A Scripture-based Eucharistic spirituality

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A Scripture-based Eucharistic spirituality

Dom Mark-Ephrem addressed the conference on the theme of a scripture-based Eucharistic spirituality after reading the Emmaus Gospel, Luke 24:13-35.

In that gospel passage we heard Jesus challenging the disciples who walked the Emmaus road. We are told that he went as far as to rebuke them severely. A forewarning! Taking the Emmaus gospel as our guide for today's meeting with you, that is part of what we propose to do: to challenge you.

This a mission confided to us – not by your own Archbishop, I hasten to add, just in case you might suspect him of hiring us in to do the dirty work. No, our mandate comes first of all from the late John-Paul II who writing to those who live the Consecrated Life, stated in his Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata: "It is your duty to dare to speak a challenging prophetic word even to the Church's Pastors." (VC 84) Moreover, our own Diocesan Bishop, John McAreavey, spoke these words to our community on the occasion of the Solemn Dedication of our monastic church on 18 January, 2004: "We look to you to challenge us….We look to you to make us feel uncomfortable in many of the attitudes we take and to encourage us to look to a better future."

Our First Challenge
An Encounter with the Word of God in Lectio Divina.

Since I am perfectly convinced that it isn't anything we will say that will bring you very far and that the real challenge you should hear today should not come from us but from the Word of God, our idea for this morning is to set you out on a sure footing for today's reflections. And to this end we invite you to root yourselves in the Gospel. And so we suggest that, at the end of this 1st talk, you all take a time of personal lectio divina on the Emmaus gospel text.

Hopefully, today will give you some opportunities for sharing with one another: in groups, in the formal meetings proposed, and maybe in your more informal encounters and discussions with one another. But before you speak how important it is to listen!

Our suggestion of a time of personal lectio divina is not just a quaint idea introduced by two monks to help fill up the 2nd slot on this morning's timetable without their having to do all the work for you!
It is born of our conviction that the priest needs to experience this practice. And that, I hasten to add, is not just our conviction. Let me quote Dei Verbum, the Vatican II document, the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of which we have just celebrated. "All clerics, especially priests…. who are officially engaged in the Ministry of the Word, should immerse themselves in the Scriptures."

Now, if I am honest with you, my experience would suggest that many priests are some distance from realising this challenge of the Council. Most of you might paddle in the Bible every so often; many may even dip in and out regularly; but perhaps it is of a fewer number that it could truly be said that they are really immersed therein.

Put simply, I am not convinced that regular, assiduous lectio divina is a top priority for many clerics. Admittedly, probably every priest will turn to the Scriptures to prepare his Sunday homily, in order to give nourishment to his flock, but many will be living a scarce diet for themselves, depriving themselves of the food they need for the journey. Many will serve up to others what they haven't really tasted for themselves! If I am completely honest, I would have to say that I suspect many priests turn with more attention to a collection of prepared homilies or a commentary on the Scriptures than they do to the Living Word of God when they sit down to prepare their own homily.

This is saddening! To begin with – saddening for the priests themselves. For, priests will only be faithful and equipped to fulfil their mission in the Church and in the world if they can renew themselves constantly in the light of the Word of God.

But there is also a knock-on effect for others. Let's not shun our responsibility. It is saddening for the People of God if priests don't practice lectio divina. If Priests are not being faithful to lectio divina it is the whole People of God who suffer as a result, for to quote the Vatican II Decree on Priestly Ministry, chap. 2-Part 1 "The Functions of the Priest": The people of God finds its unity, first of all through the word of the living God, which is quite properly sought from the lips of priests… priests, as co-workers with their bishops, have as their primary duty the proclamation of the gospel of God to all. In this way they fulfil the Lord's command:
"Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every living creature" (Mark 16:15). Thus they establish and build up the people of God…Toward all men and women therefore, priests have the duty of sharing the gospel truth in which they themselves rejoice in the Lord… No doubt priestly preaching is often difficult in the circumstances of the modern world. If it is to influence the mind of the listener more fruitfully, such preaching must not present God's word in a general and abstract fashion only, but it must apply the perennial truth of the gospel to the concrete circumstances of life.

