Shall we collect our thoughts and begin, perhaps, with a word of prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen. We give you thanks, Almighty God, that you give us the grace to perceive you in a variety of ways, in the multiplicity of the world you have made, and in simple, gentle rest in your presence. Give us the grace to perceive all the movements of our own hearts, and all of the things of which we are capable of opportunities to be in your presence and teach us in making use of these opportunities to discover ever deeper aspects of yourself and help us to share this with others. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. We looked a little bit this afternoon or rather this morning at the divine office and in particular at the monastic practice of psalmody as a particular place where one can experience this ongoing rhythm of God in the many

[01:12]

God in the One, God in multiplicity, God in salvation history, God in all the stuff that the Psalms reveal, whether it be the movements, as Saint Athanasius refers to them, of the heart, as a kind of a mirror of what we are. or simply as a kind of a, if you will, a prelude. The Psalms are, to a very real extent, an opportunity for us to bathe in the great waters of God in multiplicity so that we can then emerge and rest quietly in the silence that follows them in an act of self-offering, in an act of quiet, simple offering of the self back to God. Our prayer together at the Liturgy of the Hours is a kind of a consecration or an acknowledgement of the basic inner rhythm of the human heart. And in a very real sense, all of our spiritual craft is based on that rhythm.

[02:13]

And in a particular way, we as Benedictines have at the heart of our spirituality, in addition to the divine office, also the practice of Lectio Divina. And I think in this, in both Liturgy of the Hours experienced as a way of contemplative prayer that has a broader understanding of contemplation, both God in the many and God in the one, I think in the same way that the Liturgy of the Hours can be of great benefit to people to understanding and deepening in a, if you will, a kind of a broader banquet of prayer and of an understanding of what contemplation is all about, So Lectio Divina can be an opportunity to recover and rediscover some very ancient skills which we as moderns desperately need. I'm often reminded, in a variety of ways, by the fact that in medicine today, as it's practiced, there are a whole lot of very valuable and useful skills that never get taught, never get exercised.

[03:16]

There's a whole little book, about an inch and a half thick, called Dagaon and Dagaon, which is just chock full of all sorts of different ways of examining the human bodies using only your five senses and your hands and a few very simple kinds of instruments. And a very large part of that book is no longer used or taught anymore because we have all sorts of other modalities available to us. Which means that certain skills and crafts of diagnosis that were once finely honed and very sharply refined are beginning to recede into the background. I remember being very shocked when I studied histology. the study of tissues, that when one of our teachers announced to us that since light microscopes are fixed by the fundamental laws of optics, the laws that govern the universe, you cannot create a more powerful light microscope in 1990 than you could create in 1890. And so the people, the scientists and the researchers of the late 19th century had

[04:18]

microscopes, which were no less powerful, as long as they were using light, than the ones that are used by light microscopists today. But we were told by our instructor that the structures, the little cellular organelles, the tiny little sub bits of cells, which were accurately described by 19th century histologists, can no longer be seen. by modern light microscopists. What they were actually able to see, we are no longer able to see. We require electron microscopes to see such things. For the simple reason that that was what they had. Those tools were what was available to them, and they used them. as best they could and use them in a very fine and refined sort of way. In the same way, we as a people are in terrible danger, we as a culture are at real risk for losing our language skills and for not really being able to appreciate what language is for and what the printed word is for.

[05:23]

We as Benedictines, in the practice of Lectio Divina, have access to a way of reading, a way of experiencing the sacred text that is in terrible danger of being lost in our own day, because it requires the use, it facilitates the development of skills which human beings naturally have, which have always been a part of language using human beings, but which are no longer very highly prized. much as the physical diagnostic skills that are vanishing away, much as the light microscopy skills that are vanishing. As it's happening to some extent in the sciences, it's happening at an even more alarming rate, I think, in regard to literature, and in particular, in regard to sacred literature. And so, I think we as the guardians, as the custodians of this tradition, as people for whom this is still a part of our lives, are encouraged by God to deepen in this and to find ways of sharing it with the people of God, not just because it's a nice old-fashioned thing to do,

