WITH regard to the practice of lectio divina, please explore the articles downloadable from the section on lectio divina accessible from the Bibliography link on the navigation panel to the left.  Feel free, also, to explore the Lectio Divina link on the navigation panel.  Biblical texts and patristic writings used at Mass and the Divine Office (which are excellent matter for lectio divina) may be found at the Universalis Website (https://www.universalis.com/USA/0/mass.htm).
 

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

IN order to reappropriate the ancient, traditional understanding of Christian contemplation and contemplative prayer, it is first necessary to remind ourselves of the natural rhythms of human experience.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

THE adjective apophatic was first used by the sixth-century Christian mystic, Dionysius the Areopagite, to described a “Way of Negation” whereby we acknowledge the limitation of all theological images, words, and concepts in the presence of the God Who transcends all images, words, and concepts.

AND yet the Incarnation requires us to embrace as well the  kataphatic “Way of Affirmation” which proclaims the absolute necessity and value of images, words, and concepts in our relationship with the Word made flesh.-

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

IT is possible to very roughly characterize different Christian spiritual practices according to their tendency to emphasize either kataphatic or apophatic spiritual experience - or both.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINKS: CONTEMPLATION;  MEDITATION

IT will be helpful to remind ourselves of the classical and biblical meanings of the words contemplation and meditation as well as their use in early and medieval Christianity.

CONTEMPLATION (Latin contemplatio/contemplare; Greek theōria/theōreō: θεωρία/θεωρέω).  Literally, beholding, seeing. For Plato and the Christian authors from the third century onwards it describes a deep, mystical perception by the nous or deepest part of the soul (the image of God), a beholding of the underlying meanings or purposes of God  hidden beneath surface appearance.

In the New Testament the noun is used only once, together with the verb in Luke 23:49, of the crowds who have beheld (theōrountes/ θεωροῦντες) the spectacle (theōria/θεωρία) of the crucifixion of Christ.

MEDITATION (Latin meditatio/meditare, Greek melétē/meletáō: μελέτη/μελετάω).  In the Septuagint (Greek version of the Old Testament) it is used frequently in the context of “meditating on the law” in the sense of study, practice, repeating to one’s self in order to memorize.  In classical Greek it meant “care, attention”, practice, exercise, and repetition, rehearsal by an orator of his speech.

See also the 1989 Document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

THE use of short repeated phrases in Christian prayer is first attested in the monastic literature of the fourth century: namely, The Letter to Marcellinus (on psalmody) by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria; the Sayings (apophthegmata) of the desert fathers and mothers; and especially in the Ninth and Tenth Conferences of Saint John Cassian.

DURING the next eight hundred years this practice is only occasionally alluded to in the spiritual literature of East and West.  It blossoms into prominence in the high middle ages in the West as the paternoster and rosary prayers, and in the East as the Jesus Prayer; and detailed descriptions and commentaries abound from the fourteenth century to the present.

See also the 1989 document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation.

 NAVIG.BAR:  LITURG.CONTEMPL.;   PSALMODY / SONG

ONE of the most traditional forms of Christian kataphatic contemplation is the practice of hymnody and psalmody, both at the Divine Office and in the Eucharistic Liturgy.  The importance of Liturgical Contemplation is attested throughout the history of Christianity, in the mystagogical sermons of the fourth and fifth centuries and in spiritual authors such as Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus Confessor.

CHRISTIAN poems and hymns are found in the New Testament.   Together with the antiphons that precede and follow the psalms in Gregorian chant, these musical icons are the distilled contemplative experience of our Christian forbears, transformed into poetry and music.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

THE ancient Christian practice of lectio divina, the slow, meditative pondering of Sacred Scripture, is an art inherited from Judaism.  It allows the gentle, contemplative reading of Sacred Scripture to become an experience of prayer: that is, dialogue with God and gentle rest in the presence of God.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

THE definitive “Yes!” to the use of sacred images in Christian catechesis and prayer is found, for West, in the letters of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who wrote around the year 600.  In the Christian East the “iconoclastic” (lit. image-smashing) controversy raged for nearly a century and was settled at the Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the year 787.  Sacred images can serve as a “window into heaven”, and are an important means of kataphatic contemplative prayer.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

THE admittedly-ancient, but often problematic, tendency to regard some forms of prayer as superior or as evidence of advanced spiritual state should be moderated by awareness that different types of prayer may easy or difficult because of personality type or “temperament.”  The significance of temperament (krasis; mixture/attunement), its derangements and restoration (eurhythmia), have been a subject of philosophical, spiritual and medical study for more than two and a half millennia, and is receiving renewed attention in our own day.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

THE art of contemplative exegesis, also called allegorical interpretation, seeks to uncover beneath the literal/historical sense of the sacred text deeper levels of meaning, including: a moral or ethical imperative; an allegorical or christological sense, and an anagogical or heavenly/eschatological level in which time and space are transcended in the presence of the God Who is the Eternal Now.

SKILL in this textual art enables the practitioner to look up from the Sacred Text and apply this technique to the perception of and interaction with other human beings.  Both the innermost self and the neighbor can thus increasingly bee seen as bearing the Divine Image.

 NAVIGATION BAR LINK

IN an age where interpersonal relationships are increasingly contaminated by social and  political polarization it become more important than ever to appreciate the value of human and Christian community.  Saint Basil the Great offers wise reflections on the importance of community and the dangers of isolation.