{"id":1426,"date":"2019-09-06T13:47:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T18:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/?p=1426"},"modified":"2019-09-06T22:42:23","modified_gmt":"2019-09-07T03:42:23","slug":"lectio-divina-part-iii-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/?p=1426","title":{"rendered":"Lectio Divina Part III: Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We continue our exploration of Lectio Divina<\/em>, the classic Christian method of meditative\nprayer. By now, you recall the four chief components: 1) Reading, 2)\nMeditation, 3) Prayer, and 4) Contemplation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole point of reading and meditating is to allow prayer and contemplation to well up within our heart. Our disciplined commitment will begin to pay off. God will beckon us beneath the surface, where most of us prefer to spend our time. If we allow it, he will plunge us into the deep places of our heart, and the real praying can begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scripture uses the word \u201cheart\u201d hundreds of times. So do the\nSaints. Authentic prayer is always prayer of the heart. The heart is where we\nencounter the living God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn\u2019t it interesting how a bodily organ becomes so symbolic? Our \u201cheart\u201d represents the seat of all our relationships, the core of our being, and the inner sanctuary in which our truest self is found. Literary experts might refer to this usage of “heart” as metonymy<\/a>, but it also somehow resonates with our everyday experience! We feel our heart racing when we are attracted or aroused. We feel our heart ache when we are spurned or rejected. We feel our heart go numb when we are ignored or abandoned. We know what it feels like to \u201copen our heart\u201d or to \u201charden our heart.\u201d We know what it feels like when others do the same to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes people think of \u201chead\u201d and \u201cheart\u201d as opposites. Not\nso. Scripture speaks of \u201cthoughts of the heart\u201d just as much as it does of\nrejoicing or groaning or sighing. In the biblical sense, \u201cthe heart\u201d integrates\nall that is core to our humanity: thinking, feeling, imagining, remembering,\ndesiring, hoping, and willing. Our fallen world and fallen human condition keep\ntempting us to be fragmented and compartmentalized. Our heart is where the\nintegration is meant to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The head and heart need not be opposed, any more than \u201cthe\ngut\u201d and the heart are opposed. Both Scripture and our everyday experiences\nspeak of our guts as the locus of our strongest emotions. We have a \u201cvisceral\nreaction\u201d or a \u201cgut feeling.\u201d We feel emotions intensely there \u2013 but do not\nalways know how to handle them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know, I know, you scientists in the group will tells us that\nit is the human brain that generates our emotions and sensations as well as our\nthoughts. But tell that to a man with a toothache or an ingrown toenail! For\neveryday purposes, we can definitely understand \u201cthe heart\u201d as the core of our\nbeing, the seat of our relationships, and the inner sanctuary in which we\nencounter the living God. It is there that authentic prayer happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that sense, yes, one extreme is to be overly cerebral in our meditation \u2013 to stay at the level of thinking only, and never allow our heart to be touched or moved. I have known many Christians who feel comfortable having ideas about God and faith \u2013 perhaps even talking about God and faith \u2013 but they struggle to describe any actual encounter or conversation or relationship with him. In some cases, a real relationship is there, and shows its good fruit in their lives; they just struggle with self-awareness. In other cases, there are adamantine walls around the heart, protecting the dark or painful places that we long ago compartmentalized in a spirit of self-protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the opposite extreme, we find sentimentality. We can prefer\nto live in the realm of emotions only, and avoid any seriousness in our\nrelationships. Prayer is not predominantly about good feelings any more than it\nis about lofty thoughts. Yes, it is common to have our emotions inflamed when\nwe begin to pray in a serious way. We are falling in love with God. But  genuine prayer is not about having a\nfeel-good experience. Eventually we will need to learn to love God more\nthan good feelings about God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, being overly cerebral or overly sentimental are\njust two different ways of avoiding encounter and walling ourselves off from\nmeaningful relationships. Avoiding and numbing are so much easier than entering\ninto full communion with God and others. When we learn authentic Christian\nprayer, we begin to put out into the deep waters \u2013 yielding our control and following\nwhere the adventure may lead us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to Lectio\nDivina<\/em>, \u201cPrayer\u201d (the third component) translates the Latin word Oratio<\/em>. Those of you who speak Spanish\nare familiar with the difference between orar<\/em>\nand rezar<\/em>. Both are translated \u201cto\npray.\u201d But rezar<\/em> has more a sense of\nreciting prayers, whereas orar<\/em>\ndescribes a heart-to-heart conversation with God. The two are not opposed; we\ncan do them both at the same time. Remember that Jesus taught us to recite the\nOur Father, and intended us to engage our heart when we do so, truly entrusting\nand surrendering ourselves to God as a loving Father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oratio<\/em>, the third\ncomponent of Lectio Divina<\/em> is the\npoint at which our heart begins encountering God and spending time with him.\nThe experience can vary. It can involve feeling, thinking, imagining, remembering,\ndesiring, delighting, rejoicing, speaking, listening, sighing, weeping,\nrepenting,  firmly resolving, and so much\nmore. Oratio<\/em> begins happening quite\nspontaneously, like wood catching fire. We need not and should not strain to\nmake it happen \u2013 any more than we strain ourselves in our spontaneous love for\nspouse or children or friends. As in those relationships, when we have a moment\nof intimacy, we hopefully learn to drop the other things we are doing and let\nthe moment happen. As in those relationships, more moments happen if we bring a\nlistening ear, an open heart, an attentive posture, and plenty of quality time\nspent together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we find our heart touched in prayer, it is so important not to move on too quickly! One touch of the heart can sustain our prayer for days or even months. When God opens up these heavenly streams in our heart, it becomes a wellspring that we can keep going back to. Ignatius of Loyola offers the image of a sponge slowly soaking up every drop of God\u2019s love. If there is a particular verse of Scripture, image, thought, memory, or impulse that captivates us, we can keep returning to it when we notice our mind or heart wandering. As long as it keeps consoling us, it is working. We will have a sense of when to move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we meditate and pray, we can learn to avoid rigidity (\u201cI have to do it in exactly this way\u2026\u201d) as well as avoiding laziness or complacency. Discipline pays off, but only if we allow our heart to be open \u2013 and often to be surprised. God is full of surprises. Indeed, sometimes the biggest graces are given at other times of the day, when we are least looking for God. In that case, be flexible! Allow the moment with him to happen, and then return to that moment of grace the next day, allowing it to become the new content of your meditation and prayer. The more and the better we pray, the more we notice what God is doing. The more we savor what he is doing and respond lovingly, the more and the better we will pray. It becomes a virtuous cycle that leads us deeper into the heart of the living God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Be Concluded\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We continue our exploration of Lectio Divina, the classic Christian method of meditative prayer. By now, you recall the four chief components: 1) Reading, 2) Meditation, 3) Prayer, and 4) Contemplation. The whole point of reading and meditating is to allow prayer and contemplation to well up within our heart. Our disciplined commitment will begin … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Lectio Divina Part III: Prayer”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,55,54],"tags":[129,198,204,114,206],"class_list":["post-1426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-saints","category-scripture","category-spirituality","tag-ignatius-of-loyola","tag-lectio-divina","tag-meditation","tag-prayer","tag-scripture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Oratio.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}