Here I throw in St Augustine's remark that none of us should become "An empty preacher of the Lord to others, because he is not a hearer of the word in his own heart."

N.B. What was stated there – in that Conciliar quotation: The first function of the priest is to be a minister of the Word.

I'm not at all sure that this teaching of Vatican II has really filtered down to us yet. I think most Catholics - priests included - see the first function of the priest to be the celebration of the sacraments; and preaching to be only incidental to that.
In light of this it seems to me that the real call for us today is to discover and come to the point where we truly have a Scripture-based Eucharistic Spirituality.
I repeat myself…

A SCRIPTURE-BASED EUCHARISTIC SPIRITUALITY!

Let me explain myself, concentrating on the word Spirituality to begin with in order to tease it out a little. Once again I quote John Paul II when he writes: "The Word of God is the first source of all Christian Spirituality." Now no one would accuse John Paul II of a minimalist view of the Eucharist. But note what he says: "It is the Word of God which is the first source of all Christian Spirituality. This is what I call proper Eucharistic logic. For, encounter with the Lord in the inspired Word of Scripture is the first step into the Eucharist that we celebrate day after day. And so it is that John Paul II goes on to encourage strongly what we seek to emphasise this morning: lectio divina.

I return to quoting the late Pope. In the same exhortation on listening to the word of God (VC 94), he goes on to say: 'It would be helpful if the practice of lectio divina which is typical of monastic spirituality were also encouraged among other members of the People of God, priests and laity alike. For, from familiarity with God's Word they would draw the light needed for that individual and Communal discernment which helps them to see the ways of the Lord in the signs of the times.'

It is only on this basis, with things thus firmly rooted in the Scriptures that John Paul goes on, in the next paragraph of his teaching on Christian Spirituality, to speak of the Sacred Liturgy, especially the Eucharist, as the place where Spiritual Communion with Christ is lived out.

I think I have adequately explained to you where we are coming from today.

So to come back to our Emmaus theme…Jesus first opened the Sacred Scriptures for them. Thus He prepared them. Only then were they to recognise Him fully in the breaking of bread. It was precisely as Jesus explained the Scriptures to them that their hearts burned within them. We are probably more attuned to thinking of burning hearts in moments of Eucharistic adoration with incense rising to the church rafters.

Without further ado, what I propose now is to introduce you to the monastic practice of lectio divina. For it is fine to speak of the importance - indeed the necessity of doing lectio divina - but the practical question of many (priests included) is how do you do it?

The first thing I want to stress is that lectio divina is not about us doing something with the Sacred Scriptures, but rather allowing the Sacred Scriptures to do something with us. It is about allowing ourselves to be challenged by the Word of God day after day, challenged and encouraged by this word to live a continual engagement in our response to the basic call of the gospel, which is one of conversion. Lectio divina challenges and encourages us to live a constant on-going conversion.

We have prepared a note for you as the steps to be followed during your personal time of lectio. So later on you will have a simple step-by-step guide. Basically I'll go through those steps with you now before sending you off to your rooms to encounter the Lord in the Emmaus text for yourselves.

The First Step: "Ask and it will be given you" – Call on the Holy Spirit.
The first and indispensable step of the time we consecrate to lectio divina and the choice of the word consecrate is deliberate! I repeat… the first and indispensable step in the time we consecrate to lectio divina is the epiclesis; our invocation of the Spirit.

This is what makes our reading of the Bible true Spirituality. Spirit-filled reading lectio divina means literally Divine Reading. It is God's Spirit reading the Sacred Scriptures in us.

The Scriptures become the life-giving Word of God only when God's Spirit animates the person who reads them. St Gregory the Great teaches: "The same Spirit which moved the souls of the prophets - those who first pronounced the words - now moves the heart of the reader." While, for his part, William of St. Thierry, the early Cistercian teacher states: "The Scriptures need to be read by the light of that same Spirit in which they were written for they can only be understood in that light."

Remember, in the Eucharist we have a double epiclesis: one, on the bread and wine, another on the body of the Church celebrating the Sacred Mysteries.

Likewise when we read the Sacred Scriptures, it is both on the text and upon ourselves that we invoke the Holy Spirit, so that the text we read may become the Word of the Living God for us and in us today!

