Shows how in lectio divina we can truly meet the one who speaks, the living Word, God himself, who calls us to live rich Christian lives, even if the Word’s work in us remains mysterious.
Enzo Bianchi was born in Castel Boglione, Piedmont, Italy in 1943. In 1965, after graduating from the University of Turin, he founded an ecumenical monastic community - the Bose Community - of which he is still the prior. He is the author of Words of Spirituality and God, Where Are You?, both published by SPCK.
Enzo Bianchi is known to many as prior of the ecumenical Bose
monastic community in Italy. Lectio Divina is his plea for
Christians to feed on the Bible prayerfully and intelligently,
avoiding both academic detachment and literalist credulity, and
willing to enlist the fruits of biblical criticism in approaching
scripture as a sacrament of God's presence. It is towards the end
of this short book that Bianchi focuses on the specific discipline
of lectio divina, with its four-fold sequence of lectio (engaging
the otherness of the Bible) meditatio bringing ourselves into
relationship with scripture), oratio (offering what is taking place
to God), and contemplatio (dwelling joyfully in God's presence),
having spent time outlining the foundation of this method in
patterns of interpretation found within the Bible itself, in
Origen, and in medieval hermeneutics. Such prayerful Bible study
will often be undertaken individually, but it is a strenght of
Bose's approach that he sees the defining context for encountering
the Bible to be liturgical and communal: 'In liturgy-especially
eucharistic liturgy- there is a resurrection of Scripture as Word'
- though Protestant sensibilities may bristle a little to be told
that 'all of this takes place under a presiding guarantor' Lectio
Divina reads well in translation from the Italian but remains very
much a Roman Catholic book, written in response to that Church's
'long estrangement from the Bible' and the neglect of Bible-reading
in 'the daily lives of lay Catholics', unhelped by 'priests lacking
training in reading Scripture'. Patristic authorities and official
RC documents are frequently cited, but there is a notable absence
of wider reference. The combination of patient explanation, close
reference to post-Vatican II documentation, and a gentle
assertiveness bring something of the air of the novitiate
lecture-room. Readers belonging to Churches of the Reformation may
feel that Bose is making a case for something that they have known
about for some time, and that the helpful structure of lectio
divina may not be quite as distinctive as it seems. The author
offers many striking insights from his tradition into how, in
reading scripture, we 'will know that we have read well if we feel
that the text is reading us', though non-RC readers may feel that
for much of the book they are overhearing a neighbouring family's
conversation.
*Church Times*
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