The Fourfold Gospel, Volume 1: A Formational Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: From the Beginning to the Baptist
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About this ebook
John DelHousaye
John DelHousaye (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is the professor of biblical and theological studies at Arizona Christian University and a scholar-in-residence at the Spiritual Formation Society of Arizona.
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The Fourfold Gospel, Volume 1 - John DelHousaye
1
Entering the Gospels
The Gospels invite their readers, whether they are hearing about Jesus for the first time or are old disciples, into their story, which was typical in contemporary rhetoric and Jewish religious life. ¹ We often encounter the invitation to look
(idou, ἰδού) at what is presented: ²
Look: an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream . . . (Matt
1
:
20
;
2
:
13
,
19
)
Look: magi from the eastern regions came to Jerusalem . . . (
2
:
1
)
Look: the star that they saw in the east was going before them . . . (
2
:
9
)
The evangelists often employ the present tense, which is obscured in translation, to draw the reader into the story.³ The English Standard Version renders παραγίνεται ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰορδάνην as "Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan; a more natural translation is
Jesus appears from the Galilee at the Jordan" (Matt 3:13). Instead of merely summarizing an action, the story slows down for us to inhabit the scene. Matthew and John came to Jesus; Mark and Luke, later disciples, also came imaginatively with the Holy Spirit; and now we, their readers, are summoned. The proclaimed becomes the proclaimer.
Mystagogy
The Gospels may be received like a film with moving, connected images of Jesus Christ, who elicits action from the center. Jesus is the protagonist and focal point of nearly every scene. But they go even further, inviting readers to see with Jesus:
Look: the heavens were opened [to him], and he saw [the] Spirit of God descending like a dove [and] coming upon him. (Matt
3
:
16
)
This way of discipleship came to be called mystagogy, the gradual initiation of the believer into the mystery of the indwelling Christ by a master who is capable of communicating some experience of this mystery.
⁴ The apostle Paul bases his teaching on the presupposition that his readers possess the mind of Christ,
who, despite their immaturity, are nevertheless enabled by the Holy Spirit to perceive with Jesus (1 Cor 2:16).
Meditating in the Gospels invites a life centered on Christ. We begin to see our own every-day scenes—work, rest, worship—differently. Ludolph of Saxony (c. 1295–1378), a Carthusian monk who wrote an entire discipleship manual, The Life of Christ (Vita Christi), from this approach, claims, Of all the many kinds of spiritual exercise, I believe this is the one that is the most necessary, the most beneficial, and the one that can lead you to the greatest heights.
⁵ Queen Isabella (1451–1504) was so taken by the work that she ordered the Franciscan poet Fray Ambrosio Montesiano (c. 1444–1514) to translate it into Castilian for all her people. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), the founder of the Jesuits, was deeply impacted by the Life of Christ and incorporated the method into his Spiritual Exercises, a month-long retreat that helped novitiates in his order to discern the Lord’s calling.⁶ After a preparatory prayer seeking the grace that all our energies and activities be sincerely directed to His glory and worship
for the first Exercise, Ignatius evokes the imagination of the reader:
The first prelude consists of a certain mental re-creation of the place. It should be observed in this regard that during any meditation or contemplation of a corporal entity, for example of Christ, we shall see with a sort of imaginary vision a physical place representing what we are contemplating, for instance a temple or a mountain where we could find Christ Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and everything else that is related to the theme of our contemplation.⁷
Especially among the Orthodox, the Gospel Book, a codex conjoining Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is read like an icon. Theodore the Studite (759–826) describes the Gospels as written in ink
; icons, in gold.
⁸ Icons are to be read, not just seen. The reader is invited to look at and through the surface to the source, like we do with words, moving from the signifier to the signified. The focal point is not outside, the view of the reader, but inside the icon. After prayer and fasting, ancient iconographers painted an eye on the empty canvas. Andreas Andreopoulos notes, "The icon, therefore, is not only something for us to look at but also something that looks at us, through a window from the other world.⁹ We may imagine two neighbors talking to one another through an apartment window. When Jesus speaks, he is addressing whoever is in the scene but also us:
let the reader understand (Mark 13:14). When we respond, there is, of course, the awkward reality of talking to a page! But in faith we are also responding to God.
For the Fathers of the Church, observes Andrew Louth,
the Scriptures function as a place of encounter between the Word of God and humankind.¹⁰
The person who thirsts for God, assures Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153),
eagerly studies and meditates on the inspired word, knowing that there he is certain to find the one for whom he thirsts.¹¹ Like Abraham with the mysterious visitors,
we are called to show hospitality to God as he graciously comes to us through the pages of the Bible."¹² Bernard meditates on Christ as the ultimate image of the Bible, a book of mental images.¹³
Christians inherited this iconography from Jews, who approached God through temple gates. The temple was patterned after the tabernacle (a sacred tent), which had an altar in front of the Holy of Holies (a Hebrew idiom for the superlative, the Holiest of Places
), a small room that housed the ark of the covenant. The ark, a gold-covered wooden chest, had a lid that was covered by two cherubim (winged angels with the faces of a lion, ox, human being, and eagle), who, in turn, held up God’s throne (or chariot).¹⁴ We are told that God spoke to Moses from between the Cherubim
(Num 7:89). They protected the entrance to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve sinned; their images were embroidered into a veil that restricted access to the Holy of Holies. The Gospels relate that the boy Jesus and his parents made an annual pilgrimage to the temple at Passover. One year, his parents accidentally left without him. After returning and much searching, they found Jesus there. How is it that you were seeking me?
he said. Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s place?
