Tag: lectio divina

Turning Our Hearts to Calvary

Friends, as we turn our hearts toward Calvary, it would serve us well to begin (or to continue if this is already a part of your devotional life) to pray the prayer of examen, a practice initiated by St Ignatius. (For a description of this go to https://hamewith.org/2023/12/confessional-prayer/)

 This prayer gives us time and space to ask the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and to bring present to us any way that we have not honored God or others and have sinned as a result of that dishonor. But before we go there, we need to quiet our hearts to enter more deeply into the most perfect and extravagant love of our Triune God, Father, Son and Spirit. (To give words to their incredible uniqueness and unity, I’ve included a link to the creed here – https://hamewith.org/2025/03/the-athanasian-creed/

 John 3:16 For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. (NET)

I’m afraid that this verse has become so familiar to us that we rarely take time to enter into the profound truth spoken here. This can be, as we allow it, an opportunity to let beauty and truth enter deeply into our souls. Take some time now to read this slowly, as integrated persons (head and heart) allowing the Holy Spirit to bring forth its eternal truth. This is lectio divina, the act of entering deeply into the meaning of Scripture.

“When we do lectio divina, we read Scripture in line with its divine character – as we always should.” Hans Boersma.

Boersma goes on to say, “the search for meaning (that is to say, exegesis) is a search for God, not an attempt at historical reconstruction. And if exegesis is a knocking and searching for God himself, then lectio divina is simply what we do when we rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15).” (Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition, p 14-15).

While it’s natural for us to read this passage for ourselves, I would encourage you to read it as well, as a member of the Church, the Body of Christ. Pay close attention to John’s reference “God loved the world.”

Let’s turn our hearts to Philippians 2: 5-11, where Paul tells us that Christ emptied himself (v. 7) in order to become like us. This is not the place to think about the theological connotations of kenosis, although a rigorous study of that is highly recommended! Paul tells us that Christ emptied himself, took on the form of a slave, becoming like us. His calling from there was to be obedient (to the Father), even to death on a cross.

What kind of love is this? Though it may seem rhetorical, we should let the truth of this profound love deeply impact us. Take the time to reflect, to meditate (chew on) and pray through this passage. Consider its beauty and truth. Boersma calls us to “true contemplation, the contemplation that has as its heart’s desire – “I sought Him whom my soul loveth” (Song of Solomon 3:1) (Pierced by Love, p. 167).

5 You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, 6 who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. 8 He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross! 9 As a result God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow – in heaven and on earth and under the earth – 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (Phi 2:5-11 NET)

Boersma continues the idea of contemplation by saying – “the soul feels the delight of the Word’s caresses” (Song of Songs, 3:1) (Boersma, p. 167). Allow the Word (John 1:1) and the Scriptures to profoundly minister to you and embrace all that they offer. It is the unique task of the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to the glory (and love) of the Father and the Son.

As we begin to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us any sin, any way that we have dishonored God or others, remember this: “…participation in Christ means abandoning our pretenses, openly acknowledging our identities as sinner in bondage, and in the same moment realizing with a stab of piercing joy that the victory is already ours in Christ, won by him who died to save us. (Rutledge)

The action of God precedes our consciousness of sin, so that we perceive the depth of our own participation in sin’s bondage, simultaneously with the recognition of the unconditional love of Christ…” (Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p. 171).

This is enough for the day. The Crucifixion does indeed call forth our needs to confess sin, but before we get there, let’s allow the Love of the Trinity to pierce our hearts and souls. Let me leave you with this thought: “At the risk of oversimplifying, for Paul the sequence is not sin-repentance-forgiveness, but grace-sin-deliverance-repentance-grace” (Rutledge, p. 192).

Let this version of the hymn,” O the deep deep love of Jesus” bring rest to your soul.

  1. Hans Boersma, Pierced by Joy: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham Press, 2023), 14-15.
  2. ibid. p. 167.
  3. Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2015), p. 171.
  4. ibid. p. 192.

Lectio Divina – Week One Advent 2024

All of a sudden we just know: prayer is a conversation in which God’s Word has the initiative and we, for the moment, can be nothing more than listeners. The essential thing is for us to hear God’s Word and discover from it how to respond to him. His Word is the truth, opened up to us. For there is no ultimate, unquestionable truth in man; he knows this, as full of questionings, he looks up to God and sets out toward him. God’s Word is his invitation to us to be with him in the truth. We are in danger of drowning on the open sea, and God’s Word is the rope ladder thrown down to us so that we can climb up into the rescuing vessel. It is the carpet, rolled toward us so that we can walk along it to the Father’s throne. It is the lantern which shines in the darkness of the world (a world which keeps silence and refuses to reveal its own nature); it casts a softer light on the riddles which torment us and encourages us to keep going. Finally, God’s Word is himself, his most vital, his innermost self: his only begotten Son, of the same nature as himself, sent into the world to bring it home, back to him. And so God speaks to us from heaven and commends to us his Word, dwelling on earth for a while: “This is my beloved Son: listen to him: (Mat. 17:5) [1]

Psalm 146:5 – Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry…

Step One – Read the passage slowly, attentively. Allow yourself to be taken in by the words – pay attention to any word or phrase that strikes you in the passage. (If you haven’t studied this passage, you may find this first reading will stir observation questions in you – such as who, what when, where, how).

