Growing in lectio divina is not about reading the Bible more or faster: it is about learning to read it differently. Lectio divina — literally "divine reading" — is that prayerful and patient way of frequenting Scripture by which a text ceases to be a document to be understood and becomes a Word addressed to me, today, calling for an answer. It is, in the words of Saint Ambrose taken up by the Second Vatican Council, the place where "we listen to God when we read the divine oracles"[1].
It is a practice as old as the Church, born among the Fathers, codified by the monks, recommended "with insistence and special care" by Vatican II to all the faithful, and not to religious alone[2]. Yet many Christians who pray faithfully have never learned to read while praying: they stumble over Scripture as over a difficult text, or skim it as one more pious reading. Lectio divina offers a proven path — a true school of growth — for passing from reading to encounter.
This article is devoted to the practical path: how lectio divina is taken up, kept, and made to grow, through which degrees, with what concrete means, and by avoiding which pitfalls. For the saints' and Fathers' own voice on Scripture read in prayer, see the anthology What do the saints say about lectio divina. For common misunderstandings — lectio confused with biblical study, the chance of the "verse that falls open," or daydreaming — see Common errors concerning lectio divina. For the silent prayer to which it leads, see How to grow in mental prayer and How to grow in interior silence. And since every lectio is an act of listening faith, see How to grow in faith.
What Is Lectio Divina?
Before seeking to grow in it, one must know precisely what is being cultivated. Lectio divina is neither a scholarly reading of the Bible nor mere spiritual reading: it is a definite way of standing before Scripture, with its own form, history, and end.
A Reading That Becomes Prayer
The Catechism defines it in a stroke: "lectio divina, in which the Word of God is read and meditated upon so as to become prayer"[3]. That is everything. We do not read to accumulate knowledge, but so that our reading may change, before our eyes, into dialogue. Saint Ambrose had said the essential as early as the 4th century, in a formula Vatican II made its own:
"We speak to him when we pray, but we listen to him when we read the divine oracles." — Saint Ambrose, On the Duties (De officiis ministrorum), I, 20, 88[4]
Lectio divina lies in this reciprocity: prayer and reading are the two beats of a single breath. To read Scripture without praying is to listen to God without ever answering him; to pray without reading Scripture is to speak to God without letting him speak first. Lectio binds the two. That is why the Council insists: "prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue may be established between God and man"[5].
Reading Scripture as a Living Word
What radically distinguishes lectio divina from study is faith in the nature of its object. Christians do not hold the Bible to be a dead text, but a word still at work:
"Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit." — Letter to the Hebrews 4:12[6]
To read in this way is to believe that the one who spoke in ages past still speaks today, and that the text is the place of a presence. Jeremiah said: "When I found your words, I devoured them: your word was my delight, the joy of my heart" (Jer 15:16)[7]. Lectio divina seeks to lead to this hunger: to read Scripture as one takes food, because "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Mt 4:4)[8].
A Practice Born Among the Fathers
The expression lectio divina renders into Latin the Greek theia anagnôsis — "divine reading" — which appeared in the wake of Origen in the 3rd century. In his famous Letter to Gregory, the Alexandrian master already outlines the program: to apply all one's attention to Scripture, but never to separate that reading from prayer, without which one cannot penetrate the meaning of divine things.
"Devote yourself above all to the reading of the divine Scriptures; yes, devote yourself to it. […] And do not be content with knocking and seeking: what is absolutely necessary for understanding divine things is prayer." — Origen, Letter to Gregory the Wonderworker[9]
Origen thus lays down, from the very beginning, the two convictions that will carry the whole tradition: Scripture hides a spiritual meaning that must be sought with ardor, and that meaning yields itself only in prayer. Lectio divina will be the development, century after century, of this intuition.
