Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Lectio Divina, Hearing God Speak

As I (Deacon Harold) finished the final, sending forth address at a diocesan youth conference, I noticed a young man enter the venue near the end of the talk. He was dressed in a delivery uniform and was scanning the crowd, looking for someone. Upon finishing my talk and leaving the stage, the young man quickly approached me. He was very excited and said, "Your story really touched me. I've never heard anyone talk about their faith like that before. Tell me about Jesus!" The young man and I sat down in the back of the arena, and he told me his story.

He explained that he was not a person of faith: he was neither baptized nor ever went to church. His father abandoned the family when he was boy. As a teenager, he decided to track down his dad and discovered that he had committed suicide. The young man had a girlfriend who was Catholic (the person he was looking for earlier) and she was continually trying to convert him by giving him Catholic catechisms, books, and CDs. What she had not explained to him, however, was that it was possible to have an intimate relationship with Jesus. He said that my story moved him deeply and he wanted that same experience of God in his life. I saw that he was hungry for truth — in the person of the Lord Jesus!

His enthusiasm was contagious. He wanted to dive right in and knew that the Bible was important. I happened to have an extra Bible in my bag, but it wasn't just any Bible: it was the Bible that belonged to my mother, who recently passed away. That Bible meant a lot to me, but I knew it would also mean a lot to that young man who was looking for God.

As I handed the Bible to him I told him not to start from the beginning, because by the time he reached the middle of Leviticus he would be scratching his head wondering what was going on. Instead, I encouraged him to start with the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I wanted the young man to get to know Jesus personally through the accounts of his life, death, and resurrection.

I told him that each Gospel writer wrote the truth about Jesus, and was addressing his account of Jesus's life to a specific audience. Matthew wrote to the Jews, so he started off with a genealogy to show that Jesus, as the Messiah, was a descendant of Abraham through David. Mark was writing to the first Christians, who were facing persecution. Luke wrote to the Gentiles. John, whose Gospel was the last to be written, wrote for the entire Church, focusing heavily on the divinity of Christ. I mentioned all of this so my young friend would not be confused when, for example, one writer goes into detail about a miracle Christ worked, while another mentions the same miracle only in passing, while another doesn't talk about the miracle at all.

I explained it to him this way. Say you and I went to an event honoring someone special who is important to both of us. If we were to write honestly about the event and our experience of it, we would not record what happened exactly the same way. In other words, we would not tell the same story. I would choose to emphasize aspects of the event that I think are important and relevant to the people I'm writing to, and you would do the same. We are both telling the truth but would highlight different aspects of the same experience.

I then told him to read the Gospels as though he were there in person — a spectator — as the events of Christ's life, death, and resurrection unfolded. What would it have been like to be in the presence of God? How would you react if Jesus healed you of an infirmity or disease? What does Jesus's life mean for you today?

He took the Bible and started leafing through it. I pointed out where the Gospels started and asked if he would like to pray together. He said yes, and I prayed for the repose of his dad's soul. I also said a prayer that the Holy Spirit would open his mind and heart to seek and to follow the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I prayed he would have the courage to follow the truth wherever it leads so that he can become the person that God created and is calling him to be. I thanked the Lord that he put us together, and I gave the young man a blessing. He thanked me and walked over to his girlfriend, who was watching us with great enthusiasm from another area. I pray that the young man will find what his heart is yearning for — the truth that will set him free.

The Truth Will Set You Free

My own faith (Sonja) was inherited, cerebral, and sadly minimal until my relationship with Jesus was ignited, and that only began when I became serious about obedience to daily prayer in the Scriptures. Unlike Deacon Harold, who is a "cradle Catholic," I grew up a Southern Baptist. As non-Catholics, we had no sacraments. The only way to get into direct contact with God was Bible reading and study.

So I embarked on a somewhat tentative, daily discipline of yawning (often sleeping!) through my thirty-minute sunrise Bible reading and was rattled to the core one day when God himself met me there. The spiritual sages had assured me he would if I would prove myself serious by persevering in the habit, but it was still something of a precious terror when part of the text seemed to come alive and leap off the page like an ember and burn its way into my heart. A cursory reading of "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free" became "I am the truth, Sonja Corbitt, and you shall be set free!"