(Luke 2:49). In a later debate, an adult Jesus says, The one who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it,
referring to his Father, the God of Israel (Matt 23:21). After the Romans destroyed the temple (AD 70), Jews continued to approach God through prayer and Scripture, a presupposition we find in the Gospels. On the cross, Jesus recites a psalm: "Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit (Ps 31:15).¹⁵ Tempted to feed the stomach, he recites at the devil:
Not on bread alone shall the human being live, but on every word coming through God’s mouth (Deut 8:3; cited at Matt 4:4). Like the synagogue, the church was not dependent on the temple because Jesus himself is Immanuel,
God with us (Matt 1:23). We may approach the Triune God in Christ through the prayerful study of the Gospels. Jesus foresaw the temple’s destruction, but presented himself as a place of divine encounter. The psalmist cries,
As a deer thirsts for fountains of water so my soul thirsts for you, God (42:1). His thirst comes from being far away from the temple. But Jesus responds:
If anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink" (John 7:37–38). An icon usually consists of three panels, so that the outer ones can fold inward, becoming protected and portable.
Sacred Time
Soon after the Ascension, Christians began to gather on the first day of the week, Sunday, to commemorate the resurrection. They partook of the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist, communion, mass) and sang directly to him (Eph 5:19), knowing that the crucified yet resurrected Lord was with them: Look, I stand at the door and knock
(Rev 3:20). By the end of the first century, selections from the Gospels were being read with other Scripture (Justin, 1 Apol. 67). Today, in many traditions, the Gospel Book is taken in procession out to the people who stand during its reading.
Alongside these weekly gatherings, patterned after the synagogue, a festal calendar developed with two parts. The temporale, a Latin word referring to the passing of time, focuses on Easter and Christmas, the two great independent feasts. The sanctorale, as the name suggests, is concerned with feasts of individual saints. The Jerusalem church commemorated events of Holy Week at the traditional sites where they happened, and pilgrims brought the liturgical practice home.¹⁶ Not everyone could live in Jerusalem, but any Christian could identify with Christ in sacred time. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday—all prepared the worshiper for Easter Sunday. Following the chronology of Acts, the church related Easter and Pentecost as one sequence of events, with Ascension celebrated on the Thursday ten days before Pentecost.¹⁷ In the West, the Sunday after Pentecost was designated Trinity Sunday.¹⁸ Lent, a forty-day preparation for Holy Week, developed from the proximate period of catechesis for those seeking to be baptized on Easter, which marked their initial assimilation into the life and death of Christ.¹⁹ The beginning was observed on Ash Wednesday. Christmas, Epiphany, and the twelve intervening days were a Christianization of Pagan mid-winter festivals. Analogous to Lent, the preparatory season of Advent developed in Gaul eventually consisting of four Sundays before Christmas. There are also two seasons of Ordinary Time
between the feasts, which allow the church to rest and digest the extraordinary moments and meditate on scenes from Christ’s public ministry. They offer space to integrate the life of Christ into the everyday. The Christian calendar places every season, week, and day in Christ. Simple awareness of our place in the year may deepen our devotion.
Sacred Space
Inspired by the work of Ammonius of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–c.340) divided the Gospels into units and then ten tables (canons) according to parallel and unique material.²⁰ In medieval manuscripts, these canons are usually surrounded by an arcaded frame.²¹ Carl Nordenfalk claims Eusebius was inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the traditional site where Jesus was executed and raised from the dead.²² This wedding between text and architecture continued into the Middle Ages with the great cathedrals, which, in turn, inspired Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141) and others to see the soul of every Christian as a microcosm of the building.²³
Along with seating a bishop, a cathedral is an imago mundi, a miniature cosmos to image God’s fuller creation. Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) notes, The faithful enter progressively into a world of values and meanings which, for some, becomes more ‘real’ and precious than the world of everyday experience.
²⁴ The Gospels likewise open into superreality. The Lord Jesus Christ, architect of creation, is seated in our soul, and we may approach him through Scripture and prayer.
Sensory experience, which informs the soul, comes through the main entrance, the West Door, in the narthex, which is not a part of the church proper. The narthex is a public space, like the Court of the Nations in the temple where the moneychangers sat, and is where distraction happens. Just inside the church is the baptismal where human beings are reintroduced to the Trinitarian life of God. Past the narthex are three aisles. The left aisle leads to the chapel of creation at the transept (or cross beam). Here, we worship the Creator by meditating on heaven and earth. Ewert Cousins summarizes the medieval worldview: God, in creating the universe, imprinted certain spiritual meanings into physical symbols, which could be discerned by a heightened spiritual sensibility nourished by Scripture and tradition.
²⁵ All that is true in science assists. (Meditation on the Gospels in cathedral schools contributed to the first universities in Europe.) The right aisle takes us to the other side of the transept, the chapel of the imago Dei.²⁶ Scripture claims that human beings are created in God’s image (Gen 1:26–27), but does not fully explain that mystery. We therefore share in God’s mystery (1 John 3:1–2). Christian orthodoxy presents God as one in essence and three in person. Essence points to what God is; person, who. The Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel (1907–1972) gave a series of lectures at Stanford University entitled, Who is Man? intentionally departing from the What
of the psalmist (Ps 8:4). In this regard, he is like the church fathers who maintain that God cannot be known in his essence, but can be related to as a person. He notes: As a thing man is explicable; as a person he is both a mystery and a surprise. As a thing he is finite; as a person he is inexhaustible.
²⁷ We also learn about God through other people, who are stamped with the imago Dei. We may not be persons in the exact way God is, but Scripture invites the analogy of personhood. The Western Christian tradition has understood the soul as a diverse unity of will, understanding, and memory, which Augustine treats as an analogy of the Triune God (On The Trinity).²⁸ Christians were the first to use the term person
in this sense.²⁹ Human beings are also embodied, like the Son after the Incarnation, and interpersonal. It was not good
for Adam to be alone. Eve arises from Adam’s rib. The yin of Eve and yang of Adam become one flesh.
As Richard of St. Victor (c. 1120–1173) notes, from this union of love arises a third person, a child. But like everything related to God, no universally agreed upon, complete understanding of personhood exists.
