Life experience throws light on the passage, making it come alive for us, and helping us to feel at home with it. In turn the passage throws light on the life experience transforming an event into a word of God spoken to us.
It invites us to enter through the imagination into the movement of the passage and to discover the same movement in our own lives and in the world around us. We discover a double movement of grace and of sin – in the bible passage itself and in our individual lives, in our community and in the story of humanity.
It is an exercise of prayer in so far as we respond prayerfully to the recognition of the passage in life experience. But crucially it is also an exercise in doing theology in that it offers us new insight into the workings of grace and of sin.
It can be done by all. No one is means to be excluded from the banquet table of Lectio Divina. Surely this is how the Father would want it. So whether I have a doctorate in scripture or little or no educational background (Even illiterate people can do it) we are all called to humble ourselves before the passage and we can all by reflecting on life experience make the passage come alive.
Lectio Divina requires both a personal journey with the word and a journey in community. Our encounter with the text needs to be personal and at the same time we need to see how it resonates with that of others in community, or at least one other person. Also in community we enter share our insights with one another. In this respect lectio Divina is very different from what used to be called ‘private interpretation.’
It fosters greater integration between prayer life and activity, between spiritual life and engagement in the secular world. While it presupposes moments of giving our full attention to the passage it lends itself to fitting in with a very unstructured lifestyle.
There is a discipline of being faithful to the stages – of following them in sequence especially in the early days. At least making sure that each stage is included. When it comes to the dialogue there is also a discipline in being faithful to the text and faithful to the life experience. It can only be acquired by doing it – just like learning to swim or ride a bicycle. Simple but deep and the fruits are lush. Lectio Divina becomes a way of life. The discipline of the process fosters grace-filled attitudes: humility, respect, openness, listening, receiving, gratitude, contrition, hope, contemplation and wisdom.
