The ecclesial community is inseparable from the Scripture: librum et speculum, Bernard said, in the sense that the Book mirrors the community to judge itself and the community mirrors the Book because it would have no sense without the Book.

«The church was not born automatically. God himself called her as Ecclesia, namely “convoked” from the world, out of all men. God himself has erected her with a call launched in Jesus, the Christ. Thus, the Word of Jesus Christ, as witnessed by the apostles, is the star that guides the Church. The Church turns to this Word; she is unceasingly oriented towards this Word among the disorders and the errors of our times.¹

Church and Scripture form a living unity; one is generated by the other and one gives splendour to the other reciprocally. The whole history of the Hebrew people is there to prove it, and the whole Church History has launched it afresh with unceasing creativity. It is the matter of a genetic dependence, since the constitution of the believers into a group with marked identity takes place just starting from the initiative of God, of his entering a dialogue with somebody to turn him into a convoker and narrator of dialogue.

I wish to speak of the presuppositions and the exigencies required in view of a true lectio divina. They are some theological exigencies on the very nature of God’s Word, when the approach intends to seek God with all our heart and mind. They are theological principles to be kept in mind as the context of an authentic experience of God through the reading od the divine Scriptures. ² 

God convokes through words and events

a. «God’s home is in inaccessible light” (1Timothy 6,16; 1 John:  4,12.20): the Son alone knows and sees Him, as Jesus himself states (John: 6, 46). He is the “true witness” of the Father and the mediator -for him who has heard, seen, watched and touched (See: 1 John, 1–3)- for the access to the Father and the “attraction” from the Father.  After the Ascension of Jesus to heaven, it is through Him that we have the access to the Father, thanks to the action of the Spirit, who is sent from the side of the Father to call us again and to revive the deeds, the sayings and revelation offered by Jesus Christ to us. 

The Spirit of holiness and prophecy that gives us life with its post-paschal action makes the community of the believers united in deep communion with the divine Persons. “Christ has given us his Spirit that, being one and the same in the head and the members, gives life, unity and movement to the whole body” (L G 7).

This is the divine mystery that animates us and fills up our existence. However, this mystery is not handed over to us in a book composed by writers full of fantasy. The mystery is handed over to us in a book that collects an experience: it is a partial, fragmented and sketchy description of an intense and ineffable lived experience, partially narrated and written.

b. The sacred book is the moment of God’s Word, Our God is a person, a living God: he speaks, listens and communicates. Therefore, whenever we say “word of God” (dabar Jahwé) we must understand much more than a word, a sound of the tongue or the mouth. Dabar Jahwé is all that God reveals: his projects, actions, love, judgement, promise and silence. It is the matter of works, law, and oracle all together. It is the matter of creation itself, which is word of revelation and communication ad extra. In fact, for the Fathers and the monks the contemplation of nature was part of their lectio divina.

It is a matter of God’s being itself, in its activity ad extra, as it is known to us. In clearer words, it is God himself who acts and turns ad extra. This means that creation, history, interior emotion, tragedies of the people, even errors, catastrophes, dreams and memory, everything is the word of God. The supreme and extreme Word will find its fullness in Christ Jesus, who is God revealed and communicated in history in the fullest and absolute manner. The mystery of a communicative God is behind and within the words of the Scripture.  «The entire divine Scripture is a unique book and this book is Christ, because the whole Scripture speaks of Christ and finds its fulfilment in Christ”. ³

Keeping this in mind, we understand how pacific it was for the ancient mentality to venerate the Scriptures with the same diligence with which they venerated the body of the Lord. The Word made human is totally present and active in the Scriptures and in Christ, but the Logos is one, it is always the divine Logos who speaks in the Scripture (Origen). Incorporated in the Scripture or incarnated in Jesus Christ, the Word is always the same eternal word of the Father, the same Logos who lives among us. Happy are the eyes that can see the divine Spirit hidden behind he veil of the letter. The text realises a Presence, but does not refer to an external presence: for this reason the lectio divina is an unending commitment, a never wholly fulfilled work in the life of man, because our being in the Presence never ends.

Word for the community, mirror of the community

a. The history of the Word reaches us intimately connected with the response. In fact, the response is demanded by the Word In manifesting Himself. God produces, realises and acts. The “sacred” Book represents the moment of “permanent” transcription of an encounter, of an «evangelium scriptum in cordibus fidelium». There are certainly some passages to be kept in view, but without losing sight of the fundamental unity. The written Bible is only the last phase of a long procedural iter.