It is good to spend time in these chapels, but eventually we must make our way down the long central aisle to the Holy Altar, where the Gospels are placed in a gold case behind a veil when not being read, facing east and the rising sun: God is light
(1 John 1:5); And the light in the darkness shines, and the darkness did not overcome it
(John 1:4). The Father and Son are enthroned above the altar and indwell our souls through the Holy Spirit. Our Scripture, music, and liturgy echo their warm conversation.³⁰ There is the cross where our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, died in our place that we might inhabit this space. There is the bread and wine.
We can unpack the person as cathedral more with Aristotle’s four causes of being—formal, efficient, material, and final. (We do not intend scientific precision with this language, but appropriate it merely as a heuristic to approach a complex reality.)
Formal Cause: Mind of Christ
The formal cause is the pattern by which something is formed. Disciples are being formed into the image of the invisible God, Jesus Christ, who offers his body as temple. We are beginning to understand the role of mirror neurons, which fire after we see another human being do something with intention.³¹ If we are attracted to the action, we imitate. This is fundamental to our shared humanity, and it finds its perfection in the imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi): For to this you were called. For Christ also suffered on behalf of you, leaving behind for you an example, so that you might follow after his footsteps
(1 Pet 2:21). Ludolph notes, Christ’s whole earthly life, which he chose to assume for us, offers instruction for our behavior.
³² This imitation is not forced or external, but results from sharing a common mind or intellect. The same Spirit who led Christ leads us. Since the Spirit’s work is internal, Christians have no distinct culture, dress, or ethnicity. As everyone is the same—sharing a common humanity—yet different in Adam, so it is in Christ. Thomas Merton (1915–1968) notes, Each one of us has a peculiar vocation to reproduce the likeness of Christ in a mode that is not quite the same as anybody else’s, since no two of us are quite alike.
³³ We are all saved by entering Christ’s journey back to God, but everyone’s path and pace are unique.³⁴
Efficient Cause: Holy Spirit
The efficient cause refers to things apart from the thing being changed or moved, which interact as an agency of the change or move—like the builder of a cathedral. The Holy Spirit takes this role through our intellect, which organizes our worldview and expands our awareness: When you think about the really big questions in life—be they religious, scientific, or psychological—your brain is going to grow.
³⁵
Material Cause: Memory
The material cause refers to what composes the thing being changed or moved. Memory or recollection (mnēmē, μνήμη) is like the stones of a cathedral. As children, we discover a sense of self in family stories and culture. Our reactions to these stories are held by synapses that signal neurons to send the same message repeatedly, leading to mental states and habits: neurons that fire together wire together.
³⁶ These stones (memories) of our old personhood in Adam can be repurposed, but the structure must be reformed in Christ. Through the mind of Christ, the soul is gradually rebuilt by remembering our new story. We see our past as a journey toward and now with Christ. Imagination, the formation of new memories, gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities,
as we focus on Christ.³⁷
Final Cause: Will
The final cause answers the question why a thing is changing or moving. Will is like the worship of the cathedral. Jesus lives for the will of the Father, as the Lord’s Prayer teaches us, and models this perfection in Gethsemane by submitting to the Passion: not my will, but your will be done.
A fully formed soul enjoys a union of wills with the Triune God, which is to love God and one another. Augustine treats the will as the most fundamental and mysterious element of the soul, intersecting with the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility (free will). Love requires an I and a You. Our formation depends on a distinction between us and God and the rest of creation. Eve did not lose her individuality or will when she became one with Adam (a common evil in spousal abuse), but became a member of a family whose well-being ultimately depended on conformity to God’s Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
Sacred Movement
The Gospels relate a journey from God to God. The Son comes
from the Father and returns to the Father, and we are invited to follow. He became a sojourner and an alien so that he might lead us to his homeland,
notes Ludolph, who offers this invitation: Watch him with love and devotion, and enter into his travels with all the compassion in your heart.
³⁸ See and follow speak to the inseparability of space and time in storytelling.³⁹ Unlike an image, which can be observed, at least superficially, in a moment, a text demands time from a reader. A movable icon, we follow Jesus through the stages of his birth, adolescence, public ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension, the completion of the journey, although this sequence is only so from the perspective of historical time.
Although the Passion follows Christ’s baptism, both events invite the reader into the same reality—entrance into the sacred
or liturgical time
and space before God in Paradise.⁴⁰ This journey to God traditionally has been presented in three stages: purgative, illuminative, and unitive.⁴¹ The Lutheran pastor Johann Arndt (1555–1621) notes:
Just as our natural life has its stages, its childhood, manhood, and old age, so too our spiritual and Christian life is set up. It has its beginning in repentance, through which a person does penance every day. A greater enlightenment follows after this like middle age, through the contemplation of divine things, through prayer, through the cross, through which all God’s gifts are increased. Finally comes the perfection of old age, being established in complete union through love, which St. Paul calls the perfect age of Christ
and being a perfect man in Christ
(Eph
4
:
13
).⁴²
However, the Gospels place baptism at the beginning, which signifies our union with Christ, not the end of the journey. A careful reading of the Gospels and Paul’s letters, as John Calvin rightly emphasized in his Institutes, shows that union is a gift and empowerment that makes the rest of the journey possible (see Gal 2:20; Rom 6). Arndt’s complete union,
then, may be described as the subjective appropriation of an objective reality. To illustrate this process I offer a very mild allegory of three mountain scenes in Matthew with a traditional courtship progression in North American culture.