Imagine my surprise when later, as a proud new Catholic, I learned (as a matter of fact) that our Baptist daily quiet time in the Bible was not a clever Protestant invention, but one the Church has prescribed, taught, and practiced for millennia!

Ever Ancient, Ever New

Church history calls it lectio divina, Latin for "divine reading." Exactly when and how the actual designation came about is lost in the mists of time, but it was one that indicated a particular way of reading the Scriptures that was different from study or regular liturgical readings, one through which an individual lets go of his own agenda in reading and opens himself to what God wants to say to him.

Before literacy was common and the printing press was invented (around AD 1500), Bibles were hand copied by monks, exorbitantly expensive, and rare. People did not possess individual copies, and only a few would have been able to read them if they had. Lectio divina began sometime in early Benedictine monastic tradition, when the monks gathered in daily chapel to listen as a member of the community read from a communal copy of the Bible. Through this exercise, the monks were taught to consider what they heard to be direct communication from God, and therefore to listen to it with their hearts as the Word of God.

In the twelfth century, a Carthusian monk named Guigo formally described and recorded the stages traditionally considered essential to practicing lectio divina. Today, his stages remain fundamental and the monastic practice and discipleship in Scripture reading, meditation, and prayer that constitute traditional lectio practice continues to promote communion with God and increase the knowledge of his Word. As the Church has known and taught for centuries, the Bible will come alive for us when we begin approaching it as God's word to us, as direct communication to us about our individual lives.

For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life.

Indeed, God is always speaking to us through the Scriptures.

For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body.

In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, 'but as what it really is, the word of God'. In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], 102–104).

In all of my life, I (Sonja) have found nothing so consistently transformative and fecund as the regular encounter with Almighty God in my daily lectio divina practice. He knows me more deeply than I know myself. His all-seeing eye penetrates with absolute freshness and clarity through the layers of my schedule, my circumstances, my past, my soul, my pretense, and my psyche. Perhaps you are sufficiently curious to begin trying it, so let's look at the mechanics of the lectio practice.

The Process: Lectio, or Listening

Traditionally, the first stage is lectio (reading), where we read the Word of God slowly and reflectively so that it sinks into us. Before you start, select your passage. Any text of Scripture can be used for this way of prayer, but the passage should not be too long, usually only ten or fifteen verses at most.

As Deacon Harold pointed out to his young friend at the conference, when one is beginning his journey in Scripture, it is easier and more fruitful to choose a passage from one of the Gospels. Because it connects us in the Word of God to the whole universal Church on any and every given day, we specifically suggest the Gospel reading for the Mass of the day as offered by the Catholic Church. Those are available in a print resource, such as the Magnificat, Our Daily Bread, or The Word Among Us, and online at USCCB.org or Universalis.org. I (Sonja) like the Laudate app for my phone and the Jesuit website Sacredspace.ie. Deacon Harold also uses Laudate, as well as iBreviary on a daily basis.

First, go to a quiet place, recall that you are about to read the Word of God, and — this is important — ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you. Then read the Scripture passage slowly, with full attention. Maybe you want to read aloud to let yourself hear the words with your own ears. Perhaps you'd like to emphasize each word, like this:

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32).

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32).

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32).

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32).

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32).

If you try this tip, continue emphasizing each word in the passage until you have stressed them all. You can see how slowly and meditatively lectio divina is meant to be practiced.

Meditatio, or Observing

The second stage is meditatio (meditation or reflection), where we think about the text we have chosen and ruminate upon it so that we receive from it what God wants to give us. When you finish reading, pause and recall if some word or phrase stood out, or something touched your heart or piqued your curiosity. If so, pause and savor the insight, question, feeling, or understanding. Then go back and read the passage again, because it will have a fuller meaning. Pause again and note what happened.