Just as we don't ever celebrate the Eucharist alone, but always in the communion of the Church, so in lectio divina, seeking to encounter the Lord personally, we must recall that Christ is inseparable from His body, the Church - that is to say the Tradition in which the Word was written and now speaks.

So we don't, we can't, ever practice lectio divina on our own, even if we do our lectio in a solitary way. The Church is there.

The exercise we are preparing for – a time of personal lectio (which each one will live in the personal space of his own room) has the merit today of being lived by all of us together - that's to say at the same time. So, it will be evident that we are listening both personally and communally. We'll be listening to what the Spirit is saying to us in the secret of our hearts and to the Church - the Body that we form together.

I recently heard one of my confrères make a very valid point – one to which I readily subscribe – and so I share it with you. Fr. Eric stated: "The coming of the Holy Spirit, for which we prepare by prayer and receptiveness, produces detachment." In other words, in lectio properly lived, a letting go takes place within us. We cannot give our attention to the word we are reading if the centre of our attention is our ego. We cannot be free for God's action in us if we are clinging like grim death to ourselves. Lectio divina should lead us into a freedom from our unhealthy selves. Of course, it takes effort on our behalf to detach ourselves from our own interior agenda. It takes effort, or, at least, it requires a willingness on our behalf, to let go. We need to let fall our own false egocentricity in order to seek and to listen to God, in order to allow Him to become the true Centre of our being in and through our lectio.

2nd Step: "Seek by Reading"
Open the Bible and read and here I would like to say that our lectio divina should engage the whole of our being (mind, heart and body are all involved).

A word about the body to begin with. If we normally read the words with our eyes we should also normally pronounce them with our lips in order to listen to them with our ears. Our memory comes into play as we seek to retain the words read and our intellect comes into play as we try to understand the meaning of the words we read and hold them in our hearts.

First, read the text to receive its thoughts – not yours! Do not be in too great a hurry to apply the text! A trap into which the preacher frequently falls is to see the text of God's Word only as a pretext for his own Script.

Recently I had an elderly priest who was doing his first directed retreat. With the Scriptural texts he was given for lectio, he wrote a homily for an imaginary congregation which had little or anything to do with the Biblical basis from which he had started and certainly nothing to do with his own life. Only towards the end of the retreat did we start to go anywhere as he eventually copped on that the retreat was meant to be about his own conversion in response to the call of God's Word addressed to him... and not to deal with the moral/immoral issues of his imaginary congregation who sounded as if they were from the seediest district of Corinth.

So, I repeat, do not be in too great a hurry to apply the text or you may understand it only in the light of your own ideas or your own particular circumstances or those of the people to whom you minister. Application can and has to be made – but only in due course.

Receive the Word with its objective meaning first of all; try to understand it on its own terms. While subjectivism should come into play, it is to be avoided at this point.

Do not hesitate to read the text several time – perhaps, as I've already suggested, aloud. Understand me, I'm not talking of a loud proclamation of the text, more of a gentle whisper. These Biblical texts were born in an oral tradition. They aren't written texts as we might compose a written text. So we only savour them if we hear them. St. Benedict makes an interesting point when he says that some brothers may wish to practise Lectio Divina during the siesta time. If so, he insists, they should be careful not to disturb the sleep of their brothers. Clearly they would have been reading their texts aloud.

It is by examining the letter of the text in its materiality that we shall discover its spiritual message.

We move from letter to the spirit. There is no way of discovering the Spiritual message of the text without concentrating on the text itself.

Attention is vital here. We must engage our faculty for attention at this step. And this is not easy. We are often very distracted people.

Once again, it is the whole of our being – our attention included! – that should be engaged as we seek to listen to God speak to us in and through the text. Caesaruis of Arles gives us this warning: "Someone who listens to the Word half-heartedly (inattentively) deserves the same blame as someone who negligently lets the Lord's body drop on the street." Origen has something similar to say when he speaks about how we are scrupulous not to let fragments of the consecrated bread fall to the ground in our Eucharistic celebrations; for him, we should be likewise scrupulous not to lose or let fall any of God's inspired words.
I alluded to distractions. What can we do when our mind is just all over the place? What can we do to learn another way of reading than just scanning – or more likely skimming over – the pages before us?