Purgative Mountain (Matt 5:1)
John the Baptist calls the reader to repent because of the nearness of God’s Kingdom (Matt 3:2) and to produce fruit worthy of that repentance (v. 8). He looks forward to a baptism of the Holy Spirit,
a purification from sin. Jesus fulfills this divine plan of salvation by undergoing John’s baptism and is led by the Spirit to be tempted in the wilderness, as Israel was after their redemption from Egypt (4:1–10). He is able to overcome by digesting every word through the mouth of God
(v. 4). After defeating the devil, Jesus echoes John’s call to repentance (v. 17). Calling his first disciples and attracting a crowd, Jesus went up the mountain
like Moses, opened his mouth,
and offered what came to be called the Sermon on the Mount. These words discipled new believers in the early church, leading them to purify their heart by surrendering to the Father’s will in prayer.
Purgation removes all that is incompatible with God. But the goal is not negative, merely an emptying, the relinquishment of genuine needs—as if Jesus were merely crucified and not enthroned in Paradise. The purgative stage of the journey awakens love for God.⁴³ We may detach from idols to worship and love the one true, living God. Similarly, when a man and woman become engaged, it is necessary for both to leave potentially rival relationships to commit to one another.
Illuminative Mountain (Matt 17:1)
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promises that the pure in heart will see God (Matt 5:8). This was partially fulfilled for Peter, James, and John at the mount of Transfiguration when they were allowed to see the two great mysteries of our faith, the metamorphosis of the Son’s incarnated body at the resurrection and what came to be called the hypostatic union, the union of Christ’s humanity and deity in one person (hypostasis, ὑπόστασις). Moses similarly ascended a mountain with witnesses and God speaks after six days (Exod 24:16).
By meditating on these mysteries we begin to understand the significance of our union with Christ. This knowledge gradually replaces what was eliminated in the purgative stage. Although our bodies age, become diseased, and die, as members of Christ’s body we anticipate their own metamorphoses at the resurrection. We do not become God, but our union with Christ’s humanity offers the benefits of his deity, like eternal life and the fruit of the Spirit. Another goal of the illuminative stage is for all sensible reality to become pure sacrament—to follow the command, study the birds,
and then, by grace, to begin to see what Jesus sees. When a man and woman are attracted to one another, it is natural for them to desire more intimate knowledge. Indeed, we cannot love who we do not know. Sometimes, love fades as two people get to know each other. However, to taste God’s love naturally leads to a desire to know God more correctly and to love more fully.⁴⁴
Unitive Mountain (Matt 28:16)
Matthew ends with final instructions from Jesus on a mountain for the disciples to reproduce themselves, bringing people into the mystery of the Triune life of God through baptism and teaching them to observe everything they learned, including the lessons of the previous two mountains (see Matt 17:9). This is all done with God, Immanuel: I am with you always, to the end of the age
(Matt 28:20; see 1:23).⁴⁵ It is natural for a wife and husband to unify. The wife does not become the husband, and the husband remains distinct from the wife, but they are, according to Scripture, one flesh.
This mysterious, ontological reality naturally leads to a relational reality through knowledge and fidelity.
This threefold schema risks being too linear. For some, experientially, the accent may be on one of these elements; for others, they may be evenly distributed through a season. But there is a beginning to the journey—the transition from being outside Christ to in Christ.
There is something of a middle, a liminal space, and an end of sorts, although it is fair to ask with Gregory of Nyssa (c 335–c. 394) if union with Christ is ever exhaustibly grasped by a finite human being. The end of the Bible, Revelation’s retelling of the creation story, is better understood as a new beginning.
Guides
The cathedrals were not built by elites, but through the collective labor of peasants, who nevertheless had a sense of participating in something larger than themselves: We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals
was a medieval quarry worker’s creed.⁴⁶ Sons often picked up where their fathers left, and their sons did the same. Patrons shared their wealth. The evangelists similarly laid the foundation for a comprehensive worldview that builds through the reflection of each generation. I have learned from nearly every generation since the Ascension. Some of my teachers are
Ignatius of Antioch (c.
35
–c.
110
), Papias of Hierapolis (c.
60
–
130
), Polycarp (c.
70
–c.
160
), Clement of Rome (fl. c.
96
), Justin Martyr (c.
110
–
165
), Tatian (c.
120
–after
174
), Clement of Alexandria (c.
150
–c.
215
), Tertullian (
155
–
222
), Origen (c.
185
–c.
254
/
5
), Irenaeus of Lyon (d. c.
195
), Cyprian of Carthage (c.
200
–
258
), Antony of Egypt (c.
251
–
356
), Eusebius of Caesarea (c.
260
–c.
340
), Macrina the Elder (before
270
–c.
340
), Pachomius (c.
287
–
346
), Athanasius (c.
295
–d.
373
), Ephrem the Syrian (c.
306
–
373
), Epiphanius (c.
310
/
320
–
403
), Cyril of Jerusalem (c.
310
–
386
), Martin of Tours (
316
–
397
), Macrina the Younger (c.
327
–
379
), Basil of Caesarea (c.
330
–
379
), Gregory of Nazianzus (c.
330
–
389
/
390
), Monica (c.
331
–
387
), Gregory of Nyssa (c
335
–c.
394
), Ambrose (c.
340
–
397
), Evagrius of Pontus (
346
–
399
), Jerome (c.
347
–
420
), John Chrysostom (c.
349
–
407
), Theodore of Mopsuestia (c.
350
–
428
), Augustine (
354
–
430
), John Cassian (c.
365
–c.
435
), Vincent of Lérins (d. c.
445
), Patrick (c.
387
/
90
–c.
460
/
1
), Prosper of Aquitaine (c.
390
–
455
), Simeon Stylites (c.
390
–
459
), Theodoret of Cyrus (c.
393
–c.
457
), Leo the Great (c.
400
–
461
), Benedict of Nursia (c.
480
–c.
547
), Gregory the Great (c.
540
–
604
), John Climacus (
579
–
649
), Maximus the Confessor (c.
580
–
662
), Eligius (
588
–
650
), Cuthbert (c.
634
–
687
), Willibrord (c.
658
–
739
), Bede (c.