Notice that what you are receiving is not strictly audible, but more of a mental apprehension, an understanding or thought that seems to somehow come from both inside and outside of you.

I (Deacon Harold) start my weekly Eucharistic Adoration time by meditating and reflecting on the opening verses of Psalm 63: "O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water. So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength and your glory. For your love is better than life."

I (Sonja) like to journal the meditatio part, and I actually begin lectio after having journaled my current thoughts, fears, questions, and worries as a written prayer to God. Somehow the process of writing it all down helps me purge, focus, and recollect myself; apply the reading to my life; track progress; and gives me black-and-white evidence of God's movement and direction. But journaling is not a traditional part of lectio divina; it's not necessary, and you don't have to do it at all.

We do what works in hearing and obeying God. If journaling doesn't work for you, pitch it. But if it does, jump in! Ultimately, the reflective listening that is meditatio allows the Holy Spirit to deepen our awareness of God's initiative in speaking with us.

Oratio, or Verbalizing

The third stage is oratio (response), where we speak to God about what we've read and meditated on. If you want to dialogue with God the Father or Jesus in response to the Word, you should simply follow the prompting of your heart without questioning the subtlety of what is occurring or the order in which you think you're supposed to do it. Like the cultivation of any other good habit, practice makes perfect. You may have to mentally refer to each stage in the lectio divina (simply lectio for short) process in the beginning, but it quickly becomes familiar and comfortable. I (Sonja) would say lectio is even absolutely necessary to my sanity.

During oratio, you might be so enamored or convicted by what you are hearing from God that you find yourself imagining you are hugging him, or face-planted at his feet in worship or repentance, or both. Any response is correct, even negative emotions. He's a big God; he can handle your ugly. In fact, because it is a relationship we are cultivating, intimacy with God is not possible without absolute honesty in prayer. The Bible itself is clear on that.

Whatever God says to us through the reading, and however we respond, we must take what we receive in the Word of God into our daily lives and allow it to change us. Otherwise, we deceive ourselves into believing we are following him simply because we have performed the act of reading the Bible.

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22–25)

For me, then, the oratio stage usually involves some purpose of amendment, an action plan if you will: the addition or elimination of some specific behavior or action that I will begin implementing immediately, that very day, such as confessing and avoiding some sin God has just brought to my attention through the reading; making a gift or sacrifice, restitution, or apology; erecting a boundary; taking specific action to change some habit or typical way of responding to others, and so on.

Contemplatio, or Entrusting

Once I have decided on some action with his help and in his presence, I am often overwhelmed by the tenderness, patience, mercy, forgiveness, and generosity of God. This is the final stage of lectio divina, contemplatio (contemplation, or rest), where we leave our reading, thinking, talking, and planning aside and simply let our hearts trust God. This is where we listen to the voice of God and allow that voice to change our lives.

The desire to be still and thankful in his peace and love is naturally inspired by and proceeds from all that has occurred to this point in our encounter with him in his Word. We should resist speech now, remain silent, and simply rest in him. In his presence we receive grace upon grace at the deepest level of our being and are gradually transformed from within. Obviously, this transformation will have a profound effect on the way we actually live, and the way we live is the test of the authenticity of our prayer (see James 1:22–25).

The One Thing Necessary

The primary focus in lectio divina is allowing God to speak to one's heart through the text, rather than necessarily extracting information from the study of it. One approaches the Bible as the living Word that it is: "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).

Such an approach does not treat Scripture as texts to be analyzed, but as the living Word. Lectio is undertaken not with the intention of gaining information but of using the texts as an aide to contact the living God. Basic to this practice is a union with God in faith which, in turn, is sustained by further reading.

The four stages of lectio divina are not fixed rules of procedure, then, but simply guidelines in how the prayer normally develops. Its natural movement is towards greater simplicity, with less and less talking and more listening. Gradually the words of Scripture begin to dissolve, and the Word is revealed before the eyes of your heart.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Ignite: Read The Bible Like Never Before"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Sonja Corbitt and Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers.
Excerpted by permission of Franciscan Media.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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