Today I write about the hottest new old thing that everybody’s talking about. Well, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people, a broad spectrum of Christians. It’s lectio divina, divine reading.

In its usual form today lectio divina has four parts: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation (in Latin: lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio). Sounds sort of simple. You can look it up in your books or on the Internet and find lots of explanations of the discipline, lots of instructions. But what do those four words mean?

Because there’s reading, and then there’s reading. To the Christians who developed this practice, reading meant reading aloud. That’s how every literate person read back in the classical world and in the days of early Christianity. You already know this from having read Acts 8:30 where Philip ran up to the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch “and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah.” Philip could hear him reading privately because he read out loud. Doing so made reading a multi-sensory act that involved one’s eyes, tongue, and ears. In the monasteries, where the practice of lectio divina was developed, private reading continued to be out loud. Maybe quietly if there were others in the room also studying, but aloud nonetheless.

Making reading a physical act instead of just a mental one has several effects. It slows reading down, for one thing. “We read attentively, seeking not to cover as much as possible as quickly as possible but to plumb the depths of the text so that the text may plumb the depths of our being and doing. Rather than an analytical approach, we take a contemplative posture that is open to ambiguity and mystery. The final goal of spiritual reading is to be mastered by God for the fulfillment of God’s purposes in us and through us.” (M. Robert Mulholland, Jr. Invitation to a Journey: a Road Map for Spiritual Formation. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2016, p. 129) In other words, this isn’t Bible study, nor sermon preparation time, nor research.

Reading this way also helps the reader fix the text in his or her memory, leading into the rest of lectio divina. The memorized sacred texts were/are first of all the Bible, and secondarily commentaries, sermons, and other writings by the faithful. For earlier Christians, this meant that whole libraries could easily rise up in their minds. (This, by the way, helps explain the apparently meandering outlines of much earlier Christian literature. One word or phrase would remind the writer of something similar which just had to be mentioned and commented on, which would remind him of another passage, which led to … well, eventually it either led back to his original point or there was what seems to us to be an abrupt leap back to what he started out with.) My own practice has not reached this point, not by a very long shot.

The original text then becomes fodder for continuing rumination or meditation. The words are turned over again and again as the reader seeks to find the sweet meaning in them for his or her own life at that time. Think of slow, patient cud-chewing by a cow (a ruminant!) out in her field.

Meditation on the text leads to prayer. Possibly – or even likely – not a prayer of supplication or request. More likely, I should think, a prayer that just expands the period of lectio divina from “you and the text” to a richer “God and you and the text”.

Eventually, possibly, it may be that this process carries one into the gift of contemplation. Some non-Catholics seem to treat contemplation as just another period of meditation, just asking yourself deeper questions about your reactions to the text. In contrast, it seems Catholics tend to describe contemplation as a deeper spiritual union with God, a gift. John Michael Talbot writes that “contemplation is a gift of God beyond our perception. We don’t go to it, it comes to us. It is pure union of being in Being. As God is simply I AM, so we simply ARE in him when experiencing contemplation. Contemplation happens when we stop thinking of God, and God’s idea takes over!” (The World is My Cloister: Living From the Hermit Within. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010, p.45). Contemplation really moves from what I am actively doing with this text to what God seems to be doing in me with this text.

Talbot outlines a “fourfold progression” of lectio, oratio, meditatio, and contemplatio. (The Universal Monk: the Way of the New Monastics. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2011, p. 98-108). Martin Luther spoke of oratio, meditatio, and tentatio (the latter means suffering, temptation, stress, struggle). Mulholland shuffles the four while adding a preparatory step and a concluding one: silencio, lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio, incarnatio. (Invitation to a Journey: a Road Map for Spiritual Formation. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2016, p.129-133). And, of course, there’s a Wikipedia article on lectio divina – it has the order: read, meditate, pray, contemplate.

Thomas Merton summarized the progression this way: “Reading becomes contemplative when, instead of reasoning, we abandon the sequence of the author’s thoughts in order not only to follow our own thoughts (meditation), but simply to rise above thought and penetrate into the mystery of truth which is experienced intuitively as present and actual. We meditate with our mind, which is ‘part of’ our being. But we contemplate with our whole being and not just with one of its parts.” (The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003 [the text belongs to 1959!], p. 59)

However you spend time with Scripture in lectio divina, just remember that it “is not a technique, but an atmosphere or ambience within which specific actions take place. … [These actions] should not be seen as necessarily sequential.” (James W. Sire. Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2000, p. 153). By outlining the “steps” of lectio divina in various ways we aren’t shackling ourselves into a legalistic confrontation with Scripture. What we want is an exercise of our Gospel freedom. Merton again: “Nothing is in fact so inimical to the contemplative life as regimentation.” (The Inner Experience, p. 78)

All that said, lectio divina can be practiced in ways that suit people in today’s world who live with modern responsibilities, pressures, and commitments. It isn’t just for monks any more!