Mutual Service in Manual Labor |
Shared Liturgical Prayer |
Meditational Scripture |
Prayer in the Heart |
A person who reads Scripture is even more frequently led to prayer than to meditation. The prayers are as short, usually, as they are more frequent. It happens in this fashion. As you are reading you will feel an inclination to speak to God about what you are reading. For instance, you are reading a text from Isaiah in which the prophet is denouncing the social crimes and injustices of the people. At that moment the Holy Spirit may stir up your awareness of the social injustice in your own life. You may then want to pray to God for forgiveness. You may ask God to show you what you should do to correct the situation. You may ask God to give you the strength to repent and change. Or you have just read the story of the ten lepers healed by Jesus, of whom only one returned to give thanks. This might kindle a desire in you to pause in a prayer of gratitude to God for all God is doing for you. Or else again, the account of the cleansing of the leper arouses us to pause and address Jesus: "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean."
At various times you will be lead to every form of prayer, praise, petition and intercession. Each time is a grace of the Holy Spirit. Do not plan and program your prayers. Just remain open and sensitive to the impressions and invitations the Divine Spirit will give you at your lectio divina. Sacred reading is a threshold to prayer. We enter into prayer frequently and we return to our reading, ever guided by the Spirit. When the grace of prayer comes upon us we yield to it; when the prayer has been completed the grace of reading is there waiting for us to take it up again.
This practice of lectio divina prayer deeply roots your own spirituality in the biblical spiritual tradition. It causes you to identify yourself with the people of the bible and to experience your own personal history as a part of the sacred history recorded in Scripture. Yes, reading the bible will teach you how to pray.