The Monastic Heritage: "Idleness Is the Enemy of the Soul"
It is monasticism that made lectio divina an institution. Saint Benedict, in his Rule (c. 530), inscribes "divine reading" in the monks' daily timetable, alongside manual labor and liturgical prayer:
"Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore the brothers should be occupied at fixed times in manual labor, and at other fixed hours in divine reading." — Saint Benedict, Rule, ch. 48[10]
The lesson still holds: lectio is not a mood, it is an appointment. Benedict assigns it fixed hours; he even prescribes that in Lent each monk receive a book from the library to read it "through from beginning to end"[11]. Regularity, a given text, a kept duration: everything that will later make up the practical pedagogy of lectio divina is already there.
Guigues II's Ladder: Four Degrees
But it is a 12th-century Carthusian, Guigues II, who gave it its classic formulation — the one the Catechism will take up. In his short Letter on the Contemplative Life, nicknamed The Ladder of Monks (Scala Claustralium), he describes lectio divina as a ladder with four rungs set up from earth to Heaven:
"Reading is the careful examination of the Scriptures, done with an attentive soul. Meditation is a studious action of the mind which seeks, under the guidance of its own reason, the knowledge of a hidden truth. Prayer is the devout impulse of the heart toward God to ward off evils and obtain good things. Contemplation is a certain elevation above itself of the mind suspended in God, tasting the joys of eternal sweetness." — Guigues II the Carthusian, The Ladder of Monks[12]
And he sums up the whole art in one sentence, echoing the Gospel ("Seek and you will find," Mt 7:7):
"Seek by reading, and you will find by meditating; knock by praying, and it will be opened to you by contemplating." — Guigues II the Carthusian, The Ladder of Monks[13]
This ladder is not a rigid staircase to be climbed step by step in cadence: it is a dynamic. We read, and reading calls for meditation; we meditate, and meditation turns into prayer; we pray, and prayer rests in contemplation. The degrees answer and return to one another; but their order states a profound spiritual truth, which the rest of this article will unfold.
Why Seek to Grow in Lectio Divina?
"Ignorance of Scripture Is Ignorance of Christ"
The first reason is the gravest: we do not know the Christ to whom we do not listen. Saint Jerome, the great translator of the Bible, said it in a formula that became proverbial, which Vatican II places at the heart of its call to read Scripture:
"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." — Saint Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, prologue[14]
Jerome's reasoning is tight: Christ is "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:24)[15]; yet the Scriptures reveal that power and that wisdom; therefore whoever is ignorant of the Scriptures is ignorant of Christ himself. Growing in lectio divina is thus not one devotion among others: it is deepening our knowledge of the One we love. "All of Sacred Scripture is but one book, and that book is Christ," Hugh of Saint-Victor will say[16].
An Encounter, Not a Study
One can know the Bible learnedly and never have met Christ in its pages. Lectio divina aims not at knowledge but at encounter. John Paul II stressed this at the dawn of the third millennium:
"It is necessary, in particular, that listening to the Word become a vital encounter, in the ancient and ever valid tradition of lectio divina, which draws from the biblical text the living word which challenges, directs, and shapes our lives." — John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, § 39[17]
The model of this encounter is given by the Gospel itself: the disciples at Emmaus, to whom the Risen One "opened the Scriptures," felt their hearts burning.
"Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?" — Gospel according to Saint Luke 24:32[18]
That is the promise of lectio divina: that reading may cease to be cold, that the text may burn, that Christ may walk beside the reader and open its meaning to him. It is this passage from commentary to encounter that must be made to grow.
"Do You Understand What You Are Reading?"
But this encounter does not happen alone or just anyhow. The account of the Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah on his chariot shows that the Word calls for accompaniment, for initiation:
"Philip asked him: 'Do you understand what you are reading?' He replied: 'How can I, unless someone guides me?'" — Acts of the Apostles 8:30–31[19]
Growing in lectio divina also means accepting to be guided — by the Church, by Tradition, by the Fathers, by a spiritual director — so as not to make the text say what it does not say. Lectio is never a solitary and arbitrary reading: it takes place within the faith of the Church, which is the first to receive and interpret its Word.
The Four Degrees, a School of Growth
Guigues II's four degrees are not only a description: they are a pedagogy. Each works on a disposition of the soul, and it is by practicing them in turn that we grow. To go through them one by one is to learn concretely how reading becomes prayer.
