Meditation
Introduction:
Some background Points
Observer:
What we mean by Meditation in Lectio is different from what is currently meant by Meditation in popular usage. In popular understanding today Meditation describes a practice of quietening body, mind and heart and coming to a place of inner silence, stillness and centredness. There are various techniques employed to bring one to this point. Meaning of Meditation in Lectio is something quite different; mind is active – particularly the imagination through making connection with memories – but also feeling, emotions and intuitions.
The meditation stage is founded on faith conviction that the “work of God” or “activity of God” or “movement of grace” contained in the passage is not merely a “work” done in the past, but is a “work” that God continues to do today in our lives and in our world. This conviction is crucial: What God did in the past, he continues to do today. He is always doing! So that the passage acts as a “pattern”, or “model” or “symbol” or “type” of what God is doing today. Every passage, therefore, invites us to discover where and how God is doing the same thing today. At the same time, and in the same way, we are invited to discover that the story of “sin” in the passage is as real today as it was back then.
In the Meditation Stage we experience the text as a king of “magnet” which has the power to draw to itself similar events, happening, and encounters from our own life experience. So the surfacing of memories is not so much an experience of “digging and searching” on our part, but more of a “waiting” on the Holy Spirit, at work in the passage and in us, to stir up and attract memories which are partial or full manifestations of the same “work of God” going on today.
This process of Meditation is not tied to any particular time, place or circumstance. It can be going on as we engage in many of our daily activities, and in this way encourage a greater integration of “spiritual life” and “ordinary life .
Meditation:
In the Meditation stage the Reader
Has now become a participant, “entering” into the passage, or better still, allowing the passage to “enter” us.
No one can decide for us where we are going to enter the passage.
The passage always respects us. The following “triggers” might be helpful in the stirring up of memories.
- What does the passage, or any part of it, remind us of?
- What touches us or moves us in the passage?
- Who do we find ourselves feeling with or for in the passage?
- When and how have we been or seen Jesus (or any other character) in this passage?
- Listen to whatever life experience surfaces in us. Respect it. Stay with it. Let the memories surface in all their historical reality – where? When? Who? What happened?
As we do so we are invited to relive the memory with the help of the passage (details from the passage opening up and illuminating aspects of our life experience). At the same time, we relive the passage with the help of the memory (aspects of our life-experience throwing light on the passage). It is a process in which the passage and the life experience get to know each other, converse with each other, discover each other – both what they have in common and their differences. The Meditation Stage is characterised by a coming together or growing oneness or “communion” between the passage and life experience. Continue with this process until we can spontaneously exclaim:
“I now recognise that passage”. The same movement of grace (activity of God’s love, work of God), or of sin (obstacles to that grace) that I have read about in the passage – I have seen today! I can now appreciate a new sacred depth and meaning in the historical events, happening, encounters in my own life and in what I see going on around me in the world today. This is good news. God/Jesus with us. God alive and at work in the world today.
Normally we will find a number of memories surfacing:
The important thing is to go deeply into two or three rather than superficially into many. These memories will come from the area of one-to-one relationship (involving oneself or someone close to us); or from the area of relationships between one community and another, or in the workplace, church, society or country (of which we are a part, or indeed, between one country and another, one religion and another; or something we have seen with the world of nature; or within oneself alone. Ideally we will experience the passage fulfilled at least at two of these levels. The important thing is that each passage invites us to look deeply into our own personal journey, and at the same time to look deeply into the lives of those around us locally and globally so that we are in touch not only with the truth of ourselves but in solidarity with the truth of other and humanity itself throughout the world.
In the context of a Lectio Divina community:
The giving and receiving of these meditations is central to the gathering. Ideally, we will come to Lectio community having already meditated on the passage and ready to offer something that we are comfortable with – a down-to-earth, concrete instance of the passage or any part of it, fulfilled today. In making “the offering” we should try to make as much reference to the passage – words, images, metaphors, movement etc. as we can.
We offer it humbly as an experience of “good news”:
For ourselves, and confident that it will be “good news” for others. At the same time, we listen to other offer their experience of the passage, and their offerings will most likely awaken new memories in us as well. Together we will come to a fuller and deeper appreciation of the work of God going on today. This represents the ideal of a Christian community: followers of Jesus coming together to nourish and support each other with “good news” affirming and confirming for each other the truth that Jesus is truly risen, and alive and at work in our lives and in our world today.
In order to allow time for everyone who wishes to make their offering:
We should also try to keep our offering as short as succinct / concise as we can.
Oratio or Prayer:
(Praying the text and our life experiences)
Spontaneously we feel to turn to God in prayer.
This prayer usually finds expression in three types.
Three types:
1. Thanksgiving
2. Repentance
3. Petition
Our prayer can take the form of any one of these or of all three. Using a combination of our own words and the words from the passage puts our own life experience of the word on a par with the word of God in scriptures.
