because Lectio doesn't rhyme with the other two, it didn't get into the motto, you know? But we really need to conceive the practice of Lectio Divina. as constitutive of our monastic life and our monastic practice. And I think if we locate Lectio Divina in Benedict's whole project, a way for me that's useful to think of it is that Benedict arranges everything in the monastery so that our lives can be saturated by the Word of God. Just think about it. Let nothing be preferred to the work of God, which is virtually entirely the scriptural word. And not for nothing does He want us to hear every morning in the invitatory psalm, if today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts. And it's as if to say, if today you hear His voice, and you will,

[01:02]

So harden not your hearts." And it's almost like every day begins as that psalm unfolds, you know, it finishes on kind of a bad note. I swore those people. I hated them. They didn't listen to me. They were stiff-necked. Damn them. And it's kind of like, you know, that was yesterday in the monastery. I didn't live it as I ought. But today you will hear his voice again. And so harden not your heart. So the Upas day is a big part of our monastic day. That's the word of God. The silence of the monastery is so that the word of God can sink down in. The practices of things like reading a table or the relationship with the abbot that Benedict articulates, all this is so that I can hear the Word of God. And I think we just need to kind of locate Lectio Divina right there along with that whole arrangement of the monastic day by Saint Benedict.

[02:07]

What I like to say, his, Benedict's, is a project to assure that our life is saturated in the scriptures. Lectio Divina, among all those practices, makes sure that it's happening to me personally. You know, it's possible to kind of get into the habit of monastic life and live it eventually at arm's length. If you're a good observant monk, that is, you always attend the choir and, you know, listen to the table reading or whatever it is, but you never let it get to you. If you practice Lectio Divina, what Lectio Divina is, is it's going one-on-one with the Word, and it's letting this Word address me very personally. One of the things that we need to be aware of, that is very helpful in the practice of Lectio, is my awareness that there is, as I open the scriptural text today to practice Lectio,

[03:14]

God is speaking directly to me and I need to make the necessary adjustments, the necessary interior adjustments to really receive that word. Like everything in the Christian life, this is far bigger and more wonderful than we would suspect. It's huge that God should speak to me today. But this is my life as a monk. giving Him, giving God as much room as I can give Him to speak to me today. This is a way of defining our monastic life. One of the ideas that I find useful in the practice of Lakshaya that I learned from origin, but you find it in virtually all of the Fathers, in a sense traceable back to Him, is a notion of what we could call, maybe we could call it the real presence of Christ in the Word.

[04:18]

You know, as Catholics, we have kind of a gut-level instinct about the intensity of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and we call it the Real Presence. Not meaning by that that He's not really present elsewhere, but meaning that there's an intensity of His presence. Or another way of saying it would be to say, nothing is lacking in His presence. He is here in signs of bread and wine, but nothing is lacking. This is a real presence of Christ. Origen doesn't use this expression, but he says the same about the scripture itself. Nothing is lacking in Christ's presence to me in his word. In his word, he is totally present to me and totally available to me. And again, this is a huge fact. You know, we...

[05:20]

We're surrounded by so much grace in the monastery and in our Christian lives. The Word of God all day long, Eucharist day after day. We're really not very good at bearing it all, at detecting it all. It's like it's too much and so what can you do? You just kind of have to go along and keep taking it. But in a sense, refining our monastic life surely includes almost like, you could say, developing a kind of tolerance for grace, you know, developing a capacity to really receive it for what it is. And so if we're going to talk about Alexio, let me just begin by reminding you of that. Christ is really present to me in His Word. I'll try to say something as we go along here about the significance of his being present to me in that form.

