Lectio Divina Reading

March 23, 2003

Lectio According to Juliana of Norwich

The words Our Lord addressed to her help us to understand how to value divine reading in our lives. Although not so specifically intended in his directions to her to reading itself, we can see how it applies. Our Lord revealed himself to her as he does to us in our Lectio.

"He left me with his own blessed word in true understanding, bidding me most powerfully to believe it, and I do so , blessed may he be!

I believe that he who showed it to me is our savior, and that it is in faith that he showed it.

Therefore I Love it, ever rejoicing, and I am bound to it by everything he himself meant, together with his word, "Keep yourself in it, comfort yourself with it, and trust it."

Thus I am bound to keep it in faith. In the six commands that follow; "Take it", his intention is to fasten it faithfully in our hearts, for he wills that it dwell with us in faith until the end of our lives, and afterwards with the fullness of joy, trust in his blissful commands and promises, and know his goodness. Our Precious Lover helps us with spiritual sight and light and true teaching on different matters, interior and exterior, by which we can know him. And therefore, in whatever way he teaches, he wills that we perceive him wisely, receive him sweetly, and keep ourselves in him faithfully.

How Our Lord communicates Himself t us as we look to him in our reading:

"Glad, merry and sweet is the blissful, lovely expression of Our Lord to our souls. For he sees us always living in Love-Longing and he wills that our souls look to him with a glad expression, in order to give him his reward…By means of his grace he has drawn and will further draw the outer expression of the Word the inner disposition and will make us entirely One with him and with one another in the true lasting joy that is Jesus."

(Chapters 70 & 71, Juliana, Showings of Divine Love)