A Thanksgiving:
Primary prayer
The desire to pray a prayer of thanksgiving is the hallmark of a good meditation. In recognising the passage in life experience – events, happenings, encounters in our own personal lives or the life of our neighbourhood community parish community, society, country and world – there arises a spontaneous desire to give thanks for the passage, for the memory of such events etc. and for the same presence of God (work of God) encountered in the passage and in the memory of life experience.
We are invited to talk to God directly in our own words expressing the gratitude, repentance or petition that is in our heart.
In relation to all three types of prayer there is a further invitation to bring some of the words of the passage, indeed as many as possible, into our prayer. Praying our life experience in the language of the passage lifts it up, gives it a new dignity, clothes it with the word of God in scripture.
B Repentance:
At the same time we also feel humbled by the experience: while we recognise a little bit of the movement of grace (activity of God) in our story we know it could have more. Certainly there were other times and situations where we fell short and just feel to say “Lord have mercy”. Every passage is at the same time an invitation to profess the story of grace – God’s activity, God’s work – in our lives and world, and to confess the story of sin – when we or others have been obstacles to that movement of grace. Every passage is calling us to grow in holiness. Again we address God directly expressing sorrow or regret in our hearts.
C Petition:
At the same time we just feel to ask God’s help, that more of the attitudes and actions of Jesus (movement of grace) that we have experienced in meditation might live in us, in our church, our world.
The prayer of petition can be expressed beautifully in the words of “Maranatha” – come Lord Jesus!
“Come more perfectly than you have come before”!
“Increase your presence within me and within all of humanity “.
“Your kingdom come”.
In the context of a Lectio Divina Community:
An individual offering of “meditation” is followed immediately by prayer of this kind and this prayer is often followed by “silence” before another individual makes an offering.
Contemplative Moment in Lectio Divina.
In his book “The Way of Paradox” the Spiritual writer Cyprian Smyth reminds us that in our Catholic tradition there are two paths to the Contemplative moment. He describes it in terms of a journey to the top of a mountain…where God waits to meet us. There are two ways to the top: the direct route, up the rock face; or the indirect way, that follows the meandering path. Both are valid.
In the “direct way”, we go to into the presence of God by “switching off,” as it were, from ordinary everyday life, people and situations. It is the experience of “withdrawing” physically, mentally and emotionally from the world around us and coming to an inner silence which disposes us to encounter the presence of God at the top of the mountain. If we go into God’s presence via this “direct path” it is imperative that we come back down via the “meandering path,” and as we do so, recognizing the presence of the same God in ordinary events, happenings and encounters in the life of the world around us. This is crucial because the greatness of our Catholic Christian tradition is precisely its stress on the presence of God within life, within people, within nature – the truth of God incarnate.
The other option is to journey to the mountain top and into the God’s presence via “the meandering” path. On this path we enjoy experiences of God’s presence along the way – recognised in ordinary everyday events and happenings – in “the beauty of the surrounding hills, the valleys, the mountain streams, the wildlife…etc” The danger with this indirect route is that we might linger and loiter so much along the way, enjoying God’s presence as we go, that we might never actually reach the top of the mountain. And yet reaching the top – the Contemplative Moment – is an experience that God desires for all his children.
The experience of the contemplative moment in Lectio Divina is clearly the fruit of journeying on the meandering path.
The beauty of Lectio is that we come to the contemplative moment, at the end of a long meandering path which involves reading, meditation and prayer, in which we recognize God’s presence in ordinary life, ordinary people and everyday situations. There is no shift of consciousness necessary: no need to switch off “this world” in order to switch on to God’s presence. We come into the presence of God from where we are – rooted in the realities and issues of family, neighbourhood, society, nation, and world.
In the context of a Lectio Community this contemplative moment describes a point that you come to on your journey with the passage. After journeying for so long with words – at the reading, meditation and prayer stages – we now find ourselves naturally quietening down and the silence becoming longer and deeper, as we are drawn more and more into the presence of the God, whom we have encountered in the passage, and in the various offerings and prayers that we have made. This loving God, whose presence has been “hidden or concealed” in the various events, happenings and encounters that we have celebrated in our meditations, now comes to the fore, and takes over, and draws us to himself.
The words become fewer and fewer and the presence of God becomes stronger and stronger until we come to a point where there is no longer any need for words, and we find ourselves simply resting, trustingly, in the presence of God, allowing ourselves to be held and carried by the loving “embrace” of God.
Some find it helpful in dealing with ‘distractions’ to allow one or two words from the passage, that have become special for us, and in many ways sum up our experience of God’s presence in the passage, to act as a ‘mantra’ that keeps us focussed on this presence. Repeated over and over in the quiet of our hearts the mantra draws us into deeper and deeper silence until we no longer need to say “our word” anymore, and the awareness of the presence of God can take over completely
Like children who have played and worked all day in the knowledge of the presence of a loving parent, we are now ready and content to be picked up and held by the parent and to rest in his/her loving embrace. Or you might compare it to the experience of becoming captivated and absorbed in the beauty of the setting sun in whose light and warmth we have moved all day. This is the contemplative moment.
This moment is always gift of God: we cannot force it or make it happen. All we can do is dispose ourselves to receive this gift. This is precisely what Lectio Divina offers us: it can bring us to the edge of the “lake”, and if we find ourselves carried out onto “the water”, this is always God’s doing.