[06:29]

but because it's a fundamentally human way of communicating with God, of being communicated with by God, and, in fact, it probably involves ways of being, which, for human beings, are very fundamental. And, in order to appreciate this, we perhaps need to remind ourselves or allow ourselves to be reminded of how Lectio Divina differs from the kind of reading or spiritual reading that people today would practice. I won't pass out, but I'll put out a handout that you're more than welcome to look at and to use. It's something I've put together over a few years and actually it's available to download from the internet if anybody loses a copy and wants to recommend it to anybody. And it's an introduction to Lectio with a couple of little exercises at the end, which we may have time to do tomorrow, just as a kind of way of freshening up our own sense of what it is Lectio invites us to do in our hearts, and some of the questions it allows us to both ask,

[07:36]

and to answer when confronted by the Word of God in the text. But to remind ourselves of what Lectio Divina is all about, let's think again about that basic rhythm of activity and receptivity, of active engagement in a thing, using one's mental and, if you will, even emotional resources and skills, focusing on a project, and then periodically stepping back from it, allowing one to just quiet down and let things happen. That natural rhythm that happens in our work, that also happens in our relationships, to a very great extent, that's the rhythm of Lectio Divina as well. A rhythm, as St. Cyprian said, and as the Second Vatican Council in Dave Verboom echoed, of first listening to God in the text, or allowing God to speak to us, and then allowing ourselves to speak to God, of taking something in and then giving something back, using both movements of, if you will, the inner heart or the inner spirit.

[08:48]

And when we talk about different stages or steps of Lectio Divina, as of course we do in the tradition, we have to bear in mind that those are rather artificial ways of isolating or highlighting a very dynamic process. They're ways of looking at one part of an ongoing and ever-changing spectrum, and they are not intended to be steps through which a person has to pass in order to attain some sort of goal. I think there's a danger sometimes in the way Lectio Divina is talked about, usually by non-Benedictines, usually by people who think it's kind of a new spiritual fad that they want to be able to pass on to others, they sort of look upon it as a way into some sort of state, to get into some sort of psychological or spiritual experience, and you pass along these, you know, four steps or whatever, and then you finally get into Well, whatever it is they think they're supposed to get into.

[09:49]

And this was very popular a number of years ago, particularly among researchers in meditation. There were all kinds of articles being published in a variety of journals about how different kinds of meditation could induce various kinds of states of consciousness. And certain things that could be measured with electroencephalograms, you know, electrodes on people's scalps measuring their brainwaves, were regarded as a good measure of whether or not a technique of meditation was worthy of being seriously considered, thought of as being a really serious modality. And various experiments were done with Zen and with tantric yoga, and Christianity was regarded as highly problematic in this regard because In a lot of other techniques, even including transcendental meditation, which is a very Americanized, debased form of monologistic prayer, even in those kinds of practices, you could get into various kinds of states.

[10:55]

You could get out of the ordinary conscious beta rhythm into what's called alpha rhythm. And there are a whole variety of things that's associated with, but the researchers decided that this is a good thing and something that really ought to be emphasized in meditation research. And so there's all sorts of stuff from the 60s and 70s on how much alpha rhythm you can generate by different meditative techniques. And finally, someone did this study a lot of us were waiting for them to do. They took chronic television watchers and hooked them up to electroencephalograms, graphs, and got almost pure alpha rhythm. You don't have to go to a yogi. You don't have to engage in some sort of, you know, long endless spiritual training course. If you want to have lots of alpha rhythm, watch reruns of The Munsters. It'll do it for you almost instantly. What, unfortunately, the idea of getting into a state and of staying there as the goal of spiritual practice is not only not so much a part of our tradition, it's probably not a very valid way of looking at any tradition.

