Lectio Divina Quotes

Diligently practice prayer and lectio divina. When you pray, you speak with God; when you read, God speaks to you.” – St. Cyprian

We do not pray so that we can get God's attention. We pray so that God will get our attention.

The only thing we should seek in prayer is God. When we focus on how we are doing or what we are getting out of prayer, we have taken our eyes off God and put them back on our self.

Prayer is easily ruined when we make it a project - part of a spiritual self-improvement plan. Rather than pushing yourself forward by resolve, allow God to lead you by desire. The most typical evidence of grace at work within us is not awareness of duty but awareness of desire.

I accept Augustine's maxim of solvitor ambulando - things are solved by walking.' Sometimes when I walk, I think of God, and sometimes I explicitly direct worded thoughts to God. But my walking prayer is in no way limited to these times when I specifically speak to God. The whole experience is prayer when I walk with openness before God.

Teresa of Avila says that the important thing in prayer is not to think much but to love much. The head is not a bad place to start our prayer journey. But if prayer stays there too long and does not begin to sink to the heart, it will inevitably become arid and frustrating.

We have to learn to hear on every level at once if we are really to become whole. The problem is that most of us are deaf in at least one ear. We have to learn to listen to Scripture. And we have to learn to listen to life around us.

For the ancients, to meditate is to read a text and to learn it "by heart" in the fullest sense of this expression, that is, with one's whole being: with the body, since the mouth pronounced it, with the memory which fixes it, with the intelligence which understands its meaning, and with the will which desires to put it into practice.

man and woman might not forget that their ultimate happiness would not be found in the fruit of the field, but in relationship with God, which is the fruit of worship and prayer.

Most broadly understood, lectio divina involves receiving God's revelation wherever it occurs. This means that there are other media beyond Scriptures that can also be engaged with in this same prayerful way. We can, for example, apply it to the reading of a book or article. In fact, it is very appropriately used when reading something devotional-say, for example, the book you now hold in your hands. But we can also open our senses and attend to God's revelation while listening to music, viewing a work of art, contemplating an icon, talking to a friend, listening to a sermon or watching a sunset.

Watch particularly for traces of God in other people. Since humans are that part of creation most directly reflecting the divine image and likeness, it should be here that we most readily sense traces of God. Cultivate the spiritual habit of looking through Spirit-filled eyes at those you encounter and watching for Jesus. Recall that he said that he is there - particularly in those most broken and least likely to be suspected of bearing the Christ within their being. Watching for the presence of God in others will change the way you relate to them as you begin to see yourself surrounded by bearers of our Lord's presence in the world.

If we are honest, most of us have to admit that prayer is often more of an obligation than something arising spontaneously from desire . . . the core of the misunderstanding lies in thinking of prayer as something that we do. Understood more correctly, prayer is what God does in us. Our part has much more to do with consent than initiative.

Too often we seem to have the idea that submission to Scripture means that we first come to see it as reasonable and then submit to it, but submission means, in part, a willingness to bend the knee in faith to things that are not fully resolved in our mind.

Paying attention is being open and awake - ready to be seized by whatever is present to us in the present moment. This is why it is a foundation of prayer. Attentiveness is prayer because attention paid to anything is a doorway to the self-transcendent. It moves us beyond our self-preoccupations and opens us to that which is beyond our self. Regardless of how insignificant the object may seem, being truly aware of anything has enormous potential to aid our spiritual awakening. Prayerful attentiveness is not, therefore, reducible to thinking about God.

The Spirit of God, being divine, oversees this inspiration process such that the words and expression of Scripture are both naturally and authentically the words of the different writers and just what God wants to say. We listen through the words of people to the voice of God. And because it is the word of God, we must listen to these human words with profound care.

Contemplative prayer is not so much a type of prayer as something that should be a component of all prayer. It is the silence and space for stillness before God that supports genuine presence and openness to God . . . Sadly, it is this contemplative dimension that is most lacking from prayer. Communal prayer seldom leaves sufficient space for stillness before God in silence. Even liturgical prayer often leaves inadequate space for silence, and nonliturgical worship experiences are, of course, usually infamously devoid of silence. Intentional times of personal prayer are often rushed and reduced to the basics of petitions, intercession and possibly an expression or two of gratitude. All this is certainly worthy of being called prayer. But lacking the contemplative dimension, it is not holistic prayer and it will not be transformational.

Prayerful paying attention is not scrunching up our willpower and tightening our focus, but simply opening our self to what we encounter. This makes it much more an act of release than effort. We release any attempt to control attention and instead allow it to be absorbed by our present experience.

Soon after the New Testament was completed, Christians were reading their Bibles for joy and transformation, as a way of simply being present with God. This practice of the devotional reading of Scripture was especially popular among those who retreated to the deserts for prayer and renewal. By the fourth century, much of the Christian church accepted the practice of the devotional reading of Scripture. Lectio divina-as this practice was named-immersed people in the reading of Scripture, and yet the point was to do the reading in the context of prayer and meditation. The point was to employ the Scriptures as a doorway into transforming intimacy.