Some Lectio traditions speak of the contemplative moment as a fourth stage in Lectio, but in its most primitive tradition it was celebrated as another form of oratio or prayer. This makes sense because there is a contemplative element in all the earlier forms of prayer – Thanksgiving, Repentance and Petition – an experience of trust in God’s presence and God’s love. What happens in the contemplative moment is that this “God dimension” comes to the fore, and becomes the dominant reality, holding and absorbing us.
The experience of contemplative moments nurture in us a contemplative attitude which is the ideal of the Christian life – to live in the midst of the world with an attitude of trust that God is there, that God’s love is there, that God is at work in our lives and in the life of the world, moving everything towards wholeness and harmony.
It is important that we are able to talk about this “moment”, to recognize it, welcome it and celebrate it, not boastingly but humbly, accepting that being in God’s presence is part of our birthright as children of God
Wisdom Moment in Lectio Divina.
“Wisdom” is not a word that we hear so much of today and yet it is central to our experience of Lectio Divina. The goal of Lectio is not only to make us more loving, in the sense of growing in the attitudes and actions of Jesus, but it is also meant to make us wiser, in the sense of growing with the understanding and perception of Jesus, as St Paul says “putting on the mind and heart of Jesus.”
The wisdom received from Lectio is not a learning from books, not an academic learning in that sense, but a learning from life-experience, as illuminated and interpreted by the Word of God in sacred scripture. It has been well described as the “Aha!” moment of Lectio Divina: “Now I see it!”
The “wisdom” of the passage might have traditionally been described as the “message” it contains, and in the reading of scripture in the past that was all that mattered. But in Lectio “the message” is only a small part of the nourishment that a passage contains.
With Lectio we experience the joy of discovering this wisdom for ourselves. We experience it as our own work, our own discovery. It is one of the fruits of our journey with the passage. It is like a ripe fruit on the tree of Lectio Divina that is only waiting for us to grasp.
Every time we journey with a passage, following the method of Lectio, we are meant to come to the wisdom moment. But it takes time and effort to uncover and articulate the wisdom of a passage for ourselves. It can be helpful to work on this formulation of the wisdom statement together as a community.
In the context of a Lectio Community we ask ourselves the questions: What living lesson has our journey with this passage taught us about life’s meaning, purpose and values? What new insight have we received into any of these? How has our understanding of “life” grown through our meditation on this passage? What is the “truth” or what are “the truths” (as there may be a number of them) that emerge from our journey with this passage?
What is it that we see happening over again in the passage and in our offerings? What is the “movement” that repeats itself?
What is the common thread or pattern that repeats itself?
And we are encouraged to put this into our own words and formulate a statement. What the statement does, then, is to extract “a truth” that we find both in the passage and in some of the offerings, and summarises what they have in common. Therefore, this “statement of truth” can be verified by the various instances of it that we have recognized in the passage and in our various meditations.
There are several hallmarks that can guide us in the formulation of the wisdom statement.
- It is expressed in the form of a short statement but not a moralizing one.
- The wisdom statement will always be universally true, i.e. true for people of all religions and none, therefore not just for Christians or even less for Catholics alone. The Good News of Jesus is for all of humanity and seeks to bring us into greater solidarity with all our brothers and sisters.
- The wisdom statement will be true for individuals, as well as communities, and true in every sphere of life.
- As a statement about “ life,” “ love” etc. it will have all the flavour and power of life experience. In other words the statement will be borne out of the belly of experience.
- The wisdom statement is experienced as a gift, and fills us with a deep sense of gratitude, and gives rise to a prayer of gratitude.
- It is also experienced as a new insight, either totally new, or partially new. I’m seeing it, as it were, for the first time. And so it can give rise to a prayer of humility and repentance – How come I didn’t see this before?
- It also generates a longing or deep desire to see the truth expressed in this wisdom statement becoming a reality in our own lives and our world. How different our lives and our world would be if we were to put this into practice? We experience a desire and commitment to grow in the actual living out of this wisdom statement in our lies. Again this can lead to a heartfelt prayer of petition.
Finally, we are invited to ponder the wisdom statement, to savour it, to linger over it, to delight in it, to love it, to allow it to take root in us and become part of us. Trusting that this seed will in God’s own time and in God’s own way bear fruit in us.
Since theology has been defined as “Faith seeking understanding” (St. Anselm, 4thc), and since Lectio Divina is a means of growing in our understanding of God, humanity, world – as interpreted in the light of faith and celebrated in the Wisdom Moments, then it is reasonable to conclude that Lectio is clearly a method of doing theology as well. Furthermore, the goal of theology is wisdom and as we have seen one of the precious fruits of Lectio is wisdom. For a long time the study of theology was only available for the privileged few, with the required means and qualifications, but now through the practice of Lectio Divina it is becoming an activity of the whole Christian community, as God has always intended it to be. It is part of that great work of God in lifting up the lowly, by enabling us to discover and express the great truths of life for ourselves.
