Lectio Divina

All posts tagged Lectio Divina

February 27 – LENT, 2014 … The Pure in Heart . . . Work At It!

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on February 27, 2014
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Image

Jesus said, “The pure in heart shall see God,” and we pray, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  How does a monastic keep a pure heart?  By keeping it according to the Word! (Psalm 119:9)  We say and acknowledge again, the Word of God is powerful in our lives, but to keep it we must know it and pray according to it, and hide it in our hearts.

The liturgical season of Lent is upon us.  The essence of Lent is to “surrender” something for the love of God, from Ash Wednesday (March 5 this year) until Easter, and for the purpose of preparing our souls to remember the passion of Jesus Christ.  Shall we order our days for Lent, that we might order our souls, bringing them into a revival of wonder, gratitude, and humility before God?

Participants often say, “I’m giving up … candy or coffee or desserts … for Lent.”  Let us, in Cor Unum, make a surrender that leads us to MORE OF GOD.  Here in this monastery, we will “give up” God emptiness!  Let us fix our love upon the love of God in the gift of His Son.  Forty days without desserts might be of good benefit; forty days of increased time in God’s Word and Presence will  revive our souls.

Here are a few suggestions to consider during this week before Ash Wednesday.  We might …

give up eating between meals and give God an extra portion of time … 20-60 minutes to spend in prayer or Lectio Divina

give up twenty or thirty minutes of sleep in the morning and spend them in worship; we can use a hymnal or the Psalms

give up one meal each day and spend that time quietly in the Presence of God, in adoration

give up all gossip and all complaining, and recite a worshipful or an uplifting passage of Scripture three times every day

give up doubt and worry and give God two seasons of thanksgiving daily, trying to be thankful for at least 100 things

give up one television program and spend the time reading through the crucifixion accounts in the Gospels until Easter

We remember what Mother Theresa said to Henri Nouwen as he poured out his difficulties to her: “If you will spend one hour each day worshiping God, and never do anything you know you shouldn’t do, you will be alright.”  We could give up nothing else, and our lives would begin to change dramatically, if we would make this our practice during Lent and beyond!

For all who are willing to share their Lenten commitment, go to the comments block on the Cor Unum website.  We will remember you in prayer, and you might be an encouragement to others as well.

Tomorrow, a word about the resistance we will surely face . . . and how to overcome it!

February 12 – Abbey ten Boom

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on February 12, 2014
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

 

 

 Image

 

Welcome to the ten Boom cloister!

 

In a narrow house on a narrow street in Amsterdam, Papa ten Boom is descending the narrow stairs on his way to breakfast.  As his daughter Corrie always said, you could set your watch by the habits of the watchmaker who lives over the shop the family has owned for nearly one hundred years.

 

Caspar ten Boom’s habit are narrow, too, but his mind and his heart are very, very broad.  When the Nazis invaded his beloved country, he suggested to his friends and neighbors that they all start sewing yellow Stars of David on their clothing; that way, the Gestapo would never be able to know for sure which citizens were of  Jewish descent and which were not!

 

Papa ten Boom’s monasticism was gracious, hospitable, professional, and God-centered from morning to night.

 

At precisely eight-ten each morning he appeared at the breakfast table, impeccably dressed, but wearing a suit that might have seen better days.  He was finished with his private morning prayers.  After breakfast, no matter the pressing business of the day, he took up the heavy family Bible and there at the table, he read to family and employees alike.  His shop assistants were in attendance.  While his practice would not now be considered politically correct, he only had to fire one employee over the decades.

 

His daughter Corrie relates that there would often be inward groans when there was much to be done and the ribbon marker opened to an especially long passage.    Papa would not hurry past the reading of the Word of God, any more than he would hurry past a customer seeking a tiny service that would cost the shop more in time than the bill would cover, if indeed it was ever sent.

 

Corrie’s method of reading the Word may have come, in part, from Papa’s teaching.  She knew the Word of God intimately, deeply, compellingly, evangelically and well enough to live out her faith in the German concentration camp at Ravensbruck, and later to travel the world, sharing the message of God’s unfailing love even in that place of despair and death.  She continued her work well into her eighties.

 

We will take a look at her “Lectio” example tomorrow, but for today, let us take up our Bibles and open to the bookmark, asking God that we might read along with His Spirit.  Let’s see today what we can see as we read more slowly, stopping perhaps to spend some time at a passage that arrests our interest, making sure we have believed what we read and that it will stay with us during the day.  That is the essence of “Lectio Divina.”

 

 

Caspar ten Boom

Pinsocialmedia

February 11 – Lessons on Lectio

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on February 11, 2014
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Image

We will remind ourselves today that we are dedicated to “conversatio morum suorum,” commonly called a change of manners.  It is the conversion of the interior  style of our lives.

The postulant entering a monastery will change within the first hours into a simple postulant’s habit; she will eat her next meal and all of the rest of them for the rest of her life according to what is placed before her, and when she has a few minutes of time to herself, it is directed and her resources are extremely limited.  The list of books to which she will never again have access would wind around the world, yet  to her the convent library represents a wealth of material focused upon the object of her life, the knowledge and the nearness of God.

The new Sister is immediately assimilated into the rule and scope of the order, and she soon learns that even her thoughts are going to have to be overhauled, with gentle but unrelenting expediency, into the unfeigned and unfailing love of God.  This, if she has been well-advised, is what she came for.