To help me learn how to practice lectio divina, I’ve enlisted two expert sources. Eugene Peterson opens his book on spiritual reading with an analogy of us reading Scripture like a dog might gnaw a bone. His dog is joyful to have the bone; for a time he plays with it and enjoys having others interact with it. Then he settles in to chew it in a more private area, turning it over for a long time, then burying it only to retrieve it again later and pick up where he left off. Peterson says that in Hebrew, the word we tamely translate as “meditate” on the Scriptures actually means “growl,” like an animal growls over its prey. God wants us to growl in triumph over the Bible before settling in to wrestle with it and worry it like a bone. It’s a marvelous image.

In this digital age, the claims made about the power of a mere book seem almost preposterous. Yet Christians are asked to believe that God, working through Scripture, can do mighty works. Consider the biblical call to grow in love. How can we do this? A common answer is that we become more adept at loving by loving-by doing acts of love-and there is real wisdom in that response. Yet we know that merely trying to love does not lead to love. Love is a cultivated disposition that flourishes when our minds are trained to honor loving thoughts and our bodies are trained toward loving acts. Lectio divina can help us grow in love by experiencing God's true and healing love as we meditate on his Word and by learning to pay attention to the roots of love-our thoughts.

God in his love has chosen to reveal himself. We understand God to be self-sufficient and not in need of our gifts and service. God is not "served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things" (Acts 17:25). He has chosen to speak to us because he desires to be in relationship with us-he desires to make friends with us.

We describe people who reveal something of themselves to us as "open." Open captures an important dimension of what we call revelation. The term revelation is derived from the Latin word revelatio, and it means "uncovering." Something that was hidden has been opened or uncovered for us to see. We are unable to know God directly through our observations-unless he makes the first move, and he has done just that.

Pilgrimage always involves both an exterior and interior journey. Any travel can be a pilgrimage, regardless of the destination or whether or not there even is a destination. The difference between a pilgrim and a tourist is the intention of attention and openness to God. This transforms a trip into a pilgrimage, and the result is that the self that sets out on pilgrimage will not be the same as the self that returns.

As we read the Bible, we find instructions, moral teachings, images and history. In and through these different writings, we learn of God's active involvement in human affairs. We can perceive God acting with relationship to us even as we read the writings of Scripture. We not only read about God's blessings, we receive blessing; we do not just overhear the Father telling Jesus that he is the beloved of God, we also hear those words about Jesus spoken to us.

Relationship with God is not only expressed in the creation of Scripture, it is also part of the intention of Scripture. Consider that to understand Romans as Paul would have wanted his letter understood is to grasp the kinds of ordinary human changes-in thought, feeling, action-encouraged in it. Also consider that the book of Revelation is designed to enthrall us in the imagination of heaven and to adjust our lives accordingly. The denunciations of the prophets are structured to grip us with a sense of condemnation and sincere repentance.

It is only natural for the human mind to follow verbal and conceptual triggers. One "hook word" associates with author Jean Leclercq described words in monastic reading that link passages or ideas-and the understanding of a passage builds not through logical analysis but rather through a not-entirely-random accumulation of passages, ideas and experiences surrounding the passage at hand. Psychologists who study the human brain and nervous system speak about the development and spread of neural networks. Our mind naturally tends to follow associations that are strongly connected.

Both experience and the Scriptures themselves teach us that the Bible is a powerful book, a life-changing book. But simply because the Bible is such a powerful book, it has been powerfully misused to cause great harm on earth. • Bible passages have been quoted by men to justify the abuse of their wives and children. • Bible teachings have been distorted by politicians to justify the pollution of the earth. • Bible stories have been retold by church leaders to justify the hatred of other peoples. It is so easy to acknowledge (rightly) the divine origin and authority of Scripture only to associate (wrongly) our own private agendas with some part of it.

Some Christians mistrust or de-emphasize the role of the senses in spirituality, considering them to be inferior to reason and cognition. Such a view fails to appreciate the indispensable part of human personhood the senses actually form. It falls into the gnostic error of denying human embodiment. Because Christians affirm the goodness of the physical body and believe in the physicality of the incarnation, we should also affirm the importance of encountering God through our senses. God gave us senses to enrich our lives. They are channels that can be spiritually tuned so as to register the traces of the divine that saturate the world . . . it could be the sight of a child, the sound of birds singing, the smell of flowers or freshly cut grass, or the feeling of warmth. Any of these things-and many more-can serve as a call to pause and, even if just for a moment, turn our heart toward God.

Judging requires a lot of negative energy. When we stop our thoughts from judging another person’s hidden motive, intention or character, and simply address our differences, we create a dialogue of peace and reconciliation.

May your Spirit fill us and guide our eyes so they see, our ears so they hear, our hands so they may serve, our lips so we may praise you, our hearts so we love, and our feet so we may continue to walk in your paths as pilgrims who come to worship your Son.

Lectio divina provides us with a discipline, developed and handed down by our ancestors, for recovering the context, restoring the intricate web of relationships to which the Scriptures give witness but that are so easily lost or obscured in the act of writing.