672
–
735
), John of Damascus (c.
676
–
749
), Theodore the Studite (
759
–
826
), Rabanus Maurus (c.
780
–
856
), Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c.
815
–c.
877
), Symeon the New Theologian (
949
–
1032
), Anselm (
1033
–
1109
), Peter Abelard (
1079
–
1142
), William of Saint-Thierry (c.
1075
–
1148
), Bernard of Clairvaux (
1090
–
1153
), Hugh of St. Victor (
1096
–
1141
), Hildegard of Bingen (
1098
–
1179
), Andrew of St. Victor (c.
1110
–
1175
), Richard of St. Victor (c.
1120
–
1173
), Guigo the Carthusian (d.
1188
), Joachim of Fiore (c.
1135
–
1202
), Zachary of Besanҫon (d. c.
1155
), Dominic (
1170
–
1221
), Mary of Oignies (
1177
–
1213
), Francis of Assisi (
1181
–
1226
), Bonaventure (
1221
–
1274
), Thomas Aquinas (
1224
–
1274
), Meister Eckhart (c.
1260
–c.
1328
), Duns Scotus (
1265
–
1308
), William of Ockham (c.
1288
–c.
1348
), Ludolph of Saxony (c.
1295
–
1378
), Gregory of Palamas (
1296
–
1359
), Richard Rolle (c.
1300
–
1341
), Johannes Tauler (c.
1300
–
1361
), John Wycliffe (mid
1320
s–
1384
), Julian of Norwich (
1342
–c.
1423
), Catherine of Siena (
1347
–
1380
), Margery Kemp (
1373
–
1440
), Thomas À Kempis (c.
1380
–
1471
), Nicholas of Cusa (
1401
–
1464
), Catherine of Genoa (
1447
–
1510
), Desiderius Erasmus (
1466
–
1536
), Matthias Grünewald (c.
1470
–
1528
), Michelangelo (
1475
–
1564
), Raphael (
1483
–
1520
), Martin Luther (
1483
–
1546
), Huldrych Zwingli (
1484
–
1531
), Thomas Cranmer (
1489
–
1556
), Ignatius of Loyola (
1491
–
1556
), William Tyndale (c.
1494
–
1536
), Philipp Melanchthon (
1497
–
1560
), Francis Xavier (
1506
–
1552
), John Calvin (
1509
–
1564
), Teresa of Ávila (
1515
–
1582
), Theodore Beza (
1519
–
1605
), John of the Cross (
1542
–
1591
), Galileo Galilei (
1546
–
1642
), Matteo Ricci (
1552
–
1610
), Johann Arndt (
1555
–
1621
), Francis Bacon (
1561
–
1626
), François de Sales (
1567
–
1622
), Johannes Kepler (
1571
–
1630
), Jacob Boehme (
1575
–
1624
), John Cotton (
1585
–
1652
), René Descartes (
1596
–
1650
), Roger Williams (
1603
–
1683
), Rembrandt (
1606
–
1669
), John Milton (
1608
–
1674
), Brother Lawrence (
1611
–
1691
), Henry Moore (
1614
–
1687
), Blaise Pascal (
1623
–
1662
), George Fox (
1624
–
1691
), John Bunyan (
1628
–
1688
), Philipp Jakob Spener (
1635
–
1705
), Isaac Newton (
1642
–
1727
), Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (
1646
–
1716
), Madame Guyon (
1648
–
1717
), François Fénelon (
1651
–
1715
), Jean Pierre de Caussade (
1675
–
1751
), George Berkeley (
1685
–
1753
), Johann Sebastian Bach (
1685
–
1750
), William Law (
1686
–
1761
), Jonathon Edwards (
1703
–
1758
), John Wesley (
1703
–
1791
), George Whitefield (
1714
–
1770
), Jeremy Bentham (
1748
–
1832
), William Godwin (
1756
–
1836
), Seraphim of Sarov (
1759
–
1833
), William Carrey (
1761
–
1834
), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (
1770
–
1831
), William Wordsworth (
1770
–
1850
), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (
1772
–
1834
), Sojourner Truth (c.
1797–1883
), Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (
1798
–
1863
), Alfred, Lord Tennyson (
1809
–
1892
), Johann C. K. von Hoffmann (
1810
–
1877
), Søren Kierkegaard (
1813
–
1855
), Theophan the Recluse (
1815
–
1894
), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (
1821
–
1881
), Louis Pasteur (
1822
–
1895
), Ellen G. White (
1827
–
1915
), Leo Tolstoy (
1828
–
1910
), Martin Kähler (
1835
–
1912
), William James (
1842
–
1910
), Gerard Manley Hopkins (
1844
–
1889
), Vincent van Gogh (
1853
–
1890
), Ebina Danjo (
1856–1937
), Charles de Foucauld (
1858
–
1916
), Rudolph Otto (
1869
–
1937
), Georges Rouault (
1871
–
1958
), Thérèse of Lisieux (
1873
–
1897
), Burnett Hillman Streeter (
1874
–
1937
), Evelyn Underhill (
1875
–
1941
), Pope John XXIII (
1881
–
1963
), Albert Schweitzer (
1875
–
1965
), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (
1881
–
1955
), Albert Peyriguère (
1883
–
1959
), C. H. Dodd (
1884
–
1973
), Karl Barth (
1886
–
1968
), T. S. Eliot (
1888
–
1965
), Ludwig Wittgenstein (
1889
–
1959
), Reinhold Niebuhr (
1892
–
1971
), Catherine De Hueck Doherty (
1896
–
1985
), Henri de Lubac (
1896
–
1991
), A. W. Tozer (
1897
–
1963
), C. S. Lewis (
1898
–
1963
), Oscar Cullmann (
1902
–
1999
), Karl Rahner (
1904
–
1984
), Hans Urs von Balthasar (
1905
–
1988
), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (
1906
–
1945
), Bede Griffiths (
1906–1993
), Mircea Eliade (
1907
–
1986
), Simone Weil (
1909
–
1943
), Mother Teresa (
1910
–
1997
), George Eldon Ladd (
1911
–
1982
), W. D. Davies (
1911
–
2001
), Louis Bouyer (
1913
–
2004
), Thomas Merton (
1915
–
1968
), Brevard Childs (
1923
–
2007
), Thomas Keating (
1923
–
2018
), Jaroslav Pelikan (
1923
–
2006
), Birger Gerhardsson (
1926
–
2013
), Masao Takenaka (
1925–2006
), Pope Benedict XVI (b.