[06:28]

as word. I mean, he's present to me in other ways too. He's present to me in the form of bread and wine, and that's to address a different dimension of myself. But his being present to me as word has consequences. Word addresses itself to mind, to heart. Word has a content. Word has a content that I'm meant to respond to, all that kind of stuff. That's part of what I'll be trying to unfold for you. Another thing that I think has been useful, I know, for me in my own practice of Lectio Divina is to be aware that this is a way of reading the scriptural text that is inspired and urged on by love. One of the most privileged texts in the monastic tradition for the practice of Lectio Divina is the Song of Songs. Why so? Because there we have in the scripture itself

[07:30]

an image of what Lectio and indeed the whole monastic life is like. You know that in its literal sense the Song of Songs is a Hebrew love poem that embodies in itself what would have been the customs surrounding marriage in ancient Israel. And they had beautiful customs that articulated articulated the relationship between the bride and groom before the marriage, a sort of courtship that was developed by customs. You know, we're not too used to this in our own culture. We don't have anything quite like it that is as developed as that, although that dynamic is there. But think of the first several chapters of what's going on in the book of the Song of Songs. These two are supposed to marry each other soon. So what are the customs that surround, that precede their coming together on the day of their marriage?

[08:35]

He is to appear to her, like in a drop-in, say hello, and then leave before she wants him to. And vice versa. She's supposed to come around looking gorgeous. And he's supposed to go like, ah, and then she goes, bye, and she's gone again, all right? And this is just human nature, huh? And culture articulates and develops things that we find like that in human nature. But what's going on in human nature and what is so well articulated here in the Hebrew customs, it is a question of heightening desire. That's what they're doing for each other. They're heightening desire, they're developing and they're letting move in a very strong way inside of them the desire for the other and in the absence of the other

[09:39]

The more you play this game, the more it becomes the case that that's all you can think of, is the day when you will be joined to her, or when he will be joined to her, depending which side you play. Well, you know, long before Christians came along, the rabbis came along, Jewish exegetes, and asked themselves the question, well, what is a book like that doing in the Bible? And the answer that the rabbinic exegetes gave was simple enough. That this is a sign of the Lord's relationship, of Yahweh's relationship with Israel. He is the bridegroom and she is the bride. And our life in history is nothing more and nothing less than the preparation for our eventual complete union with the Lord.

[10:41]

And that He appears and disappears to heighten my desire. So even before somebody like Origen comes along, and who really sails with the text of the Song of Songs in his exegesis of it, the rabbis were already there, aware that here's a text that reveals a lot about the Lord's relationship to Israel. Origen takes a short step, really, in his own exegesis of the Song of Songs, in transposing it into the key of the relationship between Christ and the Church, and, rather typical of Origen, finding more than one level of interpretation to the text, it's also an image of Christ's relationship with each individual soul. As such, then, his commentaries on the Song of Songs begin to affect the whole monastic tradition and produce a whole literature, you could call monastic literature, on the Song of Songs.

[11:44]

In the monastic circle, then, a monk reads the text of the Song of Songs. understanding that this actually articulates the way in which Christ relates to his soul. He appears and disappears to heighten my desire. And you don't have to live in the monastery long to know that that is his pattern, his appearance and his receding from me, only to draw me forward. If you do Lectio Divina on the Song of Songs itself, and really take to heart what I'm saying about that Lectio Divina is really Christ's Word to me today. It really will blow you away because you find, if you, let's just imagine an IDE, you're passing a very good hour in Lectio Divina, you're awake, you're ready, your heart is open, you are, your sensibilities are awakened to the fact that

[12:47]

that this really is Christ's word to me today." Well then, this is a lot to take from him. He'll say things to you like, you are beautiful, you are lovely, I desire you. Turn, that I may see you from every angle. And the text itself gives me my words of response. You are lovely. I love you. I am black but beautiful. And so really an articulation of a profound relationship of love between me and Christ. Whether we do Lectio Divina on the text of Songs or not, my point here today is this, that the monks came to understand that the Song of Songs offers us a key to the whole of Scripture, and that actually everything that I'm looking for in the scriptural text

[14:05]

You know, the scripture doesn't immediately make sense to me. Not every word hits me with some meaning. In fact, right away I'm almost before a puzzle, finding myself before the scriptural text. But we have an image for understanding that. Here's how you penetrate the meaning of the text. By love. for your bridegroom and it's the kind of understanding that comes from love as opposed to when we read the scriptures we're not looking for greater skill in what we might call the scriptural message or the scriptural content the scripture is not primarily a message that's a dimension of it but the scripture is primarily a person who is to be met with love. And so this is a kind of... Lectio Divina is about the kind of understanding of the scriptural text that comes from love.

