified. They had heard God’s Word telling them to keep their distance from the mountain lest they see the face of God and die. So, they said to Moses: “You speak to us and we will listen, but let not God speak to us, or we shall die.” (Ex 20: 18-19) They clearly wanted a mediator, a secondary approach to their experience of God.

In our day, many people use the Church as such a mediator to God. They are faithful members meeting their religious obligations. They have the sacraments and the teachings of the Church. Their approach to God is secondary by the faithful membership in the Church.

For others, their approach to God is rooted in an emergency. They go to God when their plan for happiness has run into a crisis. They see God as a remedy of the last resort.

There are many variations to these two themes such as the gospel of prosperity and those seeking deep religious feelings as the product of their worship. However, in all these different religious pursuits, the emphasis is on the individual and less so on God.

True religion places God as the center. True spirituality clarifies the goal and directs the person in a genuinely authentic and immediate search for God. Religion has its comfortable rituals and practices. Spirituality brings transparency and the immediacy with a clear focus in seeking union with God. Spirituality has the distinct and demanding goal of deep personal prayer.

In today’s religious practice, many people are moving beyond the security blanket of active Church membership as their search for God. This has taken many different avenues. Some have become more involved in their religious responsibilities. Others have withdrawn altogether. Most have had mixed results with many running into painful spiritual dead-ends. There is one common factor. They are all looking for a deeper spiritual experience.

In the US, the largest religious denomination is Roman Catholic. The second largest group is former Roman Catholics. In El Salvador, which is typical of many traditionally Catholic Latin American countries, the Evangelicals outnumber the Roman Catholics.

In the midst of this religious turmoil, there is a growing hunger for a more authentic experience of God. There is a yearning to move beyond the does and don’ts of religion to a spirituality that taps into the deepest longings of the human heart. Deep personal prayer is an avenue that is authentic, demanding and life-giving in this quest for a meaningful spirituality that offers this experience of God.

Lectio Divina, the prayerful reading of God’s Word, offers a method of truly spiritual encounters with the call of God’s will. It also opens up to a powerful and rich spirituality. This is why there is an intimate connection between Lectio Divina and deep personal prayer.

This journey, or better expressed as pilgrimage to God, leads to a personal purification, a personal enlightenment and a personal transformation. This happens through a growing awareness, a growing self-knowledge and an increasing understanding of God’s Word. These moments of spiritual growth gift the person with a generous acceptance of God’s will. A central part of this transition is the transformation of consciousness. A meaningful encounter with God’s Word exposes the depth of false values that blind us to the presence of God within ourselves, within our neighbor and within our historical reality.

This process of growing in the awareness of God’s presence leads to deeper awareness of God. In our present situation, we have a series of veils that blind us to God. These veils are the deceptive illusions and false values imposed by our culture and other sources of deception. Removing the veils obstructing us from God is a critical task of any true spirituality.

This pilgrimage to God with the help of Lectio Divina may seem overwhelming. However, like any other journey, it is simple enough if we realize it only is possible when we take one step at a time. We now face the real challenge. Taking that first step!

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THE PEOPLE´S EXPERIENCE OF GOD

The Bible is a love story of God and his people. While it is simple and clear there are also problematic issues because this love absorbs human frailty and sin covering centuries.

The creation accounts in Genesis are written in their own symbolic and narrative style. They contain complex insights about the human experience and our historical reality. They portray the human venture based on three fundamental and deeply connected relationships as essential to the human experience. These relationships are with God, our neighbor and creation. The Genesis account relates a basic brokenness in these three links to reality. The sin of Adam and Eve, our first parents, set the pattern. We follow it as we place ourselves rather than God at the center of all reality. Our sinful condition makes us resist the call to acknowledge the constraints of being creatures.

While the Bible is the story of salvation, the consequences of sin are at the center of the story in Genesis’ first eleven chapters. They lay out the need for salvation. Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel and, of course, Adam and Eve and the apple are examples of humankind’s pulling away from God. God’s instruction “to have dominion over all the earth” (Gen 1:28) is mangled in our selfish patterns of behavior. God also told us to “till it and keep it.” (Gen 2:15) Our failure on both accounts has severely disrupted the balance between God, humanity and creation. This rupture is expressed in our time in wars, violence, abuse, neglect of the most vulnerable and the continuing violation of nature.