1927
), Raymond Brown (
1928
–
1998
), Martin Luther King, Jr. (
1929
–
1968
), Thomas Oden (
1931
–
2015
), Morna Hooker (b.
1931
), Basil Pennington (
1931
–
2005
), John Mbiti (
1931–2019
), Henri Nouwen (
1932
–
1996
), Benedicta Ward (b.
1933
), Benedict Groeschel (
1933
–
2014
), Dallas Willard (
1935
–
2013
), Pope Francis (b.
1936
), Donald Hagner (b.
1936
), Anscar Chupungco (
1939–2013
), N. T. Wright (b.
1948
), Wayne Grudem (b.
1948
), Darryl DelHousaye (b.
1949
).
There is a danger in reading the Gospels from only one point of view. Each individual is partially blinded by bias; every generation, its own idolatry. But when Christians from different times and places offer similar interpretations, idiosyncratic readings can be isolated. Indeed, without any clear indication of literary dependence, when two or more very different people see the same thing, it may reveal a deeper, spiritual unity. I do not necessarily agree with everything claimed by these guides—to do so would strip my understanding of coherence and, in a way, dishonor them by not recognizing the tensions and contradictions of our tradition—but each has uniquely pointed me to Christ.
Preparation
When I visited Jerusalem as a child, I noticed that the steps to the temple (stairs of ascent
), one of the few remaining elements of the ancient complex, were uneven. Our guide shared they were intended to slow worshipers from mindlessly rushing into God’s presence. Ludolph writes:
The sinner who already faithfully believes in Christ and has been reconciled to him through penance should strive to stay close to this physician by devoutly meditating on his most holy life as much as possible. But take care to do this with deliberation and not hurry through the reading of Christ’s life; rather, take a small selection in turn each day. With such devout reflections you can celebrate a daily Sabbath for Christ.⁴⁷
Teresa of Ávila notes, While there’s not a thing we can do to direct the work of the Beloved, there is much we can do to open ourselves to receiving his favors
through prayer and meditation.⁴⁸ With all of Scripture, the Gospels require a human response to God’s initiative in salvation.
Breathing
Following Jesus is an embodied process. It is very difficult to read for comprehension when the body is stressed.⁴⁹ A symptom is shallow, quick breaths. But attending to our breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, allowing a rest-and-digest
response to our environment and space for the Spirit. Jesus, it can be inferred, controlled his breathing, a manifestation of his spirit or life principle, until surrendering it to the Father on the cross (Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46).⁵⁰ Every moment of discipleship is accompanied by breathing in and breathing out; we cannot breathe apart from Christ (Col 1:15–20), and, unless Christ returns in our lifetime, someday we will exhale in him a final breath before the Father. Breathing is analogous to the ministry of the Spirit, who gives life, so that the gentle activity may become sacramental because it conveys life in God’s common grace and mirrors a spiritual quickening. The Hebrew and Greek words translated spirit
may also be rendered breath.
It may be helpful, then, to breath slowly and deeply with the awareness that we are breathing with Jesus and that each breath is a gift. Imagine his first breath in Bethlehem and last on the cross. Let the exhalation be a little longer than the inhalation. We may even wed Jesus’s prayer word, Abba
(dad), to the exhalation.⁵¹
Literacy
Jesus learned to read, although educating the masses was not a priority outside of Judaism. Jews were the only culture to gather weekly to hear a word from their God, but there was also encouragement to read and study Scripture. According to rabbinic tradition, the Hasmonean Queen, Salome Alexandra (141–67 BC), encouraged primary education, which was implemented by her brother, Simeon ben Shetach (c. 120–40 BC), a Pharisee.⁵² Josephus (37–after 100) claims, Above all we pride ourselves on the education of our children.
⁵³ A rabbinic commentary tells a story about Rabbi Akiva (c. AD 50–135) going to an elementary teacher
and saying, Master, teach me Torah.
On a tablet, the teacher wrote down aleph, bet, the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and so forth until he could read Leviticus and then the rest of Torah.⁵⁴ We see the impetus for reading Scripture in Ezra (fl. 480–440 BC), the paradigmatic scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the Lord the God of Israel had given. . . . For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach the statutes and rules in Israel
(Ezra 7:6, 10 ESV). A pattern in the Pharisaic agenda was to apply anything transferable from specific roles—priest, prophet, king, scribe—to the people.⁵⁵ Luke’s portrait of Jesus fits this background. When his parents discover the boy Jesus
in the temple, he is sitting in the middle of the teachers and listening to them and questioning them. Now all who were listening to him were amazed by his understanding and his answers
(Luke 2:46–47); and then, at the beginning of his public ministry we read: And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and he went according to his custom on the day of the Sabbaths into the synagogue. And he stood up to read
(Luke 4:16).
This emphasis continues in the Christian tradition. Pachomius (c. 287–346), the father of communal monasticism, required literacy from novitiates:
They shall give him twenty psalms or two of the Apostle’s epistles, or some other part of the Scripture. And if he is illiterate, he shall go at the first, third, and sixth hours to someone who can teach and has been appointed for him. He shall stand before him and learn very studiously and with all gratitude. Then the fundamentals of the syllable, the verbs, and nouns shall be written for him, and even if he does not want to, he shall be compelled to read.⁵⁶
Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), the archbishop of Canterbury, prefaced the Great Bible with this directive: When ye be at home in your houses, ye apply yourselves from time to time to the reading of holy Scriptures.