Lectio — Reading the Text as It Is
The first degree seems the simplest, and it is the most neglected: truly reading the text, slowly, attentively, as it is, before projecting anything onto it. Guigues defines it as "the careful examination of the Scriptures, done with an attentive soul"[20]. The question of this degree, according to Benedict XVI, is: "What does the biblical text say in itself?"[21].
Concretely, lectio means: taking a brief passage, reading it aloud or half-aloud, re-reading it two or three times, noting the words, the verbs, the characters, what strikes or resists us. It is the humblest degree, that of patience and exactness. Many false lectio fail here, by jumping straight to "what it inspires in me" without having listened to what the text says. To grow, we must first relearn how to read: little, but well.
Meditatio — Ruminating on the Word
The second degree extends reading into meditation. Guigues describes it as "the studious action of the mind which seeks […] the knowledge of a hidden truth"[22]; its question is: "What does the biblical text say to us?"[23]. To meditate is not to analyze: it is to ruminate, to turn the verse over in one's heart, to turn it this way and that until it yields its savor. The Catechism puts it precisely:
"Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization is necessary if we are to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2708[24]
The monastic tradition has an admirable image for this work. In her Book of Special Grace, Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn, the 13th-century mystic of Helfta, recounts that the Lord showed her his divine Heart as a house, where her soul "fluttered like a dove, and discovered a heap of wheat"; and the Lord said to her:
"When a dove finds wheat in great quantity, it does not carry it all away, but chooses a few grains that please it. Do the same. When you hear or read the word of God, your mind cannot retain everything; yet gather a few words to turn over in your memory, and say to yourself: 'Come now, what does your Beloved announce or prescribe to you through this reading?'" — The Lord to Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn, The Book of Special Grace, 3rd part, ch. 41[25]
That is the whole art of meditatio: not trying to retain everything, but choosing one word, one verse, and keeping it in the heart like a grain. We find again the gesture of the Virgin Mary, the first in lectio divina: "Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart" (Lk 2:19)[26].
Oratio — Answering God
The third degree is the turning point: the meditated Word turns into prayer. Guigues defines oratio as "the devout impulse of the heart toward God"[27]; Benedict XVI phrases it as the question: "What do we say to the Lord in response to his Word?"[28]. Here lectio becomes fully dialogue: God has spoken through the text; now the soul answers — by adoration, thanksgiving, petition, repentance, offering.
This answer is not an essay: it is often the verse itself, turned back toward God. If meditation has raised up a word from the text — "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening" (1 Sm 3:10)[29], or "Increase our faith" (Lk 17:5) — oratio takes it up and prays it. The received Word becomes the offered prayer. That is why lectio divina is, by nature, the surest prayer: we pray with the very words God inspired, and we cannot go wrong in our desire.
Contemplatio — Standing Under God's Gaze
The fourth degree is not obtained: it is received. Contemplatio, says Guigues, is "a certain elevation above itself of the mind suspended in God, tasting the joys of eternal sweetness"[30]. For Benedict XVI, it is the moment when "we take on, as a gift from God, his own way of seeing reality"[31]. The soul no longer works; God gives himself: a simple loving rest in his presence, beyond words and reasonings.
Contemplation is not manufactured by technique; it is a gift that faithfulness to the first three degrees disposes us to receive, without ever meriting it. Trying to reach it by force is already to miss it. Here lectio divina meets mental prayer and interior silence: the reading, having done its work, falls silent, and the soul remains. Many days contemplation will not come, and that is not a failure: the first three degrees suffice to nourish the soul, and the fourth remains free, like grace.
Actio — The Word Becoming Life
To the ladder of four degrees, Benedict XVI adds a fifth moment, which is no luxury but a verification: actio. A lectio divina that does not transform life has not gone all the way to the end of itself.
"Lectio divina is not complete until it leads to action (actio), moving the believer's life to become a gift for others in charity." — Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, § 87[32]
It is the simplest criterion of discernment for an authentic lectio: does it make us love more? Saint James had laid down the rule: "Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves" (Jas 1:22)[33]. The Word read, meditated, prayed, contemplated, finally wants to be lived — otherwise it remains, in the Gospel's image, a seed fallen on rock, quick to sprout and quick to wither for lack of roots.