[15:10]

It means nothing less than this. Lectio Divina is an encounter with a person. a divine person, Jesus Christ. And the steps of Lectio Divina mean to structure a dialogue between me and Christ. It's, you know, you've heard that one before about you're supposed to have a relationship with Christ. Well, I knew that. Of course I'm supposed to have a relationship with Christ. Show me how. Okay, Lectio Divina shows how. Lectio Divina is, this is our monastic way. Lakshmi Divina is a concrete way of letting Christ speak to me and also of my speaking back to Christ. You know, the so-called four steps that eventually are articulated by the tradition of reading, pondering, praying, and contemplation. Well, what's going on there? Those four steps mean to structure the opportunity for me to dialogue.

[16:15]

And what it's about is he speaks, my heart listens very carefully, And then I speak. That's what's going on there. We need to practice. Some virtues, we could say, or just have some attitudes that we bring to the practice of Lectio that I think is helpful. First of all, the virtue of faith. One of the values in calling faith a virtue is it reminds us that we need to practice it. Virtues must be practiced. Okay, so I think that when we're doing Lectio Divina we need to practice faith. And by that I mean that you cannot detect the presence of Christ in the Word without faith any more than you can detect His presence anywhere without faith. But that must be practiced. On one rather obvious level, the scripture is just a human word.

[17:21]

You can figure out that this was written in a human way and somebody had to think of it, write it down, structure it in this way. Well, that's fine to know that. In fact, we need to know that and it's intriguing to examine the word of God just as a human word. But this is not the point. The point is that this totally human word is also God's word and I can detect that only with faith. And I think calling the scripture God's word also suggests another attitude in my practice of Lectio, reverence. Like if it really is true that you go into your room and you shut the door and you open the scriptural text to do Lectio and the eternal son of the father is going to address you, speak to you,

[18:27]

Well, you know, don't forget who's speaking. Don't forget the sheer condescension and gratuity of this moment. You should be deeply reverent that God comes to you. You know, I know that there's a certain amount of profit that can be gotten out of, you know, even if you just sort of were to lie on your bed, eat chocolates and read the Bible, well, you know, God's Word would kind of come across in its own way. But this is not a refined practice of Lectio. I mean, it's okay to do that, but don't think that this is a major... I mean, when I say reverence, I mean, however you do it, this must be personal and genuine in you, but... I don't know, it might involve sitting straight, it might involve kneeling, it might involve a candle burning to all. Welcome him with some sort of acknowledgement as to who it is.

[19:32]

This is God coming to us. Another virtue to practice would be hope or what we could call here maybe more practically to make the point expectation. You should expect a lot. You should hope for a lot. You should say things in your prayer as you begin Lectio. Oh Lord, I am not worthy, but do in me. Speak to me as you spoke to others of old. Work wonders in me with your word in this hour. The Spirit teaches us to be bold in our prayer, to be very bold. And so I want to just remind you of this. I don't want to say too much about it, but just be bold in what you hope for. Hope for a lot. That's not my idea.

