Listening to the Word

Chapter Three
Listening to the Word,
pages 19-30

At the end of the last chapter Pennington identifies the motive force behind the discipline of Lectio. He writes: “In true Lectio [one has to wonder if Pennington thinks there may be a false Lectio then] by the power of the Word of God and of the Spirit, we do see, we do hear. The Word and the Spirit expand our listening. Their grace heals us of the binding prejudice, the fears, the selfishness and the self-centeredness that would have us cling to our present parameters with the illusionary comfort of their controlled limitations.”

Lectio is governed, enabled, directed by the Holy Spirit. Christianity is unique, I suspect, in that it has a part of the Trinity dedicated to transformation. As Pennington writes of the Holy Spirit and the Sacred Word of God: “They lift us above all limitations of our human reason, enabling us to be a listening not only for those transcendent truths of faith that are beyond the grasp of reason, but also for the very experience of God.” I have to wonder if Pennington thinks that the average reader has any inkling of what this instruction means because here he asserts that Lectio Divina is a discipline that will—with the assistance of the Holy Spirit—provide “transcendent truths of faith that are beyond the grasp of reason.” More, he asserts it will provide “for the very experience of God.” These are amazing assertions for laity, perhaps. We hear them regularly during the Mass and may even have heard them discussed in Adult Education classes, but in the context of this monastic treasure we have to understand that we are not just in the presence of the Holy Spirit, we are inviting the Holy Spirit to intervene in our lives and move us into a kind of listening that will transform our lives by allowing us access to “transcendent truths of faith” truths that are “beyond the grasp of reason.”

If Robby the Robot were about he would be shouting about now, “Danger! Will Robinson, Danger!” “Transcendent truths of faith” or the “very experience of God” are not your ordinary every day run-of-the-mill experiences for laity nor should they be taken as such. These are altered states of consciousness with potent and life changing consequences. They should not be taken lightly nor entered into without proper respect though Pennington seems to offer them as if they are the most normative experience a Christian should desire.
For many of the laity, Church is something we do as part of being respectable folk. For many parents, it is a way of enculturing the younger generation, a way of bring up good Christian children who know the values of the family and the essentials of Judeo Christian culture. For others of us it is a kind of spiritual vitamin without which we don’t feel right the rest of the week. For still others, it is the heart of a community we value, where the sacraments mark the beginning and the end of life as well as those essential ties that bind us in between. Be that as it may be, Pennington is at some pains to remind us that that the Mass is the Liturgy of the Word offered to the People of the Word marking us as the People of God.
Sometimes in the banality of repetition the sharp edges of memory are worn away and we forget how this whole ceremony is designed to remind God’s people of the life giving refreshment of the Scriptures. We may forget that it is not the homily, but the proclamation of the Word, that is the central feature of the Mass. In the midst of Candles, sacred lights, clouds of incense, anthems of praise and shouts of Alleluia “the great moments of theophany” are celebrated.
As a theologian Pennington may toss about the word “theophany” easily, but for most of us laity, it is not an easy word. Most of us do not know the word. It means the "the appearance of a divinity who is named and recognized to a human. It is the moment of revelation. It is contrasted with hierophany which points to a manifestation of the sacred, a break through of the supernatural into the natural world. Hierophany is different from theophany in that the supernatural/transcendent experience does not seem to be sponsored by any named diety. In hierophany we simply are aware we are in the presence of an enormously sacred event. Transpersonal psychologists would call this a metanoya by which they mean a break through, a piercing of straight thinking, reasoned ordinary mentality by transcendent experience. In this case, Pennington is referencing the many moments when the God of the Hebrew Scriptures announces his sponsorship of a particular sacred moment. Nowhere is this more true than in the presence of Jesus Christ who is the sublime manifestation of the sacred in Christian tradition.
So we are called to pay attention in the Mass to remember these moments when God claims us as his own. Pennington writes noting as we all do how overwhelming the content of the Liturgy of the Word is: “I have found that if I try to grasp all that is served up in the Liturgy of the Word, it all seems to run through my fingers.” Wonderful as it is, the Liturgy of the Word is really not an effective discipline. It is worship. It is the call to the Community to remember. “Do this in remembrance of Me” we hear before the communion. For Laity the totality of the liturgy of the Word is a powerful call not to forget, not to fall into the slumber of the secular, not to recede from the sacred into the normal, but to remember where it is, where it came from, and how it is at the center of our identity as Christians.
Pennington continues: “So what I now do in PRACTICE is to choose one small tasty morsel.” Here is that word that separates Lectio Divina from the Liturgy of the Word. Lectio is a practice, a discipline, a way of embracing the Word more intimately, more powerfully so that the transformation may occur. “Sometimes,” Pennington continues, “one particular nugget is given to me—one word, sentence, or phrase strikes me very forcefully; at other times I select one.” The mind trained by Lectio opens to the Word differently than it does to the rest of us. Such a one listens for a talisman “’a word of life,’ which I talk over with the Lord after Communion and carry with me through the day. I allow the word to re-echo in my mind and in my heart, giving color to all that I experience through the day.”`

