Three Common Traps

How to avoid some pitfalls when it comes to lectio divina

As I’ve talked with people about lectio divina over the years, three common pitfalls have emerged and I’d like to tackle them one at a time.

Not Smart Enough

Fundamentally, lectio divina is a spiritual practice. It’s not a scholarly one, though it can certainly aid one’s scholarship. Spirituality has more to do with knowing God, than knowing things about God.

Now, this is not to say lectio’s not theological. Insofar as the fundamental content is God’s word — which is to say, God — lectio is theological. However, it’s not theological not in the sense that we would understand theology today, as in the scientific or systematic study of God. Instead, it is theological because the words of Scripture are God’s words and they put us in touch with God’s Word, the Logos (Theo-Logos).

This is a long preamble. The basic point is that lectio divina describes a spirituality of coming into contact with the mystery of God through the Sacred Pages of Scripture. It’s not an exercise in erudition, but of prayer. It’s not about “getting the answer right,” but “hearing God’s word rightly.” This means disposing ourselves to be moved, provoked, and changed by it. Disposing ourselves to hear it and to respond to it.

While we are trying to hear God’s word personally — spoken into the now of our lives — we do need to work to make sure we’re understanding the literal sense of the passage we’re reading in light of the Church and her way of reading Scripture (CCC §112–114). Lectio is not an exercise in subjectivism. The text communicates and it’s our job to pick up on what it’s saying in and of itself. As long as we’re seeking that kind of understanding and listening for God’s voice, we’re not going to veer off course too far. Fr. Michael Casey puts it this way:

We simply affirm that for one who is seeking God in a spirit of openness to the future, and with an ample supply of both common sense and integrity, occasions of going badly astray are relatively few. We are not infallible and sometimes we misread persons, situations, and texts; no great harm is done if we have an ordinary level of prudence and humility.¹

We’re not engaged in highfalutin exegesis when we’re reading prayerfully. Instead, we’re relating the text to our lives, and our lives to the text. And when we pray lectio in a group setting, we’re not trying to one-up each other with elaborate questions or sophisticated answers. We’re not pontificating. We’re simply trying to listen to what God has to say and to articulate the impact of his voice in our lives.

Again, one doesn’t have to be a scripture scholar to pray lectio, and praying lectio doesn’t make you a scripture scholar. But, it can help you grow in holiness because somehow God becomes present to us through the inspired words of Scripture, and anytime we come into contact with God, we are changed.

Thinking You’re Not Praying Lectio Because You’re Not Following the Method

Sometimes people feel like they aren’t praying lectio because they aren’t following the “lectio method.” They aren’t following the rungs of the “lectio ladder” in order: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation). While they may not be “following the script,” they are reading Scripture and reflecting upon it. Usually daily. They might even be continually reflecting on what they read during the day. This sounds a lot like lectio to me.

We must remember that before lectio was given a method by Guigo II in the twelfth century, it was rather methodless. We can’t forget this. It’s impossible to know the true origins of lectio, but it’s safe to say it was well over 600 years old by the guide Guigo’s Ladder of Monks came along. At the bottom if it, lectio divina is not a formula, a method, or a mechanism. It’s a prayerful reading of holy texts (usually Scripture). It involves ruminating on those texts and trying to get the words in you so that you know them by heart and they change you. Of course this begins with reading (lectio) the word. God gets the first word, so we encounter the text. But what happens from there may take on a life of its own. Those elements of meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio likely get all jumbled up and mixed together. The free-flowing movement of lectio takes over, until you return to the word of God and allow it to move you again.

I find Guigo’s ladder method incredibly helpful for beginners and groups. I use it when teaching individuals and groups all the time. I also find it helpful in my own lectio divina when I’m distracted and need a roadmap out of my own head. That said, I rarely use it in my own ruminations. The original monastic lectio had no concrete method even if there were common elements. This can be true for us as well.

Not Magic

Lectio divina has to do with hearing God’s word personally. But, sometimes, I think how we teach lectio can be problematic, because it can sound like its magic. We talk about listening for a word or a phrase that seems to “stand out” to us, or “jump off the page” at us. Lectio isn’t some weird practice like a Christian ouija board, nor are we trying to conjure anything up. You don’t need a philosopher’s stone to get some golden nuggets out of the pages of Scripture. We shouldn’t put pressure on the text like that, or on ourselves.

Here’s the deal: All the words of Scripture are already God’s words. They’re all God-breathed (see 2 Tim 3:16). Any one of them, or any combination of them, at any time, are capable of speaking to us and reaching us at a deep level. Sure, a passage may seem dry at one point in time and come alive at another. Life has seasons and seasons have ebbs and flows. What didn’t strike me then might strike me now. But we’re not trying to “make something happen.” We’re simply reading, repeating, listening, ruminating, praying, and trying to allow the word more and more room deep in our hearts.

Sometimes, when I pray lectio, nothing in particular stands out. Sometimes what stands out makes no sense to me. Sometimes I’m left with more questions than answers (actually, that’s true most of the time). I think it’s important to chill out and not put so much pressure on lectio, like getting too fixated on finding that word or those words jumping out at me.

Again, all the words on the page are already God’s words. I’m just trying to hear what he has to say to me with and through them, that I may understand him, myself, and my life in the light of his Word. In light of this, there are times when I’ve seemingly stalled out such that I’ll just pick a line seemingly at random and try to reflect deeply on that. Of course, any piece of insight, inspiration, or interpretation I receive during lectio cannot be guaranteed to have come from God and must be subject to discernment.

I do think the four-step method from Guigo can play into this pitfall. We can get too fixated on finding that word or those words between the steps of lectio and meditatio. Then we can panic if we’ve got nothing and either feel like we’ve got to force it, like our hearing aids are broken, or like God has abandoned us. This is why the original, methodless approach can be liberating. It’s less about that word or those words. Sure, I might get stuck on several words. I might pour over them. I might repeat a whole line over and over, as if I’m driving it deeper and deeper into my being. I might read a passage fifteen or twenty times. It’s more about what the text as a whole seems to be saying, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

1. Casey, Sacred Reading, 54.