[20:33]

That's the scriptures themselves tell us, that we ought to hope for a lot. A monk needs a childlike simplicity also to read the Word of God. I think of, I have some nephews who are pretty young, four and seven, and they visit me at the monastery sometimes. Cute little boys, really. They're always wanting to hear stories. And I'm not too bad at telling them, I think, because I had a great uncle that was just a great storyteller, you know. And we'll kind of make up amazing things, just making things up, you know. And once I was just telling them different stories and different things about the monastery or we were walking through the forest at the monastery. I don't remember even what I was telling them and I thought, you know, I should just, I should start telling them also stories from the Bible about Jesus.

[21:40]

And so I did. And slowly the mood of our encounter changed and they were listening very carefully. And I would tell them about, I told them about Christ and the way he taught and the nice things he did and his eventual death. and his resurrection. But, you know, all the while these boys, as they, you know, they were aware that this was a different kind of story than the other stories I was telling them. But all the while they kept responding to me in a way that urged me to a better level of storytelling. They kept responding by saying, oh, Oh! And it was just beautiful to just see that, oh! You know? And as I said, it made my story go better. And to me, this is a kind of image and a model.

[22:43]

I learned from these boys how I want to be before the Word of God. You know, not to be afraid before what I'm reading to go, oh! Really, just, oh, you know. As we grow older, we forget many things that we don't need to forget and shouldn't forget about childhood, about a childlikeness. And surely, I mean, maybe you're fine on this point, but usually when you've been in the monastery a long time, you need to be reminded of this. I do, I'm for sure. It's just, hey, don't forget your heart is still capable of this kind of, oh, before the Word of God. And the more you do that, the more you make that your prayer, the more God will be able to deal with you. And He'll tell you the story better. In other words, He'll open the Word on whole new levels to you. Because He sees that you're moved.

[23:45]

And He will be very pleased by that. And all He'll want to do is just move you the more. Let me say something about the Holy Spirit and Lectio Divina. We call the scriptures the inspired Word of God. That means that they are, in a sense, the product of the Holy Spirit. And it's useful for a moment, I think, to reflect on that from a theological perspective. What is the Holy Spirit's project? What does the Holy Spirit care about? What's the Holy Spirit for? The Holy Spirit, whom, you know, these are good days to say it, we're awaiting the Feast of Pentecost in just several days. And we're living in these days between Christ ascended into heaven and the coming of the Spirit. Christ, the mystery of Christ's ascension,

[24:47]

which is a dimension of the mystery of his resurrection, is in part something like this. During the 40 days, as we hear at the beginning of Acts, he showed them in many convincing ways that he was alive. That was the project of those 40 days, was to be sure that, no, sorry, I'm not a ghost, it's really me, and I'm really here with you, going along with you in your ordinary time. And yet, at the same time, the Lord is concerned, as we see in the scene in John's Gospel, do not cling to me, he says to Mary, for I am ascending. And this is a very interesting wording there in that text. Mary sees him on the morning of his resurrection, and it's like she interrupts him in his act of ascending.

[25:54]

I am ascending, so do not cling to me. And for me, meditating on that verse long and hard and trying to figure out why did he say it that way? What's going on here? And you look at the other appearances. What his goal is, is that we not need to cling to him. Okay, if you need it to understand that it's really me, okay. Go ahead and do it. Thomas, come here. You've got a problem, touch me. Alright? But basically this is not the point. The point is, I am ascending. That is, I am not going to be with you in a localized time and place. I am going to be everywhere. I am going to fill the universe. I'm going to... This is what it means to be risen. Otherwise... Otherwise, I'm still part of the phenomenal world of death. I'm stuck here in Jerusalem.

[26:55]

And my intention is not to hang around in Jerusalem. My intention is to fill the universe. So don't cling to me here. Otherwise, people are going to have to line up to meet the risen Lord. But that's not what He is. This is not a resuscitation. This is victory over death. which is victory over being in one place at one time. Another way of saying all that is that the Risen Lord will be present to us in the Spirit. Present to us in the Spirit. Or another way of saying all that is that this victory of God over death is incomprehensible to my mind and heart without divine help, for it is a divine work.

