The lectio
The first point of lectio divina is the lectio, which consists in an attentive reading of the text, in order to understand what the text says. This research means having respect for the Word, having a religious sense of the will of God, which reaches me through his Word.
It isn’t I who can invent for myself the ways to go to God, but it is God who reveals to me how I can reach Him. Because idolatry, which consists in serving an idol, work of my hands and my convictions and conveniences, is always lying in ambush.
The various religions that are springing up now, or that vague religiosity which takes the name of new age, and all the other searches for the “divine”, as also the neo-paganism with pantheistic tones, are all awkward attempts to create one’s own divinity, made according to one’s own image and likeness or to plan one’s own way to escape present misery and future threats.
When Jesus stated “I am the true way that leads to the Father”, he didn’t mean only to state that he was the way. He wanted to reaffirm that it is God who establishes the way of return to Him.
Accepting the Word as a sure way represents a remedy to the insidious subjectivism that is rampant and to the perennial temptation to idolatry.
Even among the most fervent Christians there is widespread conviction that each one can choose her/his own devotions, more or less enlightened, more or less in conformity with “true devotion” which is that which springs from the understanding of the priority of God’s demands on us through the Word, in contrast to our needs and preferences.
We must take note that in the heart of each person there is an irrepressible tendency toward subjectivism, which pushes us to adjust things so as to create for oneself a way to go to God that is not too arduous, rather soft, often self-serving, always egocentric and self-referential.
The daily confrontation with the Word, instead, saves us from this illusion and puts us in contact with the authentic will of God, which calls me back to the obedience of faith, the truth of my relationship with God, and the unmasking of my illusions.
Illusions that can become dangerous; think of the jihad, of the Gott mit uns, and all the horrible deformations of a will of God, more imagined than accepted.
This first part, that is the understanding of the text, in its exegetical component, can also help overcome the deficit of Biblical training for certain consecrated persons--especially, but not only-- of a more advanced age.
If it is true that one should not stop with the exegetical moment, that does not mean that it should be neglected.
A good exegesis, of the more strictly philological and theological kind, contributes to a knowledge of the Bible, when one dedicates time to it. And, in practice, is favored when this first part is done previously (for some the best time is the evening before), as a preparatory moment for the following moments.
Today, then, there is no lack of qualified exegetical commentaries, for different levels of education, which help one enter into the complex, fascinating, but also distant and sometimes even disconcerting world of the Bible, a world in which the Word of the Most High still resounds.
Such a previous exegetical approach helps avoid a certain fundamentalism, too, typical of an ingenuous and immediate approach to a text. The text is to be read in context and in connection with the whole of Biblical revelation. And this is a remark of not secondary importance, since the part cannot be detached from the whole, that the Bible is to be taken in its totality, since the history of revelation took place along quite a few centuries and in different cultural contexts and as a response to different religious and ethical questions.