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Lectio Divina through the Ages

This Rock Volume 20, Number 7   September-October 2009     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   Want to Evangelize? Start with Scriptural Prayer By Fr. William Dillard   Lectio Divina through the Ages   The Language of Prayer Is the Language of Poetry By Anthony Esolen   To See Him Face to Face   Lord, We Are Not Worthy   Transcendent Truths   A New Fisher of Men: St. Louis the Crusader By Christopher Check   A Formidable Queen Mother   A Pole-Vault across Purgatory   Further Reading   Justification Sola Fide: Catholic after All? By Christopher J. Malloy   Pope Benedict and Trent   Damascus Road There and Back Again By Sebastian R. Fama   By the Book Health and Wealth—or the Cross? By Jim Blackburn   Eyes to See Beauty beyond Price By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told America’s Catholic Colony By Matthew E. Bunson   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

During the patristic period, the fathers of the East and the West used lectio divina and encouraged its use among the faithful. Perhaps the first to do so was St. Cyprian of Carthage, who counseled a young monk to "be assiduous in prayer and reading" (Epistle 1.15). St. Ambrose of Milan writes "We speak to God when we pray, we listen to God when we read God’s Word" (qtd. in Theological and Dogmatic Works).

Certainly one of the most profound experiences of lectio divina was in the life of St. Augustine of Hippo, and is described in his Confessions. Augustine had been reading, meditating, and contemplating the Psalms when he heard a voice say to him, "Go sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven, and come follow me" (Confessions VIII).

But the name most closely identified with lectio divina is that of St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 530). St. Benedict gave lectio divina its name in his Rule of St. Benedict, and established its inseparable link in the West with monasticism. He codified lectio divina in his Rule, mandating specific times each day for the monk to practice scriptural reading and prayer (48).

In the Scholastic period, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure and many other theologians advocated scriptural prayer, encouraging the faithful to put questions to Scripture and then to ask themselves questions about the form and content of what they had read (Jean LeClercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 78). The Modern Period was a golden age for writing on meditation and contemplation. During this time the Church further developed the understanding of prayer as dialogue with God who initiates the dialogue through his Word ("Prayer," The New Catholic Encyclopedia).

In the last century, lectio divina has experienced a profound revival beginning in 1927 with Denis Gorcs and continuing with the liturgical movement of the 1940s and 1950s. The Second Vatican Council emphasized the value of lectio divina in the decree Dei Verbum: "prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue takes place between God and man" (25).