In the ancient cultures, the written communication was not privileged, while the oral one was. The written communication was eventually meant as pro-memory, but the true value was attributed to the listened to and constantly interpreted “oral edition”.  Even when it was addressed to a single person, this communication was finalised to the community, to build up the community, to create a communitarian identity through narrating and describing. Thus, in the Hebrew tradition, the exact term would not be “sacred Scripture”, butt “proclamation”  (miqra’), a thing which immediately evokes a community that listens to the living Word  (Deuteronomy: 6,4), and allows itself to be called to conversion (Psalm:  95,8), to be sensitised  (Exodus 7,10), thus becoming aware of  its reason for seeking life and identity. The “proclamation” does not have an end to itself, but becomes moulder of communitarian identity, of a memory that re-launches one’s own destiny towards other horizons.

The Scriptures form the most intimate part of the structures of the people of God and the living Church: they are not a priori product, to which, on a second moment, the people  comes to be linked from outside. They are the expression of a people generated around the Word, convoked by the Word. This people proclaims, in the heart and in writing, the marvels of God. The historical episodes themselves, the lived emotions, the glorious or sorrowful events are narrated with ever renewed pathos, just as if they were still being elaborated, like an open story always lived by new heroes: for instance, let us think of the Psalms, which take great themes and re-elaborate them poetically in a prayerful, exhortative and supplicating way.  .

We cannot separate the Bible from the journey of history (and of a people) under the guidance of the Word. The Holy Books are a condensation of the underground trend of people; whose religious conscience they make explicit. They have matured and been transmitted within the community itself, a community that hopes and waits, remembers and lives: the texts are eloquent and will come back to be eloquent only if this context is put to action.

The great assemblies prove this, for instance: Sinai (Es 24 e 34) with the stipulation of the Covenant (Gs 24; Deut 27), with the renewal of the Covenant after the travail of the desert and after entering the promised land; the discovery of the scroll of the law in the temple, with the new popular conscience under Joshua (2 Chron 34). Finally, perhaps the most famous one was the Ezra Assembly with the solemn proclamation of the Law and the popular explanation (Ezra 8).

However, we must add also the fundamental role played by other well known elements: the office of the synagogue every Saturday, with the reading of the Torah and the Prophets in the temple and in the synagogue. The homily in the office of the synagogue aimed at actualising the word of God in different religious and cultural contexts: the various targumic and midrash elaborations originated here. They amplified the oral or written traditions in historical, exhortative and symbolic way. We must add also the use of the Psalms, as communitarian response, in the liturgical celebrations: their variety consented a great variety of responses, according to circumstances and memories, as well as an actualised re-interpretation of ancient communitarian reactions.   

b. The Church (qahal) in the desert is born from the Word: there is a tight bond between the People and the Word from its very birth. In the pre-existing chaos, the word of God created the land and the universe, in the Egyptian chaos he called to freedom the scattered multitude and gathered it into a unique people as his own “chosen property”. It was at the Word of God that Moses ran the risk and the adventure of the Exodus.

The “convocation in the desert” (At 7, 38) – at the moment of the Covenant- took place on the foundation of the words: «Summon the people to me; I want them to hear me speaking» (Deuteronomy:  4, 10). After the reading of Moses, the people accepted the covenant, which Yahweh had made, entailing all these stipulations” (Exodus: 24, 7-8). This covenant, which constitutes the identity and history, was remembered every day in the Shema: «Listen, Israel... » (Deuteronomy: t 6,4), every week before the meeting of the synagogue, every year for the paschal feast (See: Deuteronomy, 26: a historical little creed). In moments of crises, the people were convoked around the Word (See: the assemblies and ordinances of the books), Imploring mercy and salvation according to the promises. 

Israel was convinced that the transmitted Word, more than a scroll, was the expression and experience of an ever newer presence, therefore the book was something always unfulfilled, because the presence was never something repeated, but always new. This explains the freedom of adding, correcting, adapting under new emotions or under the new collective conscience. Let us think of the re-reading called deuteronomistic. The classical example is given by the Psalms, which express the prayed history, as well as the prophets who repeat history and set it in motion afresh, and finally the cult, particularly that of important feasts, having a prophetic, symbolic and real role, besides the ritual one.

The «new qahal» also – the Ecclesia of the new covenant- is born just because God gathers – through the gestures and words, the examples and sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made man- with the announcement of the coming Kingdom, the questioning for conversion and the fulfilment of the Law, not only the scattered ones of Israel, but all the peoples. The book, which we call the New Testament was not born as a book and a writing, but mainly as experience of conviviality and friendship with Jesus of Nazareth, by listening to his proposals, his parables, his original interpretation of the Law and the traditions. Above all, it was born through a lived re-interpretation of Easter, which was the vital nucleus of the first covenant’s identity, and which Jesus had renewed radically.

