Lectio Divina: How to Pray It, with Psalm 23

Lectio divina is reading the Bible as a letter from someone who loves you, rather than as a textbook. You take a short passage, read it slowly, often aloud, more than once, and let a word or phrase stop you. You turn it over. You speak to God about it. And then you are quiet with him.

It is as old as Christian prayer. Pope Benedict XVI traces it to the Fathers of the Church, quoting St. Augustine: “Your prayer is the word you speak to God. When you read the Bible, God speaks to you; when you pray, you speak to God,” and Origen, who told a student to devote himself to “the lectio of the divine Scriptures” and, when he met a closed door in the text, to knock (Verbum Domini 86). St. Benedict built it into the monastic day, setting hours for it in chapter 48 of his Rule. In the twelfth century a Carthusian monk, Guigo II, prior of the Grande Chartreuse from 1174 to 1180, described its four steps in a short letter known as the Scala Claustralium, the “Ladder of Monks,” picturing them as the rungs of Jacob’s ladder between earth and heaven.

The Second Vatican Council asked every Catholic to go “gladly to the sacred text itself,” and to remember that “prayer should accompany the reading of sacred Scripture” (Dei Verbum 25, quoted in Verbum Domini 86). The Catechism quotes St. Jerome’s warning, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (CCC 133), and gives lectio divina, with the Rosary, as its example of Christian meditation on the mysteries of Christ (CCC 2708).

In Verbum Domini 87, Pope Benedict XVI describes the steps, each with a question:

1. Lectio (reading). Read the text, with “a desire to understand its true content: what does the biblical text say in itself?” Without this, he warns, “there is always a risk that the text will become a pretext for never moving beyond our own ideas.”
2. Meditatio (meditation). “What does the biblical text say to us?” Here each person “must let himself or herself be moved and challenged.”
3. Oratio (prayer). “What do we say to the Lord in response to his word?” Prayer, “as petition, intercession, thanksgiving and praise, is the primary way by which the word transforms us.”
4. Contemplatio (contemplation). We “take up, as a gift from God, his own way of seeing and judging reality, and ask ourselves what conversion of mind, heart and life is the Lord asking of us?”

He then adds a fifth word the monks always assumed: lectio divina “is not concluded until it arrives at action (actio), which moves the believer to make his or her life a gift for others in charity.” And he gives Mary as its model, who “kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

The guided meditation above is a lectio divina on Psalm 23, in a free paraphrase for praying slowly. Here is the same practice on the psalm in the World English Bible, Catholic Edition, for praying on your own. Allow about twenty minutes.

Before you begin. Sit somewhere quiet. Make the Sign of the Cross and ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart (a short prayer for this is below).

1. Lectio: read. Read the psalm slowly, aloud if you can, twice:

¹ The LORD is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing. ² He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. ³ He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. ⁴ Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. ⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over. ⁶ Surely goodness and loving kindness shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the LORD’s house forever.

Ask what the text says in itself. It is a psalm of trust, in two pictures: a shepherd with his sheep (verses 1–4), and a host with his guest (verses 5–6). Notice that halfway through, in the dark valley, the psalmist stops talking about God and starts talking to him: “for you are with me.”

2. Meditatio: reflect. Read it a third time and notice which word or line catches you. Stay with it. If it is “I shall lack nothing,” ask what you feel you lack. If it is “the valley of the shadow of death,” ask where your valley is. If it is “in the presence of my enemies,” ask what God is setting before you in the middle of a conflict. Do not force it; one phrase is enough.

3. Oratio: respond. Speak to God about that phrase, in your own words. Thank him, ask him, argue with him, tell him what you are afraid of. The psalm itself shows you how: it turns from “he” to “you.”

4. Contemplatio: rest. Stop talking. Stay with the Shepherd for a few minutes in silence, as a sheep simply lies down in the pasture. Then ask one question: what is he asking of me today?

5. Actio: act. Choose one small thing to do before the day is out because of what you heard: make the call, forgive the debt, rest instead of working late, bring someone a meal.

• Choose the text before you sit down. The easiest choice is the Gospel of the next Sunday, or of the day’s Mass. Keep it short: a psalm, a parable, eight or ten verses.
• Give it fifteen to thirty minutes, ideally at the same time each day.
• Read slowly and more than once. Reading aloud, even under your breath, slows you down.
• Stop when something stops you. Lectio divina is not about finishing the passage.
• Keep a notebook if it helps: the word that struck you, and what you said to God.
• Do not judge it by how you feel. Some days nothing seems to happen. God’s word, he promises, “will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please” (Isaiah 55:11).
• Try it with others. In group lectio, the passage is read aloud several times; after each reading, anyone who wishes says the word that struck them, then what it says to them, then a short prayer. Benedict XVI stresses that Scripture is best read “in the communion of the Church” (Verbum Domini 86).

Yes, it is Catholic, and one of the oldest Catholic ways of praying. It comes from the Fathers and the monasteries, was formalized by a Carthusian monk, and has been recommended by the Second Vatican Council and by Pope Benedict XVI, who said the Synod on the Word of God gave it “the greatest attention” among all ways of reading Scripture, since it can bring about “an encounter with Christ, the living word of God” (Verbum Domini 87). He even notes that the prayerful reading of Scripture can, under the Church’s usual conditions, gain an indulgence.

Can other Christians do it? Yes. Many Protestant churches teach it today, and Christians of every tradition can pray it. It is simply prayer with the Bible.

Is it a good or bad practice? The usual worry is that it turns Scripture into a mirror for whatever we already feel, or into an Eastern-style emptying of the mind. Both are real risks of doing it badly, and the Church’s description guards against both. The first step asks what the text says in itself, before asking what it says to me; it is read “in the communion of the Church,” not alone against her; and its goal is not an empty mind but a person, Christ. The Catechism says Christian meditation “should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him” (CCC 2708), and calls contemplative prayer “a close sharing between friends,” in St. Teresa’s words (CCC 2709).

Many people begin with a prayer to the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Scriptures and is, the Catechism says, their interpreter, and end with thanks. These two are short enough to keep in the front of your Bible.