Compass
Lectio Divina offers a simple and comprehensive practice of praying the scripture that leads gradually and steadily from the mind to the heart, and from cataphatic processing modes to apophatic opening.
The stages of Lectio Divina are typically taught to beginners as linear steps. As one progresses with more experience, the steps become stages like points on a compass that can be connected in any order.
Lectio – reading
living word [continues to ___]
resonate with a particular kind of attunement; not history
Meditatio – concentrated effort of the faculties.
mind, feelings, personal association, visualizations bear on the passage to try to get inside it and become intimate with it. (which character and why; characteristics like generosity; your response to a character or event
–filling our imagination with images that inspire and guide us in our spiritual journey
Oratio (prayer)
your own deepest feelings are invited to play
What God says to Jesus, God is saying to you
perhaps deep feeling or tears rise in you (a heart expression)
–express feelings, desires, and deepest yearning to be one with God
Contemplatio “resting in God”
mental and emotional work is suspended, faculties stilled
“like a weaned child with its mother” Ps 131
cataphatic work stop by conscious choice or through a suffusion of divine love (e.g. infused grace) that overwhelms and renders faculties into stillness
this is the “still point of the turning world”
deeper level than ordinary awareness and rational understanding
reverberate in the ground of your being
reborn deep with the heart
–a state of realized oneness with God
–essentially receptive; we receive a gift of divine awareness