Growing Concretely
The degrees state the form of lectio divina; it remains to be seen how to settle it into a real life, and how to make it grow when fervor fades. Here are the means proven by tradition, from the most material to the most interior[34].
Setting a Time and a Place
Lectio divina dies of vagueness. Just as Saint Benedict assigned "fixed times"[35], the first means of growth is to decide: a moment of the day — often the morning, before life overflows — a duration — a quarter of an hour kept is worth more than a dreamed-of hour — a poor and constant place. This framework is not a legalistic constraint: it is the cradle of fidelity. We do not grow in lectio by grand resolutions, but by a small daily appointment, kept even on tasteless days.
Choosing the Text: The Gospel First
What should we read? Tradition recommends not opening the Bible at random — the "verse that falls open" is superstition, not lectio — but following a continuous thread. The surest way is to take a Gospel and go through it passage by passage, or to follow the day's liturgy, which makes us read all of Scripture to the rhythm of the Church. Meditation, says the Catechism, is made "usually with the help of a book […] : Sacred Scripture, above all the Gospel"[36]. Better a short passage meditated than a long chapter skimmed: lectio feeds on little text long savored.
Learning to Ruminate: One Word, One Verse
The heart of the practice is meditatio, and its secret lies in one gesture: stopping. When a word, a sentence, an image arrests our gaze, that is often where the Spirit waits. We must then leave the rest of the text and dwell on that point, repeat it slowly, let it sink from the mind into the heart. The ancients called this ruminatio, rumination: turning the word over as an animal turns over its food, until it nourishes. Do not fear reading only three verses in a quarter of an hour: it is the sign that lectio has begun, not that it has failed.
Carrying Away a Word, Keeping a Trace
The meditatio taught to Saint Mechtilde — choosing "a few words" as the dove chooses its grains[37] — calls for a very concrete means: carrying away one word each day. At the end of lectio, retain a word, write it in a notebook, carry it through the day like provisions for the journey, return to it at life's red lights. This kept word extends prayer far beyond the time of reading; it makes the whole day a continued lectio. A lectio notebook, kept over time, gradually becomes a journal of God's pedagogy upon a soul.
Silence and Patience
Lectio divina needs silence as a seed needs soil. Not first exterior silence — though it helps — but interior silence: quieting the chatter of thoughts, calculations, worries, so the Word may find where to resonate. This silence is not obtained all at once; it is learned, slowly, and that is why lectio is also a school of patience. On this point, see How to grow in interior silence, which is its natural ground.
Holding On in Dryness
There always comes the day when the text says nothing anymore, when reading is arid, when we "feel" nothing anymore. It is the decisive trial, and the very place of growth. For lectio divina is not a search for emotions: "a method is only a guide; the important thing is to advance, with the Holy Spirit, along the one way of prayer"[38]. On dry days, we do not change method, we do not leave the appointment: we read all the same, we offer up the dryness, we hold on. It is in this naked fidelity, stripped of all consolation, that lectio purifies faith and moves it from feeling to substance. Perseverance in aridity is the greatest act of lectio there is.
Pitfalls to Avoid
Growing also means knowing how to recognize false trails. Three misunderstandings particularly beset lectio divina, and each undoes one of its springs. We only name them here; the detail is treated in Common errors concerning lectio divina.
Reading to Know, Not to Meet
The first pitfall is reducing lectio to study. Exegesis, knowledge of context, languages, history are precious — lectio is not ignorance — but they are not the end. If reading stops at knowledge without ever becoming prayer, it has missed its goal. The criterion is simple: does my reading make me love God more, or only know him better? Origen already warned that divine things are penetrated only through prayer[39].
Sentimentalism Without Text
The opposite pitfall is subtler: taking a word as a pretext for listening to oneself. We open the Bible, we "feel" something, and we drift into our own daydreams without ever returning to the text. It is no longer the Word speaking, it is me. Authentic lectio always remains anchored in the text: meditatio starts from what the text says, oratio answers it, and we return ceaselessly to the letter so as not to lose ourselves in imagination. The discipline of the first degree — truly reading — is the safeguard against this deviation.