[12:04]

When Trappists and Benedictines who were attempting to do Lectio or something were hooked up to these machines, they produced a very disappointingly low amount of alpha rhythm. They seemed to be doing lots of different things at different times, as well they should have, because that's what Lectio Divina is. It's not about getting into some sort of mystic state and staying there, like Mary Magdalene, you know, grabbing onto the feet of the Lord and demanding the right to be there. We're not to cling to the Lord. We accept with delight and joy what comes during the experience of interacting or maybe even wrestling with him. And that's one of the images that's often used about Lectio Divina. It's not always sweet repose. The great, if you will, theorist or the one who provides us with the language of steps or stages, Guigo II, actually uses in his discussion of Lectio Divina the image of Jacob wrestling with the angel as a model of what's happening during our experience of Lectio Divina.

[13:09]

We are engaging with God in the text at a variety of levels and in a variety of ways. And we have to have a sense of movement, not necessarily of stepwise progression into some state where we're supposed to stay, but perhaps rather more a sense of a kind of a movement back and forth. Or if we want to see it in a more dynamic way, maybe as a kind of a helix. It seems like we're moving in an almost circular fashion through the same sort of different activities, but yet we are constantly being brought closer to God. A spiral, or a helix actually, that is a movement toward as well as a movement around. And the poles of this movement are, of course, the traditional words that we use to describe the practice of Lectio, the word Lectio itself. We call it sacred reading, or it could also be translated the reading of sacred things, or perhaps even better, a way of reading that is itself sacred.

[14:16]

an approach to the text that recognizes that the text is more than just words. It's almost like something out of a good science fiction film. It's as if the Bible becomes a kind of a stargate or a means into God, a created physical thing through which we pass in order not to stay with the thing itself, but to be present to the one who is the author of the text. A Jesuit by the name of Stanley did a very perceptive description of the process of inspiration and the practice of Lectio Divina, in which he pointed out that if we understand the process of inspiration as being someone having an experience of God, seeing a burning bush, hearing the Lord Jesus preach a sermon, being present when a miracle occurs, having an experience of God, they then reflect on that experience under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they then commit that experience to writing, again, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and that text is transmitted.

[15:29]

Well, Lectio Divina is doing that process backwards. taking the text, allowing it to be something we reflect on under the influence of the Holy Spirit in order to get back into the experience of God, the presence of the one who brought the text into being for that very purpose, so that we might be in the presence of God. A way of reading, a reading of holy things, an approach to reading that's very different from the way we read today. The archetypal, unfortunate way of reading in the modern world, for those who care about reading at all, is, I don't know if you have it on this coast, the Evelyn Wood School of Speed Reading, or various other kinds of approaches. You can pay a certain amount of money and they'll teach you how to read an encyclopedia in an afternoon. That's probably exaggerated, but the whole idea is you're supposed to be able to work through these huge blocks of text in a very short period of time and retain only what is necessary.

[16:33]

Well, that's the exact opposite of the approach that we take in Lectio Divina. It's based on the idea that you want to master, have control over the text. You want to discard the majority of it and retain the bits that you think might be useful. In Lectio Divina, we're not mastering the text. We're allowing the one who authored the text to reassert his mastery over us. It's not that we're going to control the text, we're going to allow ourselves to be touched by the text. Instead of being in charge, we're going to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. And so the reading that Lectio begins with is really a rendering of ourselves vulnerable which is probably best described by the opening word of the rule, listen. Lectio, or reading, is actually a kind of listening, both metaphorically and actually, because in St.

[17:38]

Benedict's day and before, most reading, in fact almost all reading, was done out loud. Those who could read did not read silently to themselves. You may recall in the Confessions Augustine's astonishment when he came across Ambrose reading the Bible silently, without even moving his lips. Augustine, a very bright man, had never experienced that in his life. He'd never ever seen anybody who read without at least muttering to themselves, without at least moving their lips. So, for People in the ancient world, to read a text was also to say it for a very good reason, and that was so that you could engage more of your senses, so that the text could actually be more present to you, for the very basic reason that Most people wanted to memorize the text. If there was a text worth reading, your task was not merely to look at it, but to make it a part of yourself.

