Apostleship of PrayerSpirituality
Heart of Lectio Divina
St Theresa of Avila says: “Contemplative prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently too to be alone with him who loves us.” She further elaborates that to pray “the important thing is not to think much , but to love much.’ To dispel the notion that love is just a fuzzy feeling, she says that “love does not consist in a great sense of devotion, but in a great determination to strive to please God in everything, to endeavour so far as we can not to offend Him, and to pray that his Son may be ever more honoured and glorified.” Her contemporary, St Ignatius of Loyola who, out of his deep experience of the love of God, wrote in His Spiritual Exercise: “love ought to manifest itself in deeds rather in words.”
All Christian prayers lead to God – that is a relationship with God, to The Father through the Son, Jesus in the Holy Spirit. It’s a relationship of love where the heart of the matter is the giving of oneself to the beloved knowing how much one is loved.
Throughout the ages, people propelled by the innate and God giving initiative of seeking an answer to the question of “who am I” struggled despite overwhelming odds at times to “pray.” Instinctively or in an unconscious way, we realized that when we know or experience God, we know who we are. Not surprisingly, different methods have emerged:
• Liturgical prayer
• Devotional prayer
• Lectio Divina
• Ignatian Contemplation
• Christian MeditationTo arrive and to be at the heart of prayer where the beloved’s interest is to experience a conversion, a turning away from myself to the other who in this case is God. It’s a process that is not linear but spiral, deepening whenever we set out to pray.
In Lectio Divina, for the sake of order, the process can be classified in 4/5/6steps.
1. Lectio ( Reading )
2. Meditatio (Meditation)
3. Oratio ( Prayer )
4. Contemplatio ( Contemplation )
5. Compassio ( Compassion )
6. Operatio ( Action )1. Reading is a gentle opening of one’s whole being to the Saving Word of God. We allow the Word to nourish us as the words are read and are re-read not for information but transformation.
2. Meditation is the simple repetition of words or phrases that capture our attention. It is not an intellectual exercise, thinking about the text, but through repetition we allow the Word to penetrate more deeply into our being, interacting with our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, our memories, our desires. Through meditation, we allow God’s word to become His word for us, a word that touches us and affects us at our deepest level.
3. Prayer is a response of the heart to God. Embraced by God when we are filled with the saving word, we make our response. As St Cyprian says. “ In Scripture, God speaks to us and in prayer we speak to God. In this prayer, we allow our real selves, even our most difficult and pain-filled experiences to be touched and changed by the word of God.
4. Contemplation. As we are faithful to the dynamic of lectio, there are moments when we find ourselves just present to the one who is eternally present to us. We simply rest in the presence of the One who has used His word as a means of inviting us to accept His transforming embrace. There are moments in loving relationships when words are unnecessary. It is the same in our relationship with God. At such moments, in wonderment, we return to the words but not with the thought of what they mean but with the thought of who uttered them and with what merciful or generous purpose. We respond with gratitude and wordless love.
5. Compassion is one of the fruits of prayer and contemplation. In this encounter with God, our whole being is opened up to the experience the brokenness of all creation. We find ourselves united not only with God but with all who live. Where lectio divina is giving shape to our lives, the Spirit is working in and through us to change the word. Prayer is more than we do when we pray but what God is doing in us.
6. Action: Things are already different by our engagement in Lectio but we find ourselves also called to engage in other actions that will help others. God calls us to be doers of the Word. The scriptures do reveal us to ourselves. But they could reveal what we could look like- Jesus who gave us this commandment. “Love one another just as I have love you.”
This brings us to the Heart of Lectio: An encounter with God who loves us and, in this encounter, we are called to love others.
Fr John Main, the Benedictine monk who teaches the discipline of Christian Meditation says: “ that you are beginning to live out the power of the love of God, that power that is present in our hearts in all its immensity, in all its simplicity, in the Spirit of Jesus. The integrating power of meditation affects every part of our life.”
Fr Gerry Peirse, C.SS.R: “ Christian Meditation is not the only way of prayer , but it is a way of prayer that begins at our core, and moves out from there to transform all other relationships.”
St Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercise wrote: ‘Man is created to praise, reverence and serve God, and by this means to save his soul…….Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created. Elsewhere he prayed:
“Take , Lord and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess, Thou has given all to me. To Thee, O Lord, I return it. All is thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and grace, for this is sufficient for me."All these giants of prayer produce a tremendous amount of work born out of their love for God, which in the end is what prayer is all about. We come to know our true end and purpose in this life. We experience that God is in us serving us and all of creation. And so in the words of T S Eliot, “For us there is only the trying, The rest is not our business.” The Heart of Lectio Divina is this.
Sr Margaret Goh, Fdcc
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