Well, without trying to imitate the copyists of the Book of Kells, we might simply copy the text or write it down. You'll be surprised what you will discover this way.

I remember being given an exercise at school one Friday evening at the end of an English literature class. We were all first year students and the teacher asked us to copy out two pages of the set novel of the year's reading programme.

On the Monday he collected our hand written texts and then on the Tuesday took great pleasure in handing us back our corrected copies. Not one of us had actually managed to copy the text correctly. He imposed detention on the whole class for the rest of the week.
It was a good lesson. He had made his point. None of us knew how to read attentively. (Admittedly he was probably just a sadist who wanted to frighten us to death for the rest of the year…but all the same he made a very valid point!)

3rd Step: "And you shall find" – meditate.
With this third step, we are invited to meditate upon the text, to reflect on it with our understanding. We are invited to search, to use our capacity to explore the avenues opened by the text.

At this point we begin to analyse the text a little. Tools of Biblical scholarship can be useful, as can commentaries of the Fathers of the Church, or the insights of other spiritual writers, but there is also a risk in all of these because the purpose of lectio divina is not to read on the text, about the text, around the text. The purpose of lectio divina is to meditate on the text itself. What is important is to do so in the text's wider Biblical context.

What will be most beneficial to us to expand our reading will be to read the footnotes in our Bibles and to look up the references in our margins and to compare our text with the parallel texts indicated to us. Why? Because all the books of the Bible form a whole and the great tradition has always understood that Scripture should be interpreted by Scripture.

This is precisely what the Emmaus gospel story depicts Jesus as having done with the disciples. He opened Scripture with Scripture for them – looking at the law, the Prophets and the writings to show how everything ties up and holds together. Helped by Jesus to understand the meaning of all the Scriptures, the disciples eventually grasped the whole message about the Messiah.

Blessed Francis of Siena comes in with a warning to us at this point. "Remember, the teacher in lectio divina should not be erudition but the Spirit's anointing, not knowledge but wisdom, not words on paper but love."

Guigo the Carthusian in his classical letter on lectio divina calls the first steps of meditation chewing over the text (ruminatio). "Chew the words over in your heart and apply the message to yourself, he counsels."

The most important part of our searching is our reflection, our rumination, likened to the animal's chewing of the cud. This term originates in the vocabulary of St. Pachomius - so it comes from the very earliest days of monasticism. It is the operation whereby we assimilate the Word we have read, heard and are trying to understand.

Just as the cow chews the cud, swallows it and then brings up in its mouth again what it has swallowed in order to savour its taste anew and moreover each time it does this draw from it another nutritional level, so we are invited to taste and see how good the Lord is by ruminating the Word.

Remember lectio divina is rooted in the Hebrew method of reading the Scriptures. A fine example of the word being ruminated is the long psalm of meditation on God's word – Ps. 118. Enzo Bianchi says:. The purpose of our meditation in lectio divina is to seek savour, not science. Scripture is Jacob's well: By meditation we draw from it the water which we then pour out in prayer.

This leads us naturally into our 4th Step 'Knock by praying'- Pray to the Lord who has spoken to you. St Ambrose's famous phrase comes to mind: "Listen to Him when you read the divine oracles, speak to Him when you pray".

Prayer is the purpose and goal of lectio divina. Lectio divina is about praying the Scriptures. Once the Lord has spoken to you – speak with Him. Enter into dialogue with Him. Enter into a conversation with God. There are moments when we will live a prayer of wonder, of adoration, of awe; others when we will be led into a prayer of humble confession because we've recognised our failure to live up to the call addressed to us; others when we will enter into a time of supplication, petition and intercession… and hopefully, too, a response of praise and thanksgiving will be awakened within us regularly.