[28:00]

And the Holy Spirit is the divine help that we need to be led into all the truth of what Jesus did in His death and resurrection. It's not enough to give you the storyline. It's not enough to say, he was crucified and he rose. Okay, now I need to be led into all the truth by that. And all the truth about that is not a question of saying, well, okay, we've got a big one on our hands here, human beings. Let's get all the smart people together and try to come up with all the truth on that. It's not a question of getting the smart people together. It doesn't hurt, but that's not where the insight lies. The insight will be the insight that God himself gives. And that is what the Spirit's work is. That is what the Spirit's project is. That's what the Spirit cares about. The Spirit cares about clarifying and illumining and extending the fruit of Jesus' death and resurrection to every human heart.

[29:11]

Well, we say, um, now how has the Spirit done that? How does the Spirit illumine and clarify and extend the work of Jesus' death and resurrection to every human heart? Above all, He's left us two marvelous means, Scripture and the sacraments. I'm not going to talk about the sacraments, but it's worth understanding the sacraments in that light, that the sacraments are that, taking Christ's death and resurrection and extending its power and its insight everywhere. The scriptures do the same. The scriptures are, this is what we mean when we speak of them as being divinely authored. We know, of course, that they are also humanly authored, but book after book they cohere toward a center. And their coherence and their capacity to work together, of these humanly created texts to work together, their capacity to cohere toward one central message, this is a divine work.

[30:26]

And thus the Bible, this is what the fathers meant when they said the Bible is one book with the Holy Spirit as its author. What that means is that by means of the scriptural text I am going to be taken, I'm going to be taught to do what the Spirit will do. I'll just use one way of summarizing it. No one can say Jesus is Lord. except in the Holy Spirit. And that's what the scriptures will teach me to do. They will really teach me to say again and again and ever increasingly broader understanding, Jesus is Lord. And the scriptures will also be the Spirit's way of doing what the Spirit wants to do in me. Teach me to cry from the depths of my being, Abba, Father. And to know that in saying that I am addressing... This is not just like a metaphor for whoever it is that's up there among other possible metaphors that we might have chosen.

[31:40]

This is a name given to us by the sun and by the spirit for addressing the source from whence they themselves come. So what we're receiving here from the spirit is already the Trinitarian mystery. We're receiving the rights, if you will, by adoption to address the source from which the divine person of the sun and the divine person of the spirit themselves come. And together with sun and spirit and together with the whole world to say to the source to give him this name, Abba. Most of what we mean when we say that the scriptures are inspired.

[32:43]

But Origen tells us something that is a useful reminder for Lectio Divina. Origen tells us that the same spirit that inspired the text will and must also inspire the reader of the text. and we need to count on that help. It's a way of reminding us that the scriptures cannot be understood in the purpose for which they're written without divine help. You can't, for example, without faith and without the help of the Holy Spirit, you can make something of the scriptures, but that's not what you need, especially in the moment of Lectio Divina. What you need in the moment of Lectio Divina is the Spirit to inspire you in that moment. The Spirit to inspire you toward what? Toward grasping the meaning of the text? No. At least in the patristic and monastic tradition there is no such thing as the meaning of the text, the one and only meaning of the text, sort of more or less identifiable with the human author's intention.

[33:57]

No, what the Spirit will inspire you is the meaning of the text for you today in this hour. which will blow where it will, and which is unpredictable, and which may be a meaning that has never derived from the text before. So, the difference ... The difference between that and just your kooky ideas about the scripture are, I mean, you know, what controls this, you know? Because anyone can say, well, the Holy Spirit told me. We know that trick, you know? And the scriptures don't mean whatever you want them to mean. And then all you have to do at the end of whatever you want them to mean is you say, and that's what the Holy Spirit thinks. This is just, I'm just talking about what happens in the secrecy of your room. Don't worry about leaving your room and sharing your bright insights or anything else.

