Lectio Divina is an ancient prayerful and devotional way of reading the Bible. Through Lectio Divina, we as Christians encounter the living God through scripture, allowing us to experience the beauty of prayer, which is the inner life of Christ.


Lectio Divina is accomplished through four processes, Reading, Meditation, Prayer, and Contemplation.

READING
Slowly read a scripture passage out loud several times.


Suggestions for Reading

• Choose a special place (preferably away from your desk and other areas of activity) that is suitable for this purpose. Sanctify this place by reserving it as a regular meeting place with the Lord.
• Because Lectio engages the whole person, your bodily posture is important. A seated position that is erect but not tense or slouched is best for the four movements of Lectio. It is good to be fully attentive and alert without sitting in a way that will eventually impede your circulation or breathing.
• Begin with a short prayer of preparation such as Psalm 19:14: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer." Start with a clear intention to know God's will for your life and a fixed intention to advance in it.
• Remember that unlike ordinary reading, in Lectio you are seeking to be shaped by the word rather than to be informed by the Word. This first step of reading prepares you for the remaining three movements of meditation, prayer and contemplation. But the whole process should be infused with a prayerful attitude.

• Since it is God's love for us that teaches us to love him, we should not regard meditation as an objective method or technique, but as a person-specific process. It is good to experiment with different approaches until you find a pattern of meditation that ". . . resonates best with your soul".
• Meditation is a long term process that builds on itself
• Allow enough time to enjoy the text
• Don't force meditation or make impatient demands of immediate gratification and results. Meditation will do you little good if you try to control the outcome.
• When a passage speaks to you meditate on it for several days before moving on.

• Allow enough time that you do not rush the process; you are not likely to listen to God when you are in a hurry
• Avoid the rut of reducing this period of prayer to a technique or a routine
• DO NOT seek to control the content or outcome of your prayer
• Prayer is a time for heart response as you move from the mind to the will. Prayer embraces the practical consequences of the truth you have seen and endeavors to direct your life in accordance with it

• Take enough time to present yourself before God in silence and yieldedness. Contemplative prayer involves the development of a deeper and more intuitive form of receptivity to the supernatural
• As with meditation and prayer, DO NOT be concerned with results, feelings, or experiences during contemplation. The important thing is to "Appear before God" in a quiet and receptive mode of being
• Contemplation is a practice very few believers have attempted to develop. Expect that growth in this new terrain will involve, time, discipline, and the frustration of apparent failure. True contemplation may require years of fidelity, but any consistency in this practice will greatly reward you
• It is helpful to think of a word or an image that expresses the "spirit of the passage" that you have been processing through your reading, meditation, and prayer. When your mind wanders (and it will wander, especially in the beginning) during your time for contemplation, center yourself by returning once again to the spirit of the passage

Suggestions for Sacred Reading as a whole
• DO NOT reduce sacred reading to a technique, system, or program. It is a personal process that cultivates a spiritual outlook of trust, receptivity, expectation, worship, and intimacy with God
• Always see yourself as a beginner in the sense that you NEVER master this process
• Feel free to adapt this spiritual formation approach to your temperament. More extroverted people, for example, will only be comfortable with short sessions while more introverted people will tend to take more time
• Write out on a 3 x 5 card the verses for the day and carry them with you to read and think about throughout your day. This does two things: it makes the scripture your theme for the day as a tool to practice the presence of Christ. They also assist you in memorization by moving the text from short-term to long-term memory

For more info go to the Lectio Divina web site, or search Google