Wanting Everything, Right Away
The third pitfall is impatience: wanting contemplation without reading, the summit without the ladder. We dream of ecstasy and neglect the humble rungs. Yet Guigues' order is an order of wisdom: no one climbs to the fourth degree who has not labored at the first three. Wanting to short-circuit lectio and meditatio to go "directly" to contemplation condemns us either to frustration or to illusion. Growth, here as everywhere in the spiritual life, is the work of time and fidelity.
Lectio Divina in the Life of the Church
Lectio divina is not a private exercise: it lives from the great river of Scripture read, sung, and prayed by the whole Church. Attaching it to that source is yet another means of growing in it.
Rooted in the Liturgy
The Catechism recalls that lectio divina "is rooted […] in the liturgical celebration"[40]. The Liturgy of the Hours, daily Mass, the lectionary unfolding Scripture through the year: all this offers personal lectio a text given by the Church, and keeps it from arbitrariness. Making one's lectio on the Gospel of the day means reading with the Church, to the same rhythm as millions of the faithful, and receiving the Word not as an individual choice but as a common gift. Private lectio and public prayer nourish each other.
Mary, First in Lectio Divina
The perfect model of lectio divina is the Virgin Mary. Twice Saint Luke notes that she "kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart" (Lk 2:19 and 2:51)[41]. She does not understand everything — "they did not understand what he said to them" (Lk 2:50) — but she keeps the Word, ruminates on it, lets it mature in her until it bears fruit. Before carrying the Word in her flesh, Saint Augustine will say, she had carried him in her faith[42]. Taking Mary as mistress of lectio divina means learning from her to keep the Word when we do not yet understand it, and to let it, patiently, shape a whole life.
A Concrete Path, Day After Day
Lectio divina does not grow by grand projects, but by a daily, graded, kept gesture. The means studied here can be summed up in a simple program, from the most accessible to the most profound:
| Step | Concrete Gesture | What It Works On |
|---|---|---|
| Before reading | Placing oneself in God's presence, invoking the Holy Spirit | Reading as listening, not as study |
| Lectio | Slowly reading a short passage, two or three times | "What does the text say?" — the patience of listening |
| Meditatio | Stopping on a word, ruminating on it, keeping it | "What does the text say to me?" — the Word descending into the heart |
| Oratio | Answering God with the words received from the text | "What shall I say to God?" — reading become prayer |
| Contemplatio | Falling silent and remaining in his presence, forcing nothing | Loving rest, received as a gift |
| Actio | Carrying away a word, living it through the day | "What shall I do?" — the Word become life |
| Over time | Keeping the fixed hour, holding on even in dryness | The fidelity that purifies faith |
Reading the table: none of these steps is spectacular; it is their faithful sequence, day after day, that transforms. Begin with the slow reading of a short passage; the rest comes, at its own pace.
The point is not to "succeed" at one's lectio, but to keep it. For Scripture is not a text we exhaust: it is a spring to which we return. "Seek by reading, and you will find by meditating"[43]: Guigues' promise holds for whoever perseveres. To the one who returns each day, humbly, to the Word, it is promised that it will end by burning his heart, as with the disciples on the road to Emmaus — and by leading him, from degree to degree, to the One it proclaims.
Going Further
- What do the saints say about lectio divina — an anthology of the great words of the Fathers, doctors, and mystics on Scripture read in prayer.
- Common errors concerning lectio divina — the misunderstandings to avoid: lectio confused with biblical study, the "verse that falls open" by chance, or sentimental daydreaming.
- How to grow in mental prayer — the silent prayer of the heart, to which lectio divina naturally leads.
- How to grow in interior silence — the ground where the Word can resonate and bear fruit.
- How to grow in faith — the theological virtue that listens to the Word and adheres to it; "faith comes from what is heard" (Rom 10:17).
