| Latin and leprosy have this much in common: they both tend to be a bit off-putting! What is this thing which pops up in the bulletin on the Sunday before every 3rd Tuesday of the month called by the inconvenient name of Lectio Divina?
Lectio is a way of letting God be God in our lives. We are told that we will not be so much judged by what we do in our lives, but by what we are, and there is only one way of becoming what God wants us to be and that is by opening ourselves up to him in prayer, and trying to quietly discover his will for our lives. That means letting him act on us, not trying to get him to act the way we want him to.
So someone in the group – usually a different person each month – chooses one of the readings from the liturgy of the following Sunday. This is done before we meet, and through the kindness of the clergy copies are available in time for the meeting. The person leading this month’s meeting begins with the opening prayer and then, very slowly and reflectively reads the text aloud. During the next 20 minutes we let the words soak in and listen to what they are saying to us. We’re not, on the whole, used to periods of silence in God’s presence. It’s easier to be active rather than passive, but God uses us as we are and accepts our efforts, and even if we feel quite sterile and empty, he will fill the emptiness in his own way, so the important thing at this stage is to ‘hang in there’ and not give up, by thinking ‘this is not for me’. Possibly it may not be ‘for me’ but it takes time and perseverance to find out whether it is or not.
Another person in the group then reads the passage again, and during the following 20 minutes, anyone can pick out and say aloud, the phrase or sentence which has struck them as meaningful. Here it’s important to give each person’s phrase time to say what it has to say for all, before jumping in with our own offering. When this has been done we mull over in silence any new thoughts which have come to us, following the injunction to: ‘Be still and know that I am God’.
Finally, the passage is read by a third person, and then each person is free to contribute their thoughts of the past 40 minutes and a prayerful discussion can take place in which the shared thoughts of all present can be discussed. The leader then brings the meeting to a close with the usual prayer.
Most of those who come find they ‘have got something out of it’. It is, on the whole a restful encounter with the Lord. Having been fed by his Word, we are better prepared to be fed by his Body and Blood.
I finish with a quotation from a little book called Prayer in Practice published by CTS: “All prayer involves finding time for God and seeking to make oneself aware of him.” While Pope Benedict says: ‘One moment’s attention brings us into the Heart of God’.
Oh, and why ‘Lectio Divina’? Well when the Church tried to encourage us to go for this form of prayer again, she decided to keep the traditional name which has stood her in good stead for centuries. It simply means ‘reading in the presence of the Lord.’ |