The 5th Step:
The door is opened to us – we enter into contemplation. This is not a spaced-out moment! Though we can know spiritual contemplations which are moments of pure gift, times when it is simply good to be there with the Lord - in communion with ourselves and with others.
But I'm afraid sometimes our expectations are not quite right in regard to contemplation. We are inclined to want something a little exotic; we hanker after some elevated experience. So we frequently feel let-down and something of a failure. An explanation with a note of caution is maybe in order. Contemplatio – contemplation for the ancients was not an ecstatic experience, a cloud-nine trip, but simply what the Word says literally: contemplatio was about seeing! In the context of lectio divina it means seeing the Lord, recognising Christ, as a result of our reading. To contemplate a text was/is to see the Word of God in the reality of our lives, to recognise its application in the concrete situations we encounter… and so contemplation leads us beyond our allotted lectio time. We are called to contemplate the Word that we have read, meditated and prayed in all the events of our day. Let me quote Enzo Bianchi here:

"Contemplatio refers not to mystical or ecstatic experiences but to a level of communication inexpressible in words: silence, tears, the presence of the lover to the beloved, discernment of the Lord's unutterable presence. Contemplatio also indicates the work accomplished in us by the Spirit who inhabits the Word: the Spirit creates in us patience, endurance, inner unification, discernment, a Eucharistic attitude and compassion for all of creation – in a word, love that overflows. This is essentially how 'lectio divina' helps us make the transition between the Word and our life: it makes us people who know how to listen, and therefore people of faith.

(Words of Spirituality p.46)

• KEEP THE WORD IN YOUR HEART

At various times of the day, go over the passage, even just one verse from it, in your memory. This fosters awareness of God, which can unify and centre your whole day – your work, your rest, your social life and your moments of solitude.

• DON'T FORGET THAT TO LISTEN MEANS TO OBEY…PUT INTO PRACTICE

If you have really listened to the Word, you will put it into practice: To listen is to obey. Commit yourself to putting God's word into action.

PRACTICAL GUIDELINES FOR LECTIO DIVINA

May I just give a few practical guidelines for an authentic commitment to Lectio Divina for everyday life when you return to the place from whence you came to Bundoran?

I base my practical hints of words of William of St. Thierry. I quote from his work, "The Golden Epistle." "At fixed hours, time should be set aside to do definite reading. Haphazard reading, constantly varied and spontaneously chosen, not only fails to edify the soul but actually robs us of our stability."

Note what he is saying there. For lectio divina there must be fixed hours and a definite reading not texts that are chosen out of our subjective mood. Our reading should normally take place at a fixed time and usually a fixed place is also very helpful here. We need discipline. Sufficient time is needed. We might need to experiment to begin with to discover the most suitable time for our lectio divina – a time that favours calm, quiet, a time without likely interruptions. Lectio divina cannot/should not be relegated the left-over times of the day. If we don't set apart a definite time for lectio it just won't happen regularly and fruitfully. We need definite reading. Lectio divina is not going to be really beneficial if we content ourselves just to page through the scriptures once in a while, moving whimsically from one paragraph to another.

We need a daily lectionary with the readings set out. At least we should plan which specific passages we will read. We have to read consistently and in some order. Looking around for passages that suit our moods is reducing the Bible to a book in which we search for what we want to find, we search for ourselves and not for Christ or for where the Spirit wants to take us. We are all tempted to choose texts that will produce exalted feelings but we should not forget that the real benefit of God's Word is that it is our daily bread. Like all healthy nourishment, it cannot always satisfy our tastes and appetites, though occasionally it is particularly enjoyable.

Re: the lectionary. That proposed by the church is excellent. It will make us journey throughout the Scriptures. It has the merit of making us listen to a word being addressed to our brethren and to all the People of God.

Fidelity / Consistency. Here we have the key to a fruitful lectio divina. Reading the scriptures requires constant effort. If we are consistent and assiduous to this form of prayer we will soon discover just how much the Scriptures can fashion our thought, renew our minds and hearts. We will start harvesting from the Scriptures. The Word memorised and interiorized will begin to have effect upon us as it penetrates our spirit and even our body.

The Vatican II Constitution "Dei Verbum" talks of the priest needing to be immersed in the Word of God, steeped in the Sacred Scriptures. We must learn to soak in the words of the Bible until we become like sponges able to give out when pressed not just our words, but our works fashioned by God's life-giving Word.

The real challenge of lectio divina is that the Word take flesh within us. I think the Rev. Ruth Patterson has analysed things right when speaking of the People of God in Ireland today she says that our people have grown tired of words – our words – they long to hear the Word … They long to encounter Jesus Christ in and through their meetings with us.

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