⁵⁷ Illiteracy in England begins to drop dramatically after 1500. In 1800, only a minority of humanity could read; today, a majority do.
Reading, the decoding of a series of abstract symbols into complex ideas, is wondrous.⁵⁸ There is no primary location in the brain for the activity, as there is for seeing, listening, and touching; the act requires interconnectivity. Reading about something, in fact, stimulates the same neurological regions of the brain as if we had directly experienced it, but also allows distance for processing.
Communities create and agree upon codes that can be decoded by readers, so that writers can communicate to later generations. This is especially important for the marginalized and otherwise forgotten voices. Writing, if preserved, is more stable than oral tradition, allowing for retrieval of lost wisdom, renewal, and critique. Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) read the Sermon on the Mount and remarked, If it weren’t for Christians, I’d be a Christian.
⁵⁹ The church preserves the Gospels, in part, so that our children might know Jesus despite our failure.
Every human culture has language, but reading is not universal; the skill requires teachers and has different levels of mastery. After Rabbi Akiva learned to read Hebrew and read all the Scriptures, he went before Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua and said, My masters . . . reveal the sense of Mishnah to me.
⁶⁰ Mishnah (מִשְׁנָה) describes study by repetition,
which transforms reading into a meditative loop or habituation. The Psalter opens with a blessing over anyone whose "joy is in the torah (instruction, law) of the Lord, and on his torah he will meditate day and night" (Ps 1:2). Rabbi Hananiah ben Tradion, a martyr, offers this gloss:
If two sit together and no words of torah (are spoken) between them, they are a session of scoffers, of whom it is written: Nor sit in the seat of scoffers. [Ps
1
:
1
] But if two sit together and the words of torah (are spoken) between them, the Shekinah (divine presence) rests between them.⁶¹
When this happens, Scripture becomes an essential ingredient in every human experience. Some dismiss the rabbis as legalistic and miss the genius of their study: by repeating and contextualizing the Law of Moses, the written Torah or Pentateuch, they were able to relate every aspect of human existence to God. Scripture and their tradition, the Oral Torah, came together in the Mishnah (c. AD 200), the first major work of rabbinic Judaism. It is their rewritten Bible, and we shall attend to these readings often.
Like breathing, reading is most beneficial, presuming the text is worthy and the occasion is more than mere communication, when it is done slowly and deeply. Rabbi Akiva would ask, "This ’aleph [the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet] . . . why was it written? That bet [the second], why was it written."⁶² Jesus says, "until the heaven and the earth pass away, not one yod or one vav will ever pass away from the Law, until all things come into being" (Matt 5:18). A yod and vav are not only the smallest Hebrew letters but also stand-ins for vowels or breaths.⁶³ Citing the verse, Bernard says, We are commanded to gather up the tiniest fragments lest they be lost.
⁶⁴ The skill attends not just to the tacit meaning of words, but also to what the author is doing with language—connoting, alluding, creating, subverting, extending. We should, with Jesus, presume every word, even letter, matters. There is also the often ambiguous space between words (syntax), inviting reflection: What, for example, is the conjoined meaning of the preposition and object of preposition in Christ
?
Lectio Divina
Sexual intimacy can be beautiful and fruitful or ugly and exploitive, depending on the context. So it is with the sacredness of reading. People forget how potentially intimate reading can be, unless we harden our heart. Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226) knew this, so that whenever he found a piece of writing on the floor, regardless of the content, he would reverently pick it up and put it in a sacred or discrete place.
⁶⁵ Scripture is a place to meet God.
Lectio Divina (divine reading
) is a Benedictine practice of reading Scripture that is couched in a set of habituations called askēsis (ἄσκησις, discipline
). Through hēsuchia, kavanah, and horarium, we allow the Spirit to form us. Like prayer, there is an active and passive element to this expression of faith. All we do is approach Scripture conscious of the ultimate author until, as John Cassian (c. 365–c. 435) notes, ascending
thoughts predominate and the mind is fixed on God alone.⁶⁶ Reading Scripture—digging for every treasure and listening for its ultimate author, with the grace of the Spirit—leads to what he calls the prayer of fire,
the contemplation of God himself, the fire of love.⁶⁷ At the beginning, the Jesuits encourage offering a short prayer of invocation—to invite the Holy Spirit to guide the Lectio Divina.
Hēsuchia (quietness
)
The psalmist exhorts: Be still and know that I am God.
(Ps 45:10).⁶⁸ The verb translated be still
(scholazō, σχολάζω) describes a release from routine or pressing obligation
and to stand empty.
⁶⁹ Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–373) speaks of a resting-place,
so that knowledge can be assimilated: Blessed is the one,
he hymns, who has perceived that heaven above is quiet, And the earth below is troubled, and has quieted himself amidst the waves.
⁷⁰ We enter the space between the opening verses of Genesis—watching God’s Spirit softly hovering over the still, dark sea. There was silence before God spoke everything into existence. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–c. 110) reminds us that Christ came from this silence, spoke, and returned: The one who truly possesses the word of Jesus,
the yang, may hear his silence
(hēsuchia, ἡσυχία), the yin, that he may be perfect, that he may act through what he says and be known through his silence
(Eph. 15:2).⁷¹ Silence and speaking are not contraries, but are complementary sides of God’ disclosure. We have to be quiet before we can hear. Quietness is a calm through the whole
person that Benedicta Ward (b. 1933) describes as a still pool of water, capable of reflecting the sun.