[18:41]

And this is true of all texts, not just the sacred ones. The word meditatio, which we often use to describe the next aspect or part of Lectio, really means reciting to yourself. It means saying a thing over, repeating it so that it becomes part of you. It's what children do when they're memorizing, or what all of us did in school when we were memorizing a poem. You say the thing over and over to yourself until it sticks. That's the root meaning of meditatio. That's the root meaning of meditation. to allow a text to come into you, to become literally a part of you, and then the language that's traditionally used is to taste it, to take it in, to allow it then to, as it were, be digested in the heart. Well, obviously we're not going to do this with the whole of the biblical text. So, part of our Lectio, part of our reading, part of our listening, has to be a sensitive listening to a word or phrase that seems to be worthy of our taking it in.

[19:48]

I like to say often, and it's certainly not original in any sense, that at that point we are emulating the prophet whom Benedict is so often likened to in the dialogues to Elijah. Often icons of Elijah are used as prototypes of Saint Benedict because of all the stories about him that are taken from the Elijah cycle. And Elijah's experience of God, analogous to that of Moses, when Elijah is in the cave, is that all these fantastic earth-shattering, earth-moving, powerful-to-the-senses things happen, and God is not in the wind, and God is not in the thunder, and God is not in all these phenomena, God is in And then we sometimes translate it as the still small voice, but I'm told or reliably informed that the Hebrew is closer to strange muttering sound.

[20:51]

unexpected sound. In Lectio we're reading gently, sensitively, listening for any word or phrase in the text before us that invites us, perhaps ever so gently, to take it in and to repeat it to ourselves. to make it a part of ourselves. And if we've taken a short verse or phrase, it is a form of memorizing. It is a kind of a holding in the heart. But I think one of the really exciting things, and I think it's something we have to be willing to share with people about Lectio Divina, is that it is the source, it's the wellspring of our great allegorical mystical tradition of interpretation of the scriptures. When we read the commentaries of the fathers, they have done this process on the sacred text, and what they end up writing down as a commentary is not what we call a commentary in the modern sense at all.

[21:52]

It is the reflection of what has happened in their heart when they've taken a particular verse, very often a very short portion of a verse in, and allowed it to undergo some sort of inner alchemy, to be transformed in a very personal way into something that they recognize as an experience of the Lord. Meditatio, or meditation, or repeating a word within our heart, is very different from the kinds of meditation that seek to get rid of ideas and images and thoughts, using a particular phrase from the scriptures. I mean, if our minds are buzzing and full of all kinds of extraneous stuff, yes, we have to find ways of letting go of that. The word that we take in will often awaken within us associations, memories, even visual experiences, which are not extraneous, but are actually the purpose in the whole exercise.

[22:54]

Very often, what happens inside ourselves when we take a word or phrase in is that we are encountering the Lord in an unexpected form. In Lectio Divina, we expect to find different phrases that attach themselves to this phrase, or memories, or even personal issues rising up, because, fundamentally, Lectio Divina is about prayer. It is a way of praying. It's intended to lead us into praying. And it's as if these memories, these associations, which are, of course, part of ourselves, are saying to us, oh, you're going to God? Well, don't leave me behind. In Lectio, we discover what is the matter of our ongoing consecration. We are given the material that God intends for us to offer up on the altar of our hearts. And the word or phrase that we've taken in is, if you will, a kind of a vehicle, almost a kind of a fishnet down into the great storehouse of memory or into the repository of consciousness in which what comes up

[24:11]

provides what we give to God. And if we say that the third or next part of Lectio Divina is prayer, oratio, it doesn't always take the form of conversation with God. It may, and that's a good thing if it does, but it may simply be a giving to God of whatever it is has risen up in our hearts as we held and repeated this word. Whatever image or idea or memory or perplexity or unresolved issue or the face of the person we most recently weren't so nice to, maybe our oratio and lectio divina is an opportunity to give to God whatever has been awakened by that word and to offer to God using that word whatever that memory or event or experience is, to a very great extent, The moment of prayer or the experience of prayer in Lectio Divina is Eucharistic. Using the very, and I mean that both metaphorically and literally, we are taking a word and applying it, not to a physical element, but to a part of ourselves.