Pope Francis described this sin that places ourselves at the center in today’s historical experience as “practical relativism.” He defines this practical relativism as follows: “When human beings place themselves at the center, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative.”

This relativism, a powerful and pervasive expression of sin in our day, leads to the exploitation and neglect of others at all levels. People are reduced to objects. Abuse of others, economically, racially and sexually, is a natural consequence of this mentality. We see all of this expressed in the invisible forces of the market, in human trafficking, in organized crime, in malignant consumerism, in the drug trade, unrelenting racism and sexism and in the rampant misuse of the land and the sea and air, flora and fauna. All these destructive forces flow from a false vision and denial of God’s mandate in Genesis.

In chapter twelve of Genesis with the call and promise made to Abraham, we begin a journey. This passage of two thousand years will lead to Jesus and the salvation of all humankind. What follows in these twenty centuries of history of Abraham’s family is an evolution. This is a story of the ever-expanding development of the promise to Abraham in the history of the Jewish people and their experience of God. That Salvation History leading from Abraham to Jesus is an epic struggle of sin and grace.

In its broadest sweep, the story flows in a time-frame across the centuries from Abraham to Moses to David, moving to the prophets and climaxing in Jesus. Throughout, there is a continual expression of God’s faithfulness and human ambivalence. The story moves from the promise to Abraham, destined to become the father of a great nation, to Moses liberating the people on the way to the Promised Land. The era of David and the kings introduces the idea of hope for God’s final intervention in the person of the Messiah. The enlightenment of the prophets’ message expands and deepens this hope. Along the way, we are gifted with the collective wisdom of the people in other books, especially in the psalms. Each expression of the story draws us deeper into the mystery of this ever-active, always loving and saving God.

Throughout this journey of Abraham’s family evolving into the Jewish people, the hope of the promise advances in spite of consistent and profound infidelities against the Law of the Covenant. Likewise, there is a slow but steady growth in the communal understanding of who God is and what God wants. Many centuries after Abraham, the people came to the deepest truth of all: there is only one God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

The entire thrust of the movement of this Salvation History leads to Jesus, the Word of God. In Jesus, we have the fullness of God’s revelation. We have the invitation to enter into the Mystery of Love reflected in the beautiful harmony between the Jewish Scriptures and the great event of Christ crucified and Christ risen. The fullness of God’s grace and truth is revealed in Jesus in the abandonment and utter poverty of the Cross. Here we encounter the ultimate truth of God, a God of saving love and mercy. This story is elaborated in the New Testament.

The Story of Salvation Leads to Prayer

The Exodus was the centerpiece of this journey for God’s people. This was the liberation from slavery in Egypt. It included the passage through the desert and the entry into the Promised Land. In this experience, the people saw the clearest and most forceful expressions of God’s saving presence. The singular power of this experience guided the people down through the centuries of an often-torturous history. Again, and again, the children of Abraham reflected on the faithfulness of God who set them free. They found strength and fortitude in encountering the revelation of this God of the Exodus in their constantly troubled plight.

In the Christian era it was the death and resurrection of Jesus that anchored the community in faith through the storms of history. This ultimate expression of God’s saving love has become the gateway to the new day, the New Exodus, in Christian history. We see in it the continual opening to hope, no matter how dark and stinging the ravages of life may be.

The central point of the story of salvation in the Bible is this. The message, in all its breadth and depth, comes from the people’s experience of the saving power of God who is active in their lives and their history. The Bible teaches us that the same God of the Chosen People is in our life. The word in the Bible gives us the light that enables us to encounter, understand, and embrace the reality of God’s continuing presence in our life. We are invited to participate in the call and promise today. Deep personal prayer is the special avenue to encounter this saving God today. This is our pilgrimage through history to the kingdom of God. The gift of God’s word in the revelation of the Bible is always a call to new life and new horizons.

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