Notes and References
Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 339–397), On the Duties of Ministers (De officiis ministrorum), I, 20, 88: "Illum [Deum] alloquimur, cum oramus; illum audimus, cum divina legimus oracula" — "We speak to him when we pray, but we listen to him when we read the divine oracles." Latin text: Patrologia Latina (Migne), vol. 16, col. 50. Passage cited by the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum § 25 (note 40), and taken up in CCC § 2653. The popular form "When you pray, you speak to God; when you read, God speaks to you" is a faithful paraphrase of it.
1 4Second Vatican Council, dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation, 18 November 1965, § 25: "The sacred Synod urges with insistence and special care all the faithful in Christ […] to acquire, through frequent reading of the divine Scriptures, 'the supreme knowledge of Jesus Christ' (Phil 3:8). […] Let them remember that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue may be established between God and man." Official text on Vatican.va.
2 5Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1177. Official English edition: "Lectio divina, in which the Word of God is read and meditated upon so as to become prayer, is thus rooted in the liturgical celebration."
3 40Letter to the Hebrews 4:12, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit."
6Book of Jeremiah 15:16, official liturgical translation (AELF): "When I found your words, I devoured them: your word was my delight, the joy of my heart."
7Gospel according to Saint Matthew 4:4, official liturgical translation (AELF), citing Dt 8:3: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."
8Origen (c. 185–253), Letter to Gregory the Wonderworker, §§ 3–4, preserved in the Philocalia (ch. 13). Reference edition: H. Crouzel, Sources Chrétiennes no. 148, Cerf, 1969. It is in Origen's wake that the Greek expression theia anagnôsis ("divine reading") appears, rendered in Latin as lectio divina. The exact English wording varies by edition; the meaning — applying all one's attention to Scripture, and seeking its sense in prayer — is solidly attested.
9 39Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547), Rule, ch. 48 ("On the Daily Manual Labor"): "Otiositas inimica est animae, et ideo certis temporibus occupari debent fratres in labore manuum, certis iterum horis in lectione divina" — "Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore the brothers should be occupied at fixed times in manual labor, and at other fixed hours in divine reading." The same chapter prescribes that in Lent each brother receive a book from the library to read it through. Reference edition: A. de Vogüé and J. Neufville, Sources Chrétiennes nos. 181–186.
10 11 35Guigues II the Carthusian (Guigo II, d. c. 1188), ninth prior of the Grande Chartreuse, Letter on the Contemplative Life called The Ladder of Monks (Scala Claustralium, c. 1150), ch. II: "Lectio est sedula Scripturarum cum animi intentione inspectio. Meditatio est studiosa mentis actio […]. Oratio est devota cordis intentio in Deum […]. Contemplatio est mentis in Deum suspensae quaedam supra se elevatio, aeternae dulcedinis gaudia degustans." Latin text: Patrologia Latina (Migne), vol. 184, cols. 475–484. Critical edition: E. Colledge and J. Walsh, Sources Chrétiennes no. 163, Cerf, 1970.
12 20 22 27 30Guigues II the Carthusian, The Ladder of Monks, ch. II: "Quaerite legendo, et invenietis meditando; pulsate orando, et aperietur vobis contemplando" — "Seek by reading, and you will find by meditating; knock by praying, and it will be opened to you by contemplating." Echo of Mt 7:7. This sentence is cited by the Catechism of the Catholic Church § 2654 (referring to Scala, PL 184, 476C).
13 43Saint Jerome (c. 347–420), Commentary on Isaiah (Commentariorum in Isaiam libri), prologue: "Ignoratio enim Scripturarum ignoratio Christi est" — "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." Text: Patrologia Latina (Migne), vol. 24, col. 17; critical edition Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 73, pp. 1–3. Cited by Vatican II, Dei Verbum § 25 (note 39).
14First Letter to the Corinthians 1:24, official liturgical translation (AELF): Christ "the power of God and the wisdom of God." It is on this verse that Saint Jerome rests his reasoning: to be ignorant of the Scriptures, which reveal that power and that wisdom, is to be ignorant of Christ.
