3.1.2- Truth of the ideal ego

The other aspect, mystical-contemplative, allows the believer to discover his own vocation, through a revelation that can only be daily and progressive. Daily prayer educates, de facto, and uncovers the truth of the consecrated person above all because, and in so far as, it is prayer of listening to God and to all that comes from his mouth, that is the Word-of-the-day. It is the daily manna or the day’s fresh bread that feeds the thinking heart and comes to reveal to the believer the gift prepared for him on that day of the Father’s providence, and at the same time, the mission that the Father himself entrusts to him on that day. “Every vocation, in fact, is ‘a morning call’, it is the response of each morning and a new call each day”, ¹⁷  and if God’s call opens every day, that’s why education (=listening to this word as word that makes truth emerge) and formation (=response to this word which calls) must be daily and ongoing.

Concretely, that means not only the morning appointment with the Word as fixed point, without exceptions, in the daily rhythm of the disciple, but an interpretation of the lectio as lectio…continual, or as meditation that is extended, in some way through the day and continues during the day, not only because the believer of good will usually has also good memory (which is the Holy Spirit) and so recalls it, but because the Word heard in the morning by nature needs the day’s events to be fully revealed and accomplished. Then, the day itself, ransomed from a certain ferial grayness, becomes “day that the Lord has made”, like Mary’s womb which delivers a Word and an ever new presence of God;  and the Word assumes all its educational and formative power, as gift from on high which molds and accompanies in every instant of daily living.  OF is also this way of understanding the classical practice of meditation, so that it is not reduced to a tired and sleepy morning ritual; it is useless if it does not reach the fragments of daily living, sterile if the Word does not let itself be fertilized by life.

On the other hand, what’s the use of a meditation that does not manage to drag the Word into events or make that Word fruitful by life?