Dear Parishioners,
I left off a couple of weeks ago promising to present more about “Lectio Divina”: this ancient, proven, and most fruitful form of meditative (mental) prayer. I need to clarify one thing. The “lectio” area on “Formed.org” now has three installments, but here we are dealing with the first one titled, “Session 1: Prayer, an Intimate Dialogue”.
As we look at the first video, Dr. Tim Grey tells a story of prayer that happened with his son (4 yrs. old) to show how we all deeply desire to communicate with God. God doesn’t just speak to us, He speaks The Word to us: His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. We are often deaf to what God says through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. So when we pray we speak to God and when we take up the Scriptures; He speaks to us through them. Dr. Grey then tells the incredible story of St. Augustine’s conversion and how he opened the Bible at that moment to Rom. 13 to hear God calling him. This changes his life. The problem is that we think of Scripture as words spoken to someone else long ago. That is true in a historical sense, but in the realm of spirituality which is eternal, those words are for us. This is the secret of the saints, they hear God through the scriptures as something spoken to them. There are two things necessary as we begin.
- We “take and read” the scripture.
- We come seeking an encounter with God that becomes a dialogue and an enthralling conversation.
Please take time to watch this video and next week we’ll have a look at the second one.