⁷² To the newly baptized—those who are participating in the mysterious death and life of Christ—Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) exhorts:
Cultivate quietness in words and quietness in actions—in speaking and walking. But avoid the inclination toward outbursts. For then the mind will remain grounded, and will not, from excessive agitation, become weak and narrow in understanding and darkened (in) seeing. Nor will it be vanquished by gluttony or vanquished by boiling rage or vanquished by the other passions, lying as easy prey for them. For the mind, which is seated on high before a quiet throne, may control the passions (by) focusing on God.⁷³
In 1975, Herbert Benson, a well-known cardiologist and professor at Harvard Medical School, popularized the Relaxation Response, an inducible, physiologic state of quietude.
He tells the ironic story of discovering this effect of meditation in the same room where Walter Cannon (1871–1945) discovered the flight-or-flight
response to stress.⁷⁴ Hēsuchia occurs when our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are balanced.⁷⁵ Sadly, the increasingly frenetic pace and distractions of modern life are making quietness more elusive. But Jesus promises: Peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives I give to you
(John 14:27).
Kavanah (mindfulness
)
In the Jewish tradition, prayer was more than speaking to God.⁷⁶ It included the preparation of the heart through kavanah (כַּוָּנָה, focusing
), a reverential, loving attention to God’s presence. The God of Israel was transcendent yet personal and therefore could be known through encounter. The Mishnah exhorts:
One may stand to pray [the Amidah] only in a solemn frame of mind. The early pious ones used to tarry one hour [before they would] pray, so that they could direct their hearts to the Omnipresent. [While one is praying] even if the king greets him, he may not respond. And even if a serpent is entwined around his heel, he may not interrupt. (Ber.
5
.
1
)⁷⁷
Physiologically, it takes time to quiet oneself before God. The early pious ones,
probably a reference to the Essenes, would stand facing the horizon to greet the sun in the morning before their labor (Philo, Contempl. Life 27–28; Josephus, J.W. 2.128–29).
We find this antecedent to speaking in the Christian tradition. Augustine (354–430) counsels, When you pray to God in psalms and songs, the words spoken by your lips should also be alive in your hearts.
⁷⁸ Francis de Sales (1567–1622) writes, when you make ready to pray, you must say with your whole heart, ‘God is indeed here.’
⁷⁹ Jesus commands, Watch and pray
—focus and then speak (Matt 26:41).
Benson observes, When the mind is focused, whether through meditation or other repetitive mental activities, the body responds with a dramatic decrease in heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure (if elevated to begin with), and metabolic rate—the exact opposite effects of the fight-or-flight response.
⁸⁰ Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, defines mindfulness as an awareness that emerges through careful, nonjudgmental attention in the present moment.⁸¹ It begins with an intention, a purposeful state of mind. In the Christian tradition, our intention is simple: to be with God.
Daniel Siegal, professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, describes three dimensions of attention: orienting, alerting, and executive.⁸² Orienting is selecting an object—in our case, a passage from the Gospels—on which to focus. Lectio Divina works best with relatively short units—a verse or at most a paragraph. Alerting is sustaining our focus on this text, which is helped by reading aloud and, if short, repeating. The mind is prone to wander. When this happens, the executive dimension allows us to refocus on the passage, which is called attunement.
Horarium (division of hours
)
Benedict (c. 480–c. 547), author of the famous Rule, expected his monks to spend a sizable portion of their day in lectio Divina.⁸³ They divided their time between prayer and work
(ora et labora). Although encouraged to pray throughout the day, regular times were set to ensure God was not forgotten. Monks spent the first three hours of the day vacare Deo (being free for God
). John Chryssavgis offers this explanation: If in our prayers we long for His Presence and wait for Him with patience, confidence, humility, and trust, then He will come into the center of our lives and establish there His kingdom.
⁸⁴
Three hours every morning may not be realistic, depending on our life situation. We do what we can. John Chrysostom (c. 349–407) counsels:
But what is the answer to these charges? I am not,
you will say, one of the monks, but I have both a wife and children, and the care of a household.
Why, this is what has ruined everything—your supposing that the reading of Scripture appertains to those only [monks], when you all need it more than they do. For they that dwell in the world and each day receive wounds, these have most need of medicine.⁸⁵
In another homily, he exhorts:
What can it be, then, that I ask of you? Let each one of you, on some day of the week, even on the Sabbath itself, take in his hands the selection of the Gospels that is going to be read to you [at our next meeting]. Read it frequently as you sit at home in the time intervening, and often ponder with care the thoughts stored up in it and examine them well. Note what is clear and what is obscure, and which thoughts seem to be contradictory, though they really are not. And when you have finally sampled all of it, thus prepared come to the sermon.⁸⁶
I have found it helpful to keep a specific time each day for Lectio Divina. It has been my first activity for decades, as long as the constraints of life permit.
Guigo the Carthusian
After making external and internal space for the Spirit to respond to our lectio (reading
), this sacred time is traditionally extended into three other periods—meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio. Guigo the Carthusian (d. c. 1188) summarizes the process:
Reading [lectio] is the careful study of the Scriptures, concentrating all one’s powers on it. Meditation [meditatio] is the busy application of the mind to seek with the help of one’s own reason for knowledge of hidden truth. Prayer [oratio] is the heart’s devoted turning to God to drive away evil and obtain what is good. Contemplation [contemplatio] is when the mind is in some sort lifted up to God and held above itself, so that it tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness.⁸⁷
Called the angelic,
Guigo saw reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation as four rungs on a ladder to heaven. The reader moves through the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses of Scripture. The taste or experiential dimension is the fruit of the Spirit.
Meditatio (meditation
)
Meditatio, according to Guigo’s contemporary Richard of St. Victor (c. 1120–1173), is the examination of an object—in this case, moving from the signifier (the word) to the signified (referent) or surrendering to the horizon of our understanding (ambiguity). My tradition calls this Bible study.
We find a preponderance of word studies in the commentaries of the church fathers—many of which are inaccurate because of the limited understanding of