[25:22]

We're taking a word from the Lord, from the Scriptures, and applying it to an experience and allowing that to be something we give back to God. Our heart is the altar, or if you will, the chalice or the paten on which this experience is being placed, and the word of consecration is exactly that same phrase or word we've heard in Lectio Divina. It becomes both the occasion for the offering, it invites or excites or causes us to respond with a particular thing, and it provides us with the word by which we give that back to God. And this is a very ancient understanding of even the word prayer. In Origen's great discussion of prayer, he points out that the words for vow and prayer, euche and prosuche, are very close, and in fact are the same word and are interchangeable to some extent. When we pray, we are giving ourselves to God.

[26:25]

And Lectio Divina can be a convenient means of discovering more of ourself, more of our unoffered or in need of transformation self. And it can also provide the very means by which that offering takes place. And when we speak of a last stage or step or a fourth aspect of Lectio Divina as being contemplation, contemplatio, perhaps it's best if we try to use the metaphor or the image of Sabbath, of rest. And just as we were reminded that the Psalms are so helpful because they reflect the passion of God, they're a reminder of God's desire for close relationship with us, We can be reminded that for people who really love one another, there come moments when words are not necessary. In close relationships, periodically, quiet falls and can be enjoyed as quiet, briefly.

[27:26]

Now, it can't be artificially constructed. You cannot, in order to save or help a marriage, tell a married couple, I think for the sake of your relationship, it's important that you spend five to six minutes in silent communion with one another in the evenings. Just try that, see if that'll help you. It won't work. You cannot artificially create a moment of quiet enjoyment of the other. It is a free gift which occurs without our asking for it, simply to be enjoyed and experienced, and The same thing that is true of relationships between people is true of our relationship with God. When we mean by contemplatio that quiet, gentle repose in the presence of the Lord that doesn't require words, and to use the language of the farmer who was asked by the curia of ours how he prays, the moment when I simply look at the good Lord and he looks at me,

[28:30]

Those are gifts which we can appreciate and delight in, but not cling to. The whole reason for finding words to describe different aspects or phases to Lectio Divina is a reminder that it is a process, and we do not cling to or claim a right to an endless extension of silent communion with the Lord. We allow this practice to be a way of discovering all the different modes of presence to the Lord, which can lead into and out of one another in any order. Lectio is an abandoning of ourselves to a different kind of a rhythm, a rhythm of which the Holy Spirit is in charge and which we have to learn to be sensitive. We may move from one thing to the other. We may find ourselves taking on a new text or suddenly letting go of the text and simply resting in the Lord. And we have to be willing to do that.

[29:32]

Lectio is not a good way of doing preparation of long texts for sermons or for lectures, because there's no way of knowing how much time you're going to spend in any given moment in time. I remember during my junior year, during my studies, we managed to convince the Master of Studies at St. Bennett Hall, it was part of the English Benedictine congregation, Ampleforth runs St. Bennett's at Oxford, that in our monastery, our tradition was, rather than doing mental prayer, which is a very specific requirement for them, after Vespers, we'd prefer to do Lectio, so would he mind if we turned out a little light in the back of the chapel and had our Bibles open in our laps? And he allowed us how we could do that. I decided to work through the resurrection appearances of our Lord during the Easter season, just in the Gospel according to St. John, and it seemed like a reasonable enough goal, but I got stuck in the appearance to Mary Magdalene and was there till Pentecost. Each day, something different was there.