Scriptural Study
Pennington recognizes that beyond the Liturgy of the Word most of the laity do not have access to the community of voice in which monastics experience Lectio. Few of us are part of a community where we can go to be read to, to have the oral experience of the Word washing over us as the sea washes over the shore. For us alone in our spiritual lives we are sustained by text. The word in text can exist disembodied from the flesh. It stands aloof, separate waiting for us to access it, reanimate it, to give it voice. He recognizes that most of us have to resort to our study, open our Bibles and participate in regular study of the text. Here he opens a particularly nasty can of worms which he has been avoiding, “the idea that few of us know the original languages in which the sacred texts were written. So we have to rely on translations. Pennington writes: “There is an old saying: “Every translator is a traitor.” English is so different from ancient Hebrew or New Testament Greek that a translation is an enormous compromise. Depending upon the institutional demands made upon the translator the betrayal may be minimal and scholarly or extreme and political.

Be that as it may, the text we have is what it is. For our study of the Word, we should be careful in selecting a study text, so we may find a translator less prone to betrayal than otherwise might be the case. My recommendation would be that you seek out a scholarly translation such as the New Revised Standard Version rather than a more politically oriented translation.

Motivational Study
From time to time there will be “dry” periods in our spiritual life. At such times it is good to seek the strength of others who have written about their own spiritual journeys. In the model of others, we may often find the refreshment we have not been able to find in our own lives.

Lectio Divina
It is astonishing to listen here to what Pennington says, as it is so unexpected: “We come to Lectio not so much seeking ideas, concepts, insights, or even motivating graces; we come to lectio seeking God himself and nothing less than God. We come seeking the experience of the presence of the living God, to be with him and to allow him to be with us in whatever way he wishes” [27]. Lectio is so different a form of reading that it may seem utterly alien to us who have always read for interpretive meaning, to understand the text in its historical contexts. Here is not understanding. Rather here is active listening. It is as if we were to say as Pennington would have it: “Speak, Lord, your servant wants to hear.” He cautions us: “It is important . . . that in lectio we do not try to contract the Word we receive to the dimensions of our already-held concepts and ideas. Rather it is necessary to allow these ideas to be blown open, if need be . . .” [27]. “Lectio is essentially prayer at a deep experiential level.”

Pennington makes no bones about things: Regardless of the betrayal of the translator, regardless of the fact we are not reading the original languages as a scholar might do, we are to condsider the Bible as “a book wholly inspired by God, who guided the writers”—and the translators presumably—“gracefully in accord with their freedom and God given gifts, to express only what God wanted them to express and all that God wanted them to write in his name” [28].


Chapter Four
A New Packaging,
pages 31-45

Pennington returns in this chapter to the theme Keating articulated in his Intimacy with God. Asian teachers were so popular with American youth because their teaching was “very simple and precise. They gave the seeker a method that could immediately be put into practice” [31]. Pennington confesses: we [Catholics] “have rarely taught our mthods of prayer in simple, practical ways that the learner can immediately begin to use” [32]. Consequently, Pennington assumes that the individual student is isolated and alone with his/her Bible and so needs a solitary method to practice. Here are his three steps:
1) “Come into the Presence and Call upon the Holy Spirit.
2) Listen for ten minutes to the Lord speaking to you through the Sacred text
[presumably as you read.]
3) Thank the Lord and take a ‘word.’”

Pennington reminds us of the central instruction we heard earlier. “The Bible bespeaks a Real Presence, a place where we can encounter the living God whenever we will” [33].

Pennington expands on these three simple steps somewhat.
1) pick up the bible with reverence.
2) Reflect on the wonder of the Divine Reality it contains.
3) Turn to the Holy spirit which
a) Inspired these words
b) Abides within each of us to teach us all things
c) Making them a living communication with the Lord

Pennington expands these steps a third time drawing upon a 12th century text.
1) we take the book in reverence and kneel down
2) we call upon the Holy Spirit to help
3) we listen to the first words on our knees and kiss the text
4) only then do we sit down and continue the lectio.

He adds further instruction:
1) Determine the duration of our lectio by a set time.
2) If we say we will read a page or a chapter, we are so pressed that we may
forget the significance of our reading.
3) We may decide instead just to sit here with the Lord for these few minutes,
then we can receive the Word with a certain openness and a sense of leisure.
4) There is no need to push on. The rest of the text will be there tomorrow.
5) If the first word or the first sentence speaks to us, we can just sit with
it, let it come alive within us, respond to it. There is no need to push on.

Enthroning the Bible.
Pennington gives us an interesting suggestion. When he worked with a monastery in the Ozarks the devout people there had an interesting practice: They would enthrone the Bible on the pillow on their bed. When they go to bed, they pick up the Bible, take a moment and get a word or phrase from the Bible to carry with them into sleep. Then they place the Bible on their shoes so that in the morning they have to pick up the Bible again and again they receive a word to carry with them through the day.

A Lectio trained Christian will take his time to open his/her Bible, take a word to carry with them through the day. Often, Pennington writes, it will come alive to him, or it may prove to be just the word someone else needs. [39]