Lectio Divina is an intentional reading strategy with roots in contemplative spirituality.
I've found it helpful for living out Augustine's dictum for reading the Bible:
“So anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them.”
Lectio involves four stages (Lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio) that I connect with breathing. During lectio and meditatio, we breathe in the word of God; during oratio and contemplatio, we breathe the word back to God and to the world.
Lectio Divina: Breathing In the Word
In lectio and meditatio, we breathe in the Word of God and ponder its message.
Lectio (“Reading”).
We first begin with reading or listening to the text that we intend to explore in depth. Read through it multiple times in your primary language. If you are an audio learner, listen to a recording of the text. Likewise if you have ability in Greek or Hebrew, read it in the original. If you are multi-lingual, read it in the other languages that you speak. The goal here is to experience the text.
Ponder the language. Pay attention to the flow of the words.
Focus on answering these broad questions:
What is going on in this passage?
What is being emphasized?
Who is/are being addressed (individuals or a group, the church or the world or both)?
Are there recurring terms or ideas?
If you are familiar with the wider context of the larger book, how does the text you are studying connect with the paragraph/chapter immediately preceding and the one following?
Make notes. It is critical to write down the observations and insights that you are discovering.
Remember to stay in a prayerful attitude. If you find yourself distracted, return to your intention of being open to astonishment.
Meditatio (“Meditate/Ponder”).
In this step, we begin to chew on the specific discoveries we made in lectio. In lectio, the focus was on a careful, slow movement through a smaller passage of Scripture. In meditatio, we expand the scope of our reading. We now metaphorically “chew” or “meditate” on our text in light of what we know about the rest of Scripture, theology, and our personal/communal experiences.
Moreover, we also set our text within the wider conversation that the Church has previously had with our text. The goal is to focus on integrating the insights we gained in lectio into our previous knowledge as a means of bringing them fully to life in our soul.
Ask yourself questions such as these:
How does this text confirm, challenge or expand what I know of other parts of Scripture?
How does this text confirm, challenge or expand my present understanding of God, Jesus, sin, creation, leadership, ministry, holiness, Christian living, mission, or life together as God’s people?
Please observe that the previous questions are not an exhaustive list of topics. The key in meditatio is to place your reflection from the lectio stage into dialogue with the knowledge and experiences that you brought to today’s study as well as to explore a resource or two to help you understand the interpretations that others have made.
Continue to make notes of your observations and insights.
Lectio Divina: Breathing out the Word
In oratio and contemplatio, we breathe back out the Word of God as an intentional act of loving God and loving our neighbor. The two steps in the second half of Lectio Divina involve what is typically called application in Bible Study.
We are now ready to reflect intentionally on Augustine’s “double love of God and neighbor.” The critical shift that we need to make in our study of Scripture is the steadfast refusal to apply the Word to anyone or anything outside of ourselves until we have felt the true weight of the Word in our minds, hearts, and souls.
The second half of lectio divina is also critical lest we allow the Word to enter our lives without intentionally taking action on it. As James taught us, we are to be “doers of the word.” It is better to study and apply one text of Scripture than it is to “know” the content of the entire Bible without living out its precepts or worse fooling ourselves into equating a knowledge about God with actually knowing God.
Oratio (“Praise”). The first application focuses on your relationship with God.
Based on your breathing in the Word during lectio and meditatio, how does the text want to leave your body as an intentional expression of your love for God?
How would you pray back the text to God?
Pay careful attention to any hesitancy that you have when pondering your response to God during Oratio. The work of idolatherapy applies during this step. Notice anything that makes you uncomfortable.
What is keeping you from fully loving the God revealed in your reading?
How does the God revealed during lectio and meditatio contrast with your experience of God?
How does the text sound too good to be true?
What troubles you in the text that makes it difficult for you to articulate a soul response to God rather than merely a superficial or trivial one?
How does the tension between your experience and what the Scripture says feel in your body?
What other allegiances do you need to let go of or repent of in order to love God more authentically?
How does the text reveal any double-mindedness or inner conflict on your part?
Is there any aspect of the text that creates inner tension or guilt or shame?
If so, what would it look like to surrender a little more deeply to God’s grace right now and then praise God out of a deeper dependency on God’s lovingkindness?
Notice how you feel after you reflect on loving God. Don’t leave this step until you are at peace with the God who loves you.
The above questions are risky because they open us up to the transformational work that God desires to do in us. It can be painful initially and even scary to practice conscious transparency of our motives and inner struggles before God. But guess what? God already knows us inside and out. He waits for us to surrender the hurt, scared, and even sinful parts of ourselves to his loving light. As God once told Joshua, “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful” (Josh 1:7–8).
Contemplatio (“Contemplate”).
The second stage of application involves pondering how the text calls us to love others. Love for others flows out of an undivided love for God. We demonstrate our love for God by allowing God’s love for us to flow freely to those around us, particularly to persons whom we may otherwise find difficult to love. Anyone can love those who love him or her first. It is the mark of perfection in love when we find it possible in our hearts to love even our enemies and those who trouble us. In our world that loves to call for justice, often we find an unwillingness to forgive others and sometimes out right malice towards persons who may disagree with us in the slightest.
The final step in lectio divina thus involves putting tangibly into action the ways that our text invites us to engage the world with the love of God.
Reflect on how the text imagines how we relate to brothers and sisters in Christ as well as to all souls living in the world.
What does it mean to love my neighbor as myself based on my reading?
How would I live differently in my relationships according to the text I’ve been studying?
What specific ways does my community of faith need to change in order to live out the ethic of the text?
What is a tangible action that I can take today to begin to make the ideals in the text more concrete in my life and in how I engage the world?
Here are some additional questions that help me to dig even deeper in the Word (this is not meant as an exhaustive list):
How does this text teach me to pray?
How does this text challenge my current way of life as well as that of my community of faith?
What kind of person do I need to become to live out this text with integrity?
How does this passage stand in tension with my current thinking or understanding of the Gospel?
Who or what is this text calling me to care about?
What is one action that I must implement immediately according to this passage?
© 2024 Brian D. Russell
To go even deeper into these ideas, check out my Astonished by the Word: Reading Scripture for Deep Transformation (Invite Press, 2023).
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