[30:35]

I wanted to plunge ahead, but there was something new, something utterly unexpected. So if we start taking the call to Lectio seriously and start letting it be a rhythm other than our own, a responsiveness to God and not just our own need to be the biblical icebreakers moving through the books of the Bible, it may well be that we'll find ourselves spending lots and lots of time on texts we thought we could cruise quietly through. Well, what I'd like to do tomorrow is to to do a little exercise, which we found very useful at our monastery, particularly during the week that we set aside for Benedictine spirituality for laity. We have a kind of a group exercise in Lectio Divina, which doesn't involve any sharing or self-revelation, so don't worry about that. In fact, it doesn't necessarily have to involve any response. It can be modified and done with a group of any size. And the only reason for doing it is that I think it can provide us with a common vocabulary and a common experience.

[31:39]

And from a practical, pragmatic standpoint, I think it can be a useful way of recommending the practice to others, and even introducing the practice to others. And modifications of it abound, and you may well find your own. But I think it can be a helpful way of jogging our own memories in regard to aspects of our own experience of the practice, which then perhaps we could profitably discuss tomorrow. So, I'm not going to go on any further this evening in light of other planned festivities. Any questions or thoughts or reflections? The only one that comes to my mind is things going well. I don't know if it's sound or smell. The word listening, oh yes, I think it's a very important practice and as we were talking about just a couple of days ago,

[32:51]

thing for us to do, because we don't think of reading, even sacred reading, as a listening thing. We think of it as being something we're going to do, rather than something that's going to be done to us, something that will require our taking something in. It is a very different way of approaching a text. The more we can be aware of that, and the more different kinds of ways we can find of expressing how different it is, I think the more valuable our experience can be for others when we're called upon to share. That book of yours, Agnes Plath, has a mention about reading, and I made a good, but the other thing was, with the kind of shots in the billboard, is that God is the God of abandonment, just as much as God is the God of consolation and so forth. Yes. You know, when Jesus said, My God, my God, I have your back, this wasn't reciting a psalm, he meant abandonment.

[34:13]

Yep, yep. And that was his father's one, to abandon him. Yes. Necessary phase. And that can be, and has to be, a very real part of what we offer to God. I think that's so right, because in one's spiritual life, we often get the idea that the only thing we can offer to God is pure, sanctified, holy stuff. And since we may not have very much of that in a given day, you know, what are we going to give to God? That's oversimplified, but we often feel that the pain and the questioning and the frustration and even the anger at God is not, somehow God can't take that. But the reality is, not only can God take it, But in some mysterious sense, he seems to want it. I mean, otherwise, why would that be there on the cross? God's experience of God, the Son's experience of the absence of the Father, and that recorded and passed down to us, except as an acceptable model.

[35:19]

I mean, we're not going to hurt God by giving God, to God, whatever arises within the heart, even if it is a sense of emptiness. and blankness. And again, with this exercise tomorrow, you know, the useful thing I find about it is that I can invoke it even on the days when I'm at my lowest spiritual ebb, and I just know I can't sit there and have, you know, warm, sweet feelings about God. I can at least ask myself a few questions about the text, and even if all I get are sarcastic, inner answers, I can give those answers to God. God can deal with it. If all I've got is a sense of, well, you're not there for me today, God can deal with that, and my hearing myself do that, or say that, makes a difference in my own spiritual life, and doesn't necessarily make me more cynical, it can give me hope. And so, Brother Timothy, if you would bless these goods we have, and bring them out. Oh yes, there is this handout, so if you want to take one each of these on the end here, feel free to do that.

[36:26]

This is on third, they're different. We still do the same, and we're always... Canada has always warred well, and you know, we also have to. So, very useful. I had to take a break. I had to take a break. I had to do a brother's business. That's right. We thank you.

[37:44]

It's the feast of Shemot V. collaborators with Paul and his group, with the Kingdom of God. May we, too, be your collaborators in the Kingdom of God. This time, too, I thank Father Markman and members of your community for welcoming me in such a Christ-like fashion, as you do to all who come to your doors. Bless this food, yes, this to Christ, our Lord. Amen. I think Sue's here.

[38:26]

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