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Spiritual exercise - To pray the Word of God

  • The proposal of a lectio must be put forward gradually:
    "To grow up also means to rise from the ground to the sky, to elevate oneself to celestial realities. Reading, meditation, contemplation, and prayer are steps to grow. It's the Heaven Steps pattern. To read the Word and to meditate it means to nourish the soul with delicious food. Even the soul needs food and care."

    "Read a chapter of the gospels everyday; and when you feel anxious, read again till you are no longer; if you get anxious again, read the gospels once more." (Ambrogio of Optino).

    "When you get back home, you should get the scriptures and read again the Word heard in church together with your wife and children...
    Return home and prepare two tables, one with plates of food and one with plates of scripture; the husband will repeat the passages read in church...
    Make your home a church."     (Crisostomo).

    Pregare

    1. Before starting to read, pray the Spirit to "open the eyes of your heart":

    "Our God, Father of the light, You sent your Son to the world, Word which became flesh to show yourself to man.
    Send your Holy Spirit upon us, so that we can meet Jesus Christ in this Word deriving from you, so that we can know him deeply and thus we can love him totally in order to get to the blessedness of the kingdom. Amen".     (BIANCHI E., Pregare la parola, Gribaudi, Torino, 1974)

    2. Read the text very carefully; look at the context, imagine the scene, try and understand who's the main character.
    Discover the different figures and their characteristics, find out how they behave with Jesus.

    3. Try and understand what message the text is transmitting.
    Ask yourself what the Lord would like to tell you with those words.

    4. Learn a sentence by heart.
    The simplest way to vigil on the Word is to learn its sentences by heart. The Word will always be too great when compared with our receptive capabilities. A word, a sentence will accompany us in our life. "The majority of the words which have an intense meaning cannot be understood immediately. We need to entrust them to our deep memory, cradle them in our hearts with patience until maturity has been reached" Standaert wrote.

    5. Pray with frankness, without fear.
    Don't concentrate on yourself, but look at Christ. Follow him. Treasure this message in your heart and put it into practice.
    "If the text is prayer, pray, if it is groan, then groan, if it is gratitude, be joyful, if it is a text of hope, be hopeful, if it expresses fear, then fear. Because what you listen to in the text reflects yourselves." (Augustine)

    If you want download the poem (only text) click here.

    Poem of Giacomo di Sarug

     

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