Sometimes we make the mistake of imagining that lectio divina should be the preserve or practice of some sort of esoteric and (ultimately false) mysticism. The mystic is, paradoxically, rooted in the concrete and material experience of his or her whole age; otherwise, they have no means of relating, in the first instance, to their fellow human beings. This is the very point of the incarnation of the Word, and the subject of heresies which, although clearly identified as belonging to the early centuries of the Church’s history, are by no means absent from our experience, language and even preaching today: the hypostatic union expresses the truth that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man, precisely that he relates in the fullest way to the divine and the human. So also, with the mystic – it is this relationship with both the transcendent and the immanent which defines him or her as mystic.
Take the prophets who figure so prominently in the writings of the Old Testament. They are clearly persons who are entirely rooted in their own day – they recognise the social, political and religious milieux which characterise their community’s life, and that of the wider world with which it has contact; they are acutely aware of the pre-history which has shaped their community and led them, from the defining moment of their identity-acceptance in Egypt and the Exodus, to their present crisis, faith-doubt, idolatry, or whatever afflicts them. And yet, they are clearly living on two planes at the same time – they have a foot across the line, so to speak, because the Word which has been addressed to them has opened the door for their existence at that level.
And it is the Word addressed to them which has done this. The Word of the Lord becomes the transformative event in their lives and experience. It strikes them, interestingly, in the midst of their mundane, as they go about their usual business – any of the calls which we read in Isaiah, or Ezekiel, or Jeremiah, or Amos will show this to be the case – but after they have received the Word, and it has impacted them, they can’t, as a matter of fact, return to what they did and were before. The Word changes them, and changes how they relate to themselves, their fellow human travellers, and God, of course, who is the source of this change. To allow the Word to act in such a way – and one has to receive it in the first instance – consents to participation in the mystical, that which lies beyond the common and concrete experience of the everyday, but which, paradoxically, reveals itself in the everyday. In this way the prophet, as one who receives the Word of the Lord, becomes the living Word, incarnationally married to the divine. How often can we note the telling change which takes place when a prophet relates some revelation, from “The Lord says this,” to, “I say this”! The prophet becomes the one standing in the place of Another, the Other. Truly witness giving testimony!
A thought cautions us, at this point. The dynamism of lectio divina depends upon encounter with a person, not an idea: my listening to the word spoken by the Word – the Second Person of the Trinity – necessitates that I meet another person, and enter into a relationship with that other, which is both real and demanding. It also, interestingly, asks a modicum of vulnerability and availability on my part – Christ, in the word, after all, makes himself available to me by the grace of the Spirit’s movement in my heart. But it becomes something of a hypocrisy to wax lyrical about lectio divina and my experience of lectio divina if my usual human relationships are denied growth, or generosity, or humility, or service, or, to be frank, love. This is probably the most basic level at which lectio divina becomes the Word reading me – the Word reveals to me the incongruity of my day-to-day selfishness. This being the case, how I practice my lectio divina – and probably the parameters which I set – is called into question, not by me, but by the one who has met me and addresses himself to me.
-Part of our series on ‘Lectio Divina’-
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Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey, Portglenone 