On Lectio Divina

For those who don't look at TitusOneNine, or who didn't bother to click on the link in that venue, I do encourage you to see this article by Laurentia Johns in the (English Roman Catholic) periodical (and website) The Tablet. The practice of "holy reading" (aka "praying the scriptures") has been a regular part of my own prayer life for several years, and this is a particularly lucid glimpse into it.

I am especially grateful for Ms Johns' attention to the symbiotic connection between the reading of the Word of God in liturgy and the practice of private prayer--the first overflowing into the second, and the second enriching and enlivening the first. So often, in my observation, people compartmentalize Sunday worship and don't create channels by which it can irrigate both personal prayer and ordinary daily living.

I am also energized by the connection she highlights between personal prayer and the common faith of the Church, how the former must always be disciplined by the latter:

Such a reading, if authentically of the Spirit, will also be consonant with the teaching of the Church, the Body of Christ - Son and Spirit, the "two hands of God" always work together (Irenaeus of Lyons: see, for example, Against Heresies IV, pref., 4).

How apropos this is in an environment where so many are apt to pit dogma (in the best sense of that term) against “Spirit.”

Do give the whole thing a look.