Step Two – Read it again. Meditate and reflect on the passage. What is it in your life that needs to hear that word or phrase? Sit in silence for a time, attending to the thoughts, images and impressions that begin to come to you. Turn that into prayer.

Step Three – What is God saying to you? What do you begin to feel called to?

Step Four – How does God want you to live this passage out? What are you resolved to do?

[1] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Prayer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), 1986. Translated by Graham Harrison.

Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina (Latin for Sacred Reading) is an ancient practice that Christians have used as a way to take to heart the Word of God. It involves reading a short passage of Scripture and taking the time to meditate on it, pray through it, and seek how to live it out. As such it helps the Christian to listen to God through His Word. Because the Word is living and active, as we approach it reflectively, we come to understand God’s Word through our senses and intellect, to be nourished by it, and to receive Christ into our lives in a tangible way. We read, we reflect, we respond, and we resolve. Put another way – we bite, we chew, we savor, and we digest. What a picture that paints as we seek to describe this kind of listening!

Because the Word is living and active, as we approach it reflectively, we come to understand God’s Word through our senses and intellect, to be nourished by it, and to receive Christ into our lives in a tangible way.

It’s important, however, that we not simply grab a passage out of context and make it all about us or our needs. This reminds me of a story I heard often when I first came to Christ. A certain man came to God and asked Him how to find a wife. He then opened his Bible to a passage that read – “grace be unto you” and decided this was God’s way of telling him to look for a wife named Grace!

The best balance to Lectio Divina is to first study a passage in its context. There are some very basic observation tools that help us to do this. If we come to a passage that we desire to listen for God’s Word to us, a natural curiosity to its source, context and place gives us those tools. Look it up! Add some notes about the passage.

An ancient practice for Jewish teachers of the law is called Midrash. This refers to a form of interpretation that allows the teacher or rabbi to apply his own meaning to the text. However, the Hebrew root of this word is “drash” which meant to study, inquire, seek, explain, or investigate. This is a great way of approaching any text of Scripture. We ask questions like, who, what, when, where, and how. We look at repeated phrases or words; we do word studies where we follow the word we’re looking at and see where it is used in other places of scripture. Suffice it to say that study helps keep us on track as we look to read the text meditatively.

Jean Khoury, author of Lectio Divina: Spiritual Reading of the Bible, writes that in approaching the Bible, we must distinguish two levels: the level of understanding and the level of listening. This, I think, implies that we use both mind and heart as we come to the Word. A much-loved professor at Wheaton College, Clyde Kilby, used to tell his male students, “men, you can’t kiss your girl and think about it at the same time. In essence he was saying- both practices are essential – reason and experience.

One story from Scripture helps tease this out. In Luke 24, two disciples, after the death of Christ, were on their way to a place called Emmaus. They were distraught over what had just happened and discouraged as well. A man comes up and asks to join their journey. He then asks them why they are so downcast -and they, in shock, say to him – “you mean you don’t know what just happened?” As they walk, this man begins to open the Scriptures to them, explaining to them why what happened to their teacher, Jesus, had to happen. Once they reach their destination, they ask this man to join them for supper. At first, he declines but then agrees. As they were at table, this man took the bread, and in that moment, they recognized him as Jesus. This is what the text says: “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luk 24:30-31a).

“All of a sudden, we just know: prayer is a conversation in which God’s word has the initiative and we, for the moment, can be nothing more than listeners.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Another author puts it like this: “All of a sudden, we just know: prayer is a conversation in which God’s word has the initiative and we, for the moment, can be nothing more than listeners. The essential thing is for us to hear God’s word and discover from it how to respond to him. His word is the truth, opened up to us… God’s word is himself, his most vital, his innermost self: his only begotten Son, of the same nature as himself, sent into the world to bring it home, back to him. And so, God speaks to us from heaven and commends to us his Word, dwelling on earth for a while: “This is my beloved Son: listen to him” (Mat. 17:5) (Prayer, Han Urs Von Balthasar, Ignatius Press).

Each week, I will include a passage that I found relevant to the theme of the week and ask you to consider reading it reflectively.

We can also apply this approach to other kinds of writing. While this never carries the weight of taking in God’s Word, it can help us slow down and take in the meaning of certain quotes or prayers or other writings. Some weeks then, I will include a quote or prayer from my studies that hopefully will help, challenge, or inspire you.

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and the comfort of your Holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus.                                      Collect from the second Sunday in Advent.