The “new community”! is shaped by the vital – narrative, parenthetic, Eucharistic and intercessory- communication of the good news personified by sayings and lived experiences of Jesus, the risen and glorious crucified. This is a communicative and narrating community, in view of a vital communion of the Word made flesh with His Father and among all the hearers who had welcomed the proclamation. Therefore there is not only continuity between Word and community, but the community itself has the characteristic of being “servant of the Word” before the lived history and all men. Its credibility will depend on its capacity of being incarnation, transfiguration, hope, communion generated by the Word. The community is born from and nourished by the Word, but the community also gives flesh to the Word, makes it exist as a visible efficacy, as written Gospel not on paper, but in living flesh”   (See: 2 Co. 3, 2s).

Originality: seeking the Face behind the words

We wish to underline another particular point, which most probably many do not keep in mind: the typology of the “Biblical” truth is of a special character. It is about a truth to be looked for. If at times we do not find in the Bible the truth that we seek or perhaps we find its opposite in it and this disconcerts us, we may be looking for a truth which is comfortable for us, without paying attention to the truth that the Bible offers us.

The Biblical truth has the following peculiar characteristics:

- It is a truth of Semitic kind, namely something very concrete, which cannot be relegated at the simple level of thought and that we can conquer more with love and action than with our thinking about it. Let us remember the dense meaning of the term to know, which signifies to love, to be intensely close, to have an intimate relationship.

- It is a religious truth, namely a vision of the world and history whose centre is in God as essential, unique root and goal of everything. It is not the matter of a “religious” sense near other senses, but of the most authentic and intimate nucleus of the content, having God as object and goal.

- The truth must be discovered: it is not an instantaneous photo, but an attempt to express the inexpressible, perhaps taking its photo from different viewpoints, with rectifications and integrations. This is because it is a truth that progresses: God reveals and engraves himself in the dynamic memory of the people through successive waves, changes and re-elaborations, Therefore, the Bible is the last point of a lengthy and complex activity of the Holy Spirit who –through the work of charismatic writers, rooted in the memory of the people- hands over to us the events of the written Word, so that the “wonders of God”, operated by his bounty, may not be forgotten.

- Therefore, it is a book of the people, the most precious and open archive, in which God goes on acting and instructing his children. It is the book of the chosen people that proclaims a freeing word and memory in constant action. It must be approached with the soul of discipleship and with faith in the present God. We need to read it also synthetically and globally, so that through synchrony and diachrony we may catch the central and dominant nuclei, discovering the presence of a global reality in the particular one.

Conclusion in the perspective of communitarian lectio

The prayerful reading of the Word in community –not to be confused with the pia exercitia, as even the magisterial teaching at times indicates- arouses thirst for a dialogue with God, enlightens the criteria of discernment and stimulates an existential conversion, which is neither purely moralistic nor only individualistic. At the same time we must say that it is a demanding journey requiring constance and perseverance, a passionate love for the Word, as a pure and lasting source of holiness and prayerful dialogue. To do it with the people, we need to make efforts to enter bare-footed, as “people”, the secret of the Word, before the burning bush, bending the face on the “sanctuary”  (in Hebrew: debir) where glory dwells. It is not a matter of teaching something to the believers, but of living all together a risky and transfiguring, transforming and adoring adventure, allowing ourselves to be “educated” by God as people convoked for a new covenant (See: Os 11,1-4).

The person who is expert in the Word, does not always find easy to be in syntony with the uncertain and at time confused faith of the people, thus he runs the risk to impose his theory, his explanation and application. By listening to the Word with a loving heart that enables us to share with wonder and contemplative eyes together with the people, the prayerful reading becomes truly a prayerful listening, a prayerful dialogue, contemplation and prophecy  that tear up the veils of an opaque history and illumines of immensity our precarious existences.

Bruno Secondin
Pontifical Gregorian University - Rome
Borgo S. Angelo, 15 – 00193 Rome

1. H. Kung, La Chiesa, Queriniana, Brescia 1969, 16.

2. Per più ampie indicazioni rimando al testo: B. Secondin, Lettura orante della Parola. Lectio divina sui Vangeli di Marco e Luca, Messaggero, Padova 2003, 13-47; L. Deiss, Vivere la parola in comunità, Torino 1976; M. Mazzeo, Parola di Dio e vita dei credenti, Devoniane, Bologna 2003.

3. Ugo di S. Vittore, De Arca Noe, II, 8: PL 176, 642c.