Cantio Dei! + weekly Q&A+Lectio divina

Welcome new blog follower Cantio Dei! That is a really cool user name, although I can only guess at what it means. I sing of God, perhaps?  My Latin is pretty awful: lots of  vocabulary but virtually no grasp of case or tense.

Speaking of Latin terms, are any of you practioners of Lectio Divina? The way I understand it--which is at a very, very basic level, it's a prayerful method of spiritual reading, wherein you take a short passage of scripture (or some other spiritual work), and do the following:
1. read it! (duh)
2. think about it, especially about how it applies to you: What is God possibly telling me here?
3. Pray--talk to God about what you noticed in step 2.
4. Contemplate--stop talking and just rest in whatever truth,goodness, beauty and love have been revealed in steps 1-3.

Now, I don't tend to do a lot of Lectio Divina, because I have a hard time reading only a short passage. I feel psychologically driven to complete a chapter or other major chunk of whatever it is I"m reading. But it dawned on me today that the readings for morning, daytime, and evening prayer are teenie-tiny little things. Unlike when I have an open Bible in my lap, there is no temptation to read the rest of the chapter, because it's not there! So when I have time, I now do a quick lectio divina exercise with these readings.

This morning for example, that little bit in 1 Peter about putting one's gifts to use according to the measure in which they were received--it gave me some lovely clarity about a project I'd been contemplating. It was great to relax and "contemplate" with gratitude, this little love note God had sent me.

Don't know how consistently I"ll stick with this new little wrinkle to my lauds and vespers routine, but I hope it lasts. It will put some new life into readings that I've eyeballed thousands of times over the years.

Now, please, don't one of you experts in contemplative prayer tell me I"m doing this all wrong!

Okay, weekly Q&A/comment  time. Give it all you've got.

Making an Old Psalm New Again--Today

One thing we all love about the Liturgy of the Hours is its variety. 150 psalms, dozens of canticles, hundreds of readings and antiphons. You can pray the hours for years and years, yet still find something new every day.

But after 20 or 30 years, finding something new each day takes a little more work than it used to. Trust me on that.  So it's nice to keep a few commentaries around, and once in a while crack one open and see what it says about a particular psalm.

That's what I did today. I checked out what the Navarre Bible said about good old Psalm 95, aka the Invitatory psalm. There's something to be said for having a psalm memorized. It gives you the ability to pray it wherever you are. The downside is the temptation to rattle it off without much thought. But for the next few weeks, at least, that won't be my problem. Because of this brief comment on  verse 7, "Today, listen to the voice of the Lord":

Every time a person says this psalm, "today" should be taken literally.

Wow. God isn't telling me to listen to Him in general, but today.
Today He is telling me something. Will I hear it?
Today there is something He wants me to do. Will I notice?
What must I do to enable me to hear his voice today?

That single word, today, is now wrapped up in my mind with other scriptural phrases, like "Be sober! Be alert!" and  "Now is the day of salvation!"

So look up a psalm in a commentary and see what might happen to you!





The Navarre Bible: The Psalms and The Song of Solomon (The Navarre Bible: Old Testament)