[35:01]

I'm just saying, in the secrecy of your room, call upon the Holy Spirit to open your heart and to be sure that this text speak to you today in the way that the Spirit wants. That's all. Let me just say something about the so-called four steps of Lectio Divina. You know, it's interesting, Benedict doesn't tell us anything about how to do Lectio Divina, except implicitly. What I mean by that is this, you know, we know from the Holy Rule that if you, you know, scholars sort of debate, you know, how much it turns out to be, but The scholarly debate seems to say that in Benedict's horarium there's between two to four hours a day of Lectio Divina. And these are broad strokes and many dimensions of study and reading come under this rubric.

[36:04]

I'm not going to worry about that with you. But what's interesting is that a method of Lectio Divina is more than anything presumed by the rule of Saint Benedict. There's no information in there on how to do it. We can learn something, though, about how Benedict himself did Lectio Divina just by noticing that the rule is nothing less than a tremendous tapestry of scriptural texts. And you can only handle the scripture in that way when you're reading them in a certain way. First of all, when you are saturated in them. which is what I'm saying in Benedict's whole monastic project is. Everything he designs in the monastery is to be sure that we will become saturated with the word of God, to learn to think in the categories of the scripture. And then he's already functioning within a tradition of scriptural interpretation that we can call, broadly speaking, the spiritual level of meaning in the text.

[37:13]

But. After Saint Benedict, for centuries really, as monks really took seriously his program of the arrangement of the monastic day and really let themselves be saturated by the Word, what we began to produce is monastic literature, which is, in many ways, monastic literature is monks who were really good at Lectio sharing their insights, either by means of their preaching, which was, you know, copied down. It's like we say, you know, gosh, that guy's a good preacher, let's record it. Well, that's what they were doing. They'd sit there and they'd write the homilies down, or the chapter talks down, or whatever it was, and so they come down to us. That's how we learn to do Lectio, if we want to do it inside the monastic tradition. And eventually, Guido the Carthusian, writes this all up in a letter.

[38:22]

You're perhaps aware of that text, The Letter to Somebody. I can't remember who it's to, anyway. But it's there that we have articulated four steps of Lectio Divina. Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, and Contemplatio. I think that it's It's okay to call this a method of reading provided we don't seek to apply these four steps in a rigid way. I think what these four steps do is identify dimensions of the experience such that when you identify those dimensions it becomes useful then to be sure that all those dimensions are kind of operative. So with that in mind, May I make just some suggestions about what I think the dimensions of this experience are.

[39:26]

Lectio literally means reading. That's the first step. So you read a text. And you are aware, of course, that one needn't read very much. A verse or two is enough, or you may read a whole passage, say, from the gospel. But basically what you're doing with that is you are... right away you're starting a distinctive way of prayer. We should notice that this is not... Well, this is not Zazen, for example, where you start by starting to empty your mind. This is the goal. Well, this is not that. This is putting something very concrete under my nose. A particular text, which is to say a particular scene from the Bible or a particular word.

[40:28]

We know that this particular start can in fact lead me... way beyond this particular start into contemplative communion, in which I've left the text completely behind. And you might compare that to the place the Zazen arrives at, although theologically there's some major differences. But, you know, just so that you see that this can lead to that sort of emptiness of mind. But be aware of the particularity of the start. I'm starting with a particular text. and I need to deal with that text. And rather naturally, that's why it's not a method, rather naturally I move into the second dimension of Lectio that is identified meditatio, which I think in this context is probably best translated as pondering, Not meditation in a different sense. Meditation's got too many connotations for us.

[41:33]

What they're talking about here is pondering the text, thinking about it, really chewing it over and being sure that I'm getting what's there. And not only getting what's there, you could say, Ignatius of Antioch has what is for me a good sort of reminder of what's going on here. He says, he who knows the word of Jesus knows also its silence. He who knows the word of Jesus knows also its silence. What that suggests to me is that, okay, it suggests a way of pondering. It suggests, okay, there's the word. It's surrounded by this, what we might call by this tacit dimension. This word really means to open into the entire mystery of God.

