Tips for daily Lectio Divina

1. Ensure that the place of the Lectio Divina and the time of day also allow you external silence, a necessary preliminary to inner silence.

"The Master is here and he is calling you" (cf. Jn 11:28), and to hear his voice you must silence other voices, to listen to the Word you must lower the tone of your words.

2. If God has called you to solitude, to silence, to a moment of dialogue with him, it is to speak to your heart.

The biblical heart is the center, the seat of the faculties.

intellectual aspects of man,

It is the most intimate center of your being.

3. Take the Bible, place it reverently before you because

This is the body of Christ; make the epiclesis, that is, the invocation to the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who presided over the generation of the Word, it is he who made it—spoken word or written word—through the prophets, the sages, Jesus, the apostles, the evangelists, it is

he who gave it to the Church and brought it intact to you.

4. Open the Bible and read the text. Never choose at random, because the Word of God cannot be skimmed. Obey the liturgical lectionary and accept the text that the Church offers you today, or read a book of the Bible from beginning to end, reading it in a flowing style.

5. What does it mean to meditate? It's not easy to say. It means, first of all, delving deeper into the message you have read and that God wants to communicate to you. This therefore requires effort, work, because the reading must become attentive and profound reflection.

6. Now speak to God, answer him, respond to his invitations, his calls, his inspirations, his requests, to the messages he has addressed to you through the Word understood in the Holy Spirit.

Excerpts from "Praying the Word" by Enzo Bianchi

© Éditions Albin Michel, 2014

ISBN: 978-2-226-33609-5