GOD COMMUNICATES WITH US in many ways. But prayer is a special time when God’s voice is often heard most clearly because we are giving God our undivided attention. Whether in Ignatian contemplation, lectio divina, the colloquy, the examen, or any other practice, the “still small” voice can be heard with a clarity that can delight, astonish, and surprise you. So when you pray, however you pray, and feel that God is speaking to you—pay attention.

What about the passages where Scripture appears to be contradictory or those difficult matters we discover in our reading? One suggestion for our reading at these points is to rest in what we do know, trusting God (perhaps through others) to illumine us concerning what we don't know.

The ancient contemplative practice of Lectio Divina—the belief that God speaks to us as we pray and ruminate on the ancient text—also inspires the way I read Scripture. Lectio is not study and analysis. It is more “hearty” than “heady,” as one expert put it.15 It is a different way of encountering God through prayerful meditation of the Scripture, listening to what the words say to your heart in this moment. Read the text three times aloud or listen as someone else does so. Note words or feelings that stand out to you, that speak to your soul in the moment. Rather than being merely a source of information about how to live, Scripture becomes, quite literally, a meeting place for a personal encounter with the Living God. Years of doing Lectio Divina inspired me to meditate on these biblical stories as I struggle to understand these times we are in. This reflection is what I will share with you in these pages.

The practice of lectio divina and the experience of being moved by Holy Scripture are excellent instruction in being sensitive to God’s inspiration.

silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation.

Lectio Divina is an opportunity to slow down and experience God's Word deeply. An opportunity to savor the words of Scripture, to sit at God's table, to be nourished, fed and refreshed. An invitation to be fully present with our holy God.

The prayer conversation always begins with God. It does not begin with us. Prayer is our response to a divine invitation to encounter. The prayer conversation has already begun because God has already reached out, seeking our attention and response. Until we learn to attend to the God who is already present and communicating, our prayers will never be more than the product of our minds and wills.

Prayer is not simply what we do. It is a way of being. More specifically, it is resting in the reality of our being-in-God. This is our fundamental identity. It is the hidden but deepest truth of our existence.

​Beloved, I realize that I have all the tools I need to be in your presence whenever I want to. I have this journal, I have the prayer of quiet, I have the Bible and lectio divina, I can speak to you in verbal prayer any time I want, and I can walk the labyrinth here or in the park. Thank you for sending me these tools. I will keep in touch with you regularly, so please keep sending me messages of what you want me to do. I am listening. ​Gratefully, Therese, your Beloved

From all of this we can conclude that reading without meditation is sterile, that meditation without reading is prone to making mistakes, that prayer without meditation is lukewarm, that meditation without prayer is fruitless, and that a prayer made with piety leads to contemplation; the latter, without prayer, is obtained only rarely, as by a miracle.

After an exploratory conversation, the next step of the approach is to help a child respond using this key question: As I consider how God is X, or does Y, what would I like to say or do now? Responses can take many different forms. A child might: • Share a doubt or question • Make art, sing, or dance around • Share how they’re feeling and why • Show kindness or care for someone else • Try a Christian practice like lectio divina or imaginative prayer • Talk to God And yes, at times, a child might: • Take a step of faith in action

first learned about the idea of photography as a form of lectio divina (divine reading) called visio divina, or divine vision, from Christine Valters Paintner. Visio divina involves meditating on an image and asking God to speak to us in that. We can also “read” nature and nature can read (or speak) to us.

There’s little point in lectio divina without the Holy Spirit’s help.

When the inspired, God-breathed verses of the Bible become our prayer, something powerful occurs. We are praying the anointed words of God. These prayers will release the move of God’s Spirit in our lives in a more precise and effective way than our own random vocabulary. It’s the Hebrews 4:12 principle which says: FOR THE WORD OF GOD IS LIVING AND POWERFUL, AND SHARPER THAN ANY TWO-EDGED SWORD, PIERCING EVEN TO THE DIVISION OF SOUL AND SPIRIT, AND OF JOINTS AND MARROW, AND IS A DISCERNER OF THE THOUGHTS AND INTENTS OF THE HEART.

Today, spend a little time reading more about the practice of lectio divina. When you feel as though it makes sense to you, look up the key passages for the day in the daily missal, or online. Choose one of these to use for lectio, and then take it to your place of prayer. Because it is a form of meditation, it's important that you give it plenty of quiet, uninterrupted time. Sit here while I go over there and pray. (Mt 26:36)

Another way of looking at our experience of difficulty in the text of Scripture is to receive our struggle as an inviting challenge from God. Thomas Merton suggested, For most people, the understanding of the Bible is, and should be, a struggle: not merely to find meanings that can be looked up in books of reference, but to come to terms personally with the stark scandal and contradiction in the Bible itself. It should not be our aim merely to explain these contradictions away, but rather to use them as ways to enter into the strange and paradoxical world of meanings and experiences that are beyond us and yet often extremely and mysteriously relevant to us.

We must always keep in mind that prayer is God’s invitation to enter into an intimate relationship of love and life with Him.

The sowing of the seed produces fruit in proportion to the receptivity of the soil. Revelation is subtle. It does not bludgeon unbelievers into acceptance, but charms the heart of those willing to be wooed.

Pray as you can, not as you can’t!