[42:36]

In Christ Jesus, this is Paul in Colossians, in Christ Jesus are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So I will touch Christ Jesus anywhere. Let's say I'm doing Lectio on a Gospel text. But even if I'm doing Lectio on an Old Testament text, as a Christian I'm doing it because this Old Testament text brings me to Christ Jesus. There's no other reason to do it. But it's easier to grasp it. I'm in some scene of Jesus in the Gospel. In my meditatio, Jesus is doing something concrete. He's curing a leper. Well, surrounding that moment is this tacit dimension of the entire divine mystery that is active in this moment. So, it's that that I wish to begin to ponder.

[43:42]

It's that that I wish to begin to understand. As I begin to grasp that, and the practice of Lectio, remember, is always very personal. So, I'm asking myself in this moment, what is the meaning of this scene for me? Where am I in it? And, because this scene is... about Christ's relationship with me. How can I make that claim? I've already made it in what I said about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings forward from the past everything from Christ's life. Christ, in His death and resurrection, this is an hour which does not pass away. It does not grow old. Otherwise, he'd be dead.

[44:43]

He's not dead. He's risen. So, his whole human life, everything he did in one time and one place, because he's not dead, because he's risen, every time he did in that one time and place is available in every time and place. And the scripture is the instrument of that. The scripture is the sacrament. that makes him present to me curing a leper now. And I become the leper that he's curing. And I want to say this not in virtue of the power of my imagination. Although, you know, you need to sort of imagine the scene, but that's not what makes it happen. You can be in any scene from the past in virtue of the power of your imagination. Imagine yourself at this battle, you know, and then read all about it, and you get into it so deeply that it's like you were there at the battle.

[45:45]

This isn't what's happening in the scripture. I am in the scene not by the force of my imagination. I am in the scene by force of the power of the Spirit. who makes the livingness of that available to me. But when I'm inside that scene then and my pondering helps me, that's what I'm pondering. How am I in that scene and what does it mean now for me to be in that scene? My pondering will move me. It will move my heart. And this is the third step, rather naturally arising, of oratio. I begin to pray. And I begin to pray what? As conceived by the early monks, this third step, oratio, were little aphorisms of prayer. Oh, Lord, save me. I love you. Oh, thank you, Lord. Thank you for this healing. Thank you for this moment of prayer. Or other more practical things, oh, I'm distracted again, save me, help me, just praying, praying.

[46:47]

But talking back, I said Leksu Dvina structures a dialogue, but what's happening here is we do not know how to pray as we ought. We do not know how to pray as we are, but the Spirit helps us in our weakness by forming a word that we can be sure is a Spirit-formed word precisely because I'm dealing with the Spirit-formed text. And when I'm dealing with the Spirit-formed text and I'm letting the Spirit-formed text move in me, then what happens in my heart and what I want to say to God in response is the Spirit-formed prayer. And thus, I who do not know how to pray as I ought am taught, very concretely taught by the Spirit, how to pray. That can be another blow-away line. The Spirit teaches you how to pray. Well, all right, but it sure doesn't seem like it. Well, get into this, and then it will. Because you cannot ponder the scriptural text without

[47:49]

without something happening to you. Because Christ is really present to you. He will change you. And you will speak words of love to Him. You will speak words of sorrow for your sin. You will confess His majesty and glory. All this is prayer. And this is the third step. And again, we can move very naturally back into that. You can kind of get You can be very deeply into the scene, praying, and then continue the scene, keep on reading, watch it unveil up, ponder it the more, pray the more. These first three steps, these first three dimensions of the experience of Lectio, the Fathers tell us, is really our responsibility and sort of our active work in the thing. The fourth step of contemplatio is beyond our control and beyond our manipulation. This is not a method that will bring you unfailingly to contemplation. And why not? Because contemplation

[48:54]

is entirely God's gift to me. It's sheer grace. But this activity can dispose me for contemplation. But what is contemplation? How is it conceived here? Contemplation here is conceived as communion. And just being in the communion of the Holy Trinity. Contemplation is coming into the dynamic of Trinitarian love and being inside that dynamic in a specific place, in the place of the sun. And I'm brought to the place of the Son by the Spirit. But in the place of the Son, I relate then to the Son as one who has become one flesh with Him. I relate to the Father as the Son relates to the Father.