15Hugh of Saint-Victor (c. 1096–1141), De arca Noe morali, II, 8: "Omnis Scriptura divina unus liber est, et ille unus liber Christus est" — "All of divine Scripture is one book, and that one book is Christ." Text: Patrologia Latina (Migne), vol. 176. Formula taken up by Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini § 39.
16John Paul II, apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte ("At the Beginning of the New Millennium"), 6 January 2001, § 39: "It is necessary, in particular, that listening to the Word become a vital encounter, in the ancient and ever valid tradition of lectio divina, which draws from the biblical text the living word which challenges, directs, and shapes our lives." Official text on Vatican.va.
17Gospel according to Saint Luke 24:32, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?" Words of the disciples at Emmaus after their meeting with the Risen One.
18Acts of the Apostles 8:30–31, official liturgical translation (AELF): to the Ethiopian eunuch reading the prophet Isaiah, Philip asks: "Do you understand what you are reading?"; the other answers: "How can I, unless someone guides me?"
19Benedict XVI, post-synodal apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini ("The Word of the Lord"), 30 September 2010, § 87. There the Pope articulates lectio divina in moments introduced by a question: lectio ("What does the biblical text say in itself?"), meditatio ("What does the biblical text say to us?"), oratio ("What do we say to the Lord in response to his Word?"), contemplatio ("taking on, as a gift from God, his own way of seeing reality"), and actio: "Lectio divina is not complete until it leads to action (actio), moving the believer's life to become a gift for others in charity." Official text on Vatican.va.
21 23 28 31 32Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2708: "Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization is necessary if we are to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on 'the mysteries of Christ,' as in lectio divina or the Rosary."
24The Lord to Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn (c. 1241–1298), nun of Helfta, The Book of Special Grace (Liber specialis gratiae), 3rd part, ch. 41 ("How one should exercise one's memory"). Reference edition: trans. of the Benedictines of Solesmes from the Latin edition, 2nd revised and corrected ed., Mame, Tours-Paris, 1921, p. 291 (full text online: livres-mystiques.com, Revelations de sainte Mechtilde). The abridged variant of the internal collection Les paroles de la vie éternelle is replaced here by the text of the edition.
25 37Gospel according to Saint Luke 2:19 (and 2:51), official liturgical translation (AELF): "Mary, however, kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart." The Virgin is held by tradition to be the perfect model of lectio divina: she keeps and ruminates on the Word before understanding its full meaning.
26 41First Book of Samuel 3:10, official liturgical translation (AELF): the child Samuel's answer to God's call, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening" — become the classic prayer of whoever places himself in listening to the Word.
29Letter of Saint James 1:22, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves." Scriptural foundation of actio as the completion of lectio divina.
33For the concrete practice of lectio divina, see notably: Carlo Maria Martini (cardinal, Archbishop of Milan, great promoter of lectio divina among the young), Une initiation à la lectio divina. De Bethléem au cœur de l'homme, Mame ed.; Enzo Bianchi (founder of the monastic community of Bose), Prier la Parole. Une introduction à la « lectio divina », coll. Vie monastique, Abbaye de Bellefontaine, and Écouter la Parole. Les enjeux de la lectio divina, Lessius ed., 2006. These authors develop in detail the steps, the choice of texts, and the counsels of fidelity summarized here.
34Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2705: meditation seeks to understand "the why and how of the Christian life"; "one usually uses the help of a book […] : Sacred Scripture, above all the Gospel." § 2708 adds that prayer is exercised "above all" on the mysteries of Christ.
36Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2707: "There are as many methods of meditation as there are spiritual masters. […] A method is only a guide; the important thing is to advance, with the Holy Spirit, along the one way of prayer: Christ Jesus."
38Saint Augustine (354–430), Sermon 215, 4; Sermon 25, 7–8: "Prius concepit mente quam ventre" — Mary "conceived [Christ] in her mind before conceiving him in her womb"; she is more blessed for having borne the faith of Christ than his flesh. Classic Augustinian theme on Mary listening to and keeping the Word. Text: Patrologia Latina (Migne), vol. 38.
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