silencio and incarnatio

The spiritual practice of Lectio Divina has been a valuable and significant part of my journey and formation these past several years. Lectio Divina is Latin for “sacred reading” and represents an early monastic technique of scripture reading and prayer. It is a way of praying with Scripture that calls one to study, ponder, listen and, finally, pray from God's Word. The traditional steps of this “ladder” of lectio were first articulated by Guigo II in the 1100’s and include four steps: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation). It is a way of listening to the text of the scriptures as if we were in conversation with Christ and he were suggesting the topics of conversation.

Robert Mulholland in his book, Invitation to a Journey, includes spiritual reading and Lectio Divina in his list of classical spiritual disciplines. “Lectio is a posture of approach and a means of encounter with a text that enables the text to become a place of transforming encounter with God. In addition to the four classic steps of Lectio Divina (lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio), Mulholland adds two steps, one at either end…..silencio at the beginning and incarnatio at the end.

These additional steps have been helpful to me, so I will share Mulholland’s explanation here…..

“Silencio is our preparation for spiritual reading. Shaped as we are by an informational culture, trained to approach the text as the ones who are in control of the text, we need to take time, at the beginning of the process of spiritual reading, to engage in a deeper internal shift in the posture of our being….John Wesley suggests we come to the text ‘with a single eye to know the whole will of God, and a fixed resolution to do it.’ The second half of Wesley’s guideline introduces the shift required in the deep inner posture of our being. It is a shift of the control of the process from ourselves to God. It is a deep commitment of our being to God’s purposes, even before we know what those purposes may be.”

“…we must add a concluding step, incarnatio. The whole focus of spiritual reading is to encounter God in ways that enable God to transform our being and doing in the world. This step brings us full circle to what we do in silencio. There we placed ourselves before the text to seek the whole will of God with a ‘fixed resolution to do it.’ Incarnatio is the fulfillment of that resolution.”