[49:59]

And I relate to the Spirit as the Son relates to the Spirit. No, you're not thinking of any of that when you're in communion. What you are is you're just the sun. You are divinized. You are divinized. And you are way beyond the specifics of the cure of leprosy. You are way beyond any particular saying this or that. You're not saying anything. You're just there in this communion. This is God's to give and it is important for us to learn to desire it. To desire it like I desire my bridegroom. Where are you? Where are you pasturing your flocks? When will I see you? When will I embrace you? But I don't know when that moment will come.

[51:03]

But surely this disposes me for that. Let me conclude this morning by saying just briefly what I would like the next step of this to be, if you're interested in it. And that is that in the second step of Lectio, in the pondering dimension, I'm not left to my own wits. It's not just like, what good ideas can I ponder? What can I come up with? Actually, I am guided by what the Fathers called the rule of faith. And that is, I am guided by the whole mystery of what has been revealed and what the Church believes about God. I want to sort of unfold that, but basically the mysteries of the faith can be summarized, I think, into three fundamental mysteries, all of which are overlapping and talk to each other.

[52:18]

They are the mystery of God as Trinity, the mystery of the incarnation of the sun, and the mystery of our divinization. Everything that the church believes and experiences is somehow subsumed and understood under one of those mysteries. And as I say, the one cannot be understood without the other. The scriptures testify to these mysteries. And so, when I'm pondering a text, in a sense, I know in advance what I'm looking for in the text. I'm looking for the mystery of the Trinity, for the mystery of the Incarnation, and for the mystery of our divinization. It's like when I was in high school, I couldn't do math. It was awful. And I had to take algebra courses that just got harder and harder.

[53:19]

We had to work out these hard problems in our algebra books. had the answers in the back that you were supposed to correct your own work with. And I finally figured out that if I knew the answer, I could figure out how to work the problem, but I could never work the problem without knowing the answer. This is how we read the scripture, I think. We're not, I as an individual before the text, I don't have to reinvent. and relive the Church's centuries of pondering this text for its meaning, which is Trinity, Incarnation, and Divinization. That's the answer. I'm looking for that in the text. I'm not looking for that as the meaning that the human author of the text intended. You couldn't make a claim like that. But I'm looking for that as the whole tacit dimension in which the scripture stands and will open up for me.

[54:20]

So I'll try to develop that in the next conference. and demonstrate that in text. It's sort of a dumb image, but it's a useful one. To put on Trinitarian eyeglasses and have the scriptural text speak in a whole new way to me. This is what we learn from the Fathers of the Church. This is what we learn from our monastic forebears. Okay? Yeah, reading God. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dear Alan Bonaventure, I didn't know he was here, huh?

[55:22]

Yeah? No, this is the one where I was. Oh, one of your workshops. Was he ever here? No. Yeah. You know, I meant to open by saying how glad I am to be here. I always appreciated Father Martin's invitation, because ever since I joined the monastery, I've heard of Mount Saviour. You know, you're known well and far and wide, and so it's really a privilege for me to come and see your place. I intend to snoop around today, you know, walk the property, case the joint, you know. Taste the flavor of your monastic life, for sure. Yeah, you're welcome. This is the most sensible thing I've ever seen. I've had so many microphones on my life. Never anything has been seen sensible. Isn't that right? Yeah. That's great.

[56:16]

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