In the Abbey, she is not even at liberty to change for her own sake, but for Jesus’.  With the realization that conversion for selfish reasons is no conversion at all, she begins to progress.  The goal of every moment of every day … the goal of her life … is the love of God, abiding in it, abiding in Him.  Every practice within the cloister walls is designed to relieve her of self-referential motives and impulses.  The worship of God and the practice of never forgetting His nearness, is the new pinnacle of  life for her.

We have been practicing the rudiments of “Lectio Divina,” the simple system of reading which directs the monastic toward God in the Scriptures and toward a path in life of ongoing, never-ending, conversion into the likeness of His Son.  Before we faint away under the bright lights of monastic aspiration, let’s take up the Romans 12:1 and 2 verses of last week and read them here in quiet, slowly and prayerfully, watching and listening to what the Spirit of God will highlight and what He will reveal.

Romans 12:1, 2 … Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Read them aloud if possible, sometimes emphasizing one word and sometimes another.  We might pray, today and always, for the grace of reading the Word of God with the same inflection that the Spirit of God would put upon the words and phrases.  Look at the passage, read it, hear it, say it, pray it, read it again, read it again, slowly, be thankful for it, worship through it.

All of this might add only a few minutes to our regular and disciplined study of the Word, but it will enhance our reading forever.  Nothing happens quickly in the Abbey, unless a storm is coming in and the windows are up.  Even then, what happens quickly takes place in silence.  Can you imagine?  Slowly, but with sudden happy results, in the quiet places of our lives, we will see the difference it makes when we behold the Lord in His Word, when we hear His Voice as we read.

Tomorrow in Cor Unum, we will meet, through the “grille” of time, one of the most prolific writers, one of the most sought after speakers of the twentieth century,  for whom the world was a cloister and the Spirit of God was the Superior, someone who will have something to teach us about making sure God’s Word lights our paths.

Abbaye de Chiaravalle

G. dallorto

by permission

February 10 – Divine Reading

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on February 10, 2014
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

 

 Image

 

 

“Lectio Divina” is the Latin term for “divine reading.”  There is nothing more divine in our study of the Word of God than to encounter Him there and then to walk with Him in faith after we close our Bibles and go on with our day.

 

This is the purpose of “Lectio.”  Its practice is making a big comeback in many circles as lay men and women have begun to discover the effectiveness of the prayerful, expressive, listening, worshipful, humble application of the Word of God.

 

Prayerful.  Expressive.  Listening.  Worshipful.  Humble.  All of these are relationships we would like to say we have cultivated toward God.  In “Lectio,” we shall.

 

Today, let’s look at that powerful, miraculous passage in Hebrews 4:12.  First, as we open our Bibles, we pray, asking God to show us what we may see there, to show us what we could never see without Him.  What an enormous difference it makes when we humble ourselves always, in all things, to pray first!   Now we read in the Presence of the Lord.  We make note of what we see, of the questions that arise, of the things that are evident, of the revelation of the character of God.  We can read again and again until we feel we have begun to hear these words as from the Lord Himself.  This is the training we have undertaken in Cor Unum, one of the slow and steady conversions that we know will bear fruit in our lives.   We will always read larger segments of Scripture, reading through the Word of God year by year, but we will take time to pause and consider and be changed as we go.

 

Now we read again and make a list of as many elements as we can draw from the text. 

 

Here is an example, from Hebrews 4:12 . . .

 

• the Word of God is alive

• it is active, it DOES something

• it is sharp, it cuts . . . sharper than a sword that cuts both ways

• hmm . . . wonder what that signifies?  (It is honest to ask questions, without doubting)

• it pierces so deep as to divide our souls and spirits

• (like dividing?) joints and marrow … apparently our souls and spirits are not one and the same

• the Word of God judges the thoughts of the heart … does my heart think on its own?

• it judges the intents of the heart … that would be a valuable assessment 

 

Those are the items that are clearly stated, even if we don’t completely understand them.  In Cor Unum, we cannot read over the Word of God to get to the next point, the tag line, the “zinger,” or the end of our assigned reading!   After we see the literal, factual elements, we can begin to apply them, prayerfully, and we do well if we take time to let the living, active Word act upon us at some point whenever we read.

We can pray for ourselves and others as we travel through the Scripture.  “Lord, Your Word can live in me and in those I love; it can change anything and everything.  You can show us what we’re really like, and Your Word can form in us the strength and faith and love that makes people new and free.  Judge my thoughts, Lord; judge my heart.  I’m not afraid of Your judgement … You gave Your Son so that we don’t even have to fear our own sinfulness and our failures.  We are safe with you, and when your sword cuts, it heals, I know.”

 

As Professor Agassiz’ students learned to look, to keep looking, and to SEE their fish, we will begin to see God in ways we never dreamed He could be known.  We will see the Son of God, obedient to the Father, full of compassion, powerful in meekness, conqueror, not victim.  We will be able to see our hearts as His home; that He lives in heaven and He lives in us.  Cor Unum Abbey will become to us a place of sweetest delights and liberating truth, because here we dwell in the Presence of God, and here he dwells in us.  Just the time we take, just reading and praying, looking and listening, is healing and strengthening.

 

“Look, look, look!  Look at Jesus, the Word made flesh!  Look at the Lord of life!  Look, look!”

 

 

“Candlemas Day”

Marianne Stokes, by permission