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Course 3 · Lesson 3.2

Meditative reading compared with study and with Ignatian imaginative prayer

9 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 3 outline

Module 1: The Idea of a Rule

  1. What a rule of life is, and what it is for
  2. Pachomius and the first written rule
  3. Basil of Caesarea and his Rules
  4. Benedict: the Rule as a school of the Lord’s service
  5. Adapting a monastic rule for ordinary life

Module 2: The Hours and the Psalms

  1. Origins of fixed-hour prayer in Jewish and early Christian practice
  2. The Divine Office in the West and the hours in the East
  3. How to pray the Psalms: lament, praise, trust, wisdom and imprecation
  4. Building a simple office for one person

Module 3: Scripture and the Prayer of the Heart

  1. Lectio divina: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation
  2. Meditative reading compared with study and with Ignatian imaginative prayer
  3. The Jesus Prayer: its words, its history and its Eastern setting
  4. Practicing the prayer of the heart, with its cautions

Module 4: Fasting, Giving, Rest and the Year

  1. Fasting in Scripture and tradition, and its safe limits
  2. Almsgiving and care for the poor
  3. Sabbath rest and the Lord’s Day: how traditions differ
  4. The church year: Advent to Pentecost and the ordinary weeks

Module 5: Conscience, Confession and Worship Alone

  1. Examination of conscience: methods old and new
  2. Confession in the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions
  3. Repentance, confession to God and to a trusted person when no minister is available
  4. What worship alone can include: prayer, Scripture, song, the hours
  5. What the traditions say requires a church or ordained minister

Module 6: Seasons and Ordinary Duties

  1. Silence as a discipline and its dangers
  2. Planning a day, a weekend and a longer retreat
  3. Work as part of the rule: ora et labora
  4. Hospitality, family and neighbor

Module 7: Dryness, Perseverance and Review

  1. Dryness and the dark night: what the tradition teaches
  2. Acedia: Evagrius, Cassian and the noonday demon
  3. Doubt and perseverance
  4. Accountability for a rule of life
  5. Reviewing and revising a rule at thirty days, ninety days and one year

All courses

Program / Course 3: The Rule of Life / Lesson 3.2

What you will learn

  • Distinguish meditative reading from study of Scripture and say why both matter.
  • Describe Ignatian imaginative prayer and its Examen.
  • Summarize Luther’s and the Puritans’ approaches to meditation.
  • Identify the strengths and cautions of each approach.

The big idea

Christians read Scripture in several ways. Study asks what a text meant, in what setting and how it fits the whole. Meditative reading, as in lectio divina, listens for how the text speaks in prayer. Ignatian prayer, from Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century, asks the reader to enter a Gospel scene by imagination. Protestants developed their own meditation, tied closely to the words of Scripture. These approaches complement one another, and each has typical dangers.

Key terms

Study
Reading Scripture to understand its words, history, setting and meaning, often with commentaries and reference works.
Meditation
Thinking over a text or truth in the presence of God, in order to be formed by it.
Spiritual Exercises
A set of meditations, prayers and practices composed by Ignatius of Loyola, designed to be made over about thirty days or in a shorter form.
Examen
A short Ignatian prayer reviewing the day with God, looking for gratitude and for failures.
Hermeneutics
The theory and practice of interpreting texts, including how readers understand Scripture.
Colloquy
In Ignatian prayer, a conversation with God, Christ or a saint at the end of a meditation.

Background

Readers often feel pulled between two goals. One is to understand the Bible accurately, which requires attention to language, history and genre. The other is to receive the Bible as living address to the reader’s own life. Christian tradition has held both. Origen and Jerome wrote technical commentaries and also taught devotional reading. Augustine insisted on careful interpretation and also read the Psalms as personal prayer. The modern separation of study from devotion is less typical of the tradition than it appears.

Different Christian groups have developed their own ways of holding the two. Benedictines practice lectio divina. Jesuits and other followers of Ignatius use imaginative contemplation. Lutherans and Reformed Christians stress the preached word and private meditation. Orthodox Christians read in the setting of worship and the fathers. A beginner does well to know these options and to choose according to temperament and tradition.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Study and meditation compared

Study asks questions of the text. Who wrote it, to whom, and when? What do the words mean in the original language? How does it fit the book and the whole Bible? Books such as the one by Fee and Stuart in the library help here. Study guards against reading modern meanings into ancient words.

Meditation asks questions of the reader. What does this passage say to me and to my situation? What is God inviting here? Both are needed. Study without prayer can become cold, and prayer without study can drift into private invention. A simple practice is to study a passage first on one day and meditate on it on the next.

Step 2: Ignatian imaginative prayer

Ignatius of Loyola (1491 to 1556), founder of the Society of Jesus, composed the Spiritual Exercises from his own experience. In many of its meditations he invites the reader to imagine a Gospel scene: to see the persons, hear their words, and see what they do, and then to place oneself in the scene, perhaps as a bystander. The reader then speaks with Christ in a colloquy as one friend speaks to another.

The Exercises include the Examen, a short prayer for the end of the day. The classic form has five steps: give thanks, ask for light, review the day, express sorrow where needed and look ahead to tomorrow. It is among the best known of Ignatian practices and is used by many outside the Catholic Church.

Step 3: Luther and the Puritans on meditation

Martin Luther, in a preface to his German writings in 1539, described three rules for studying theology: oratio (prayer), meditatio (meditation) and tentatio (trial or testing). By meditation he meant a constant, repeated engagement with the words of Scripture, spoken and thought over, not a flight of imagination. By trial he meant the pressure of suffering and doubt that drives a person back to the word.

English Puritans such as Richard Baxter wrote at length on meditation, treating it as a daily practice of focusing the mind on heavenly things, using Scripture as the basis. They wrote guides with steps for the reader. The Reformed tradition thus has its own structured meditation, tied to the text and to doctrine, with suspicion of images.

Step 4: Strengths and cautions

Each approach has strengths. Study protects accuracy. Lectio divina fosters attentiveness. Ignatian prayer engages feeling and imagination. Protestant meditation keeps the mind on the words. Each also has risks. Study can become only intellectual. Lectio can become subjective. Imaginative prayer can invent details and mistake imagination for revelation, and Ignatius himself said it should be done with a guide. Protestant meditation can slip into moralizing.

Some Orthodox writers warn against the use of imagination in prayer because they fear self-deception, which they call prelest. The Orthodox prefer to pray with the words of the church and with attention to the heart. A reader who belongs to any tradition should learn how that tradition treats these practices and ask a trusted guide.

  1. Am I more inclined to study or to meditate, and what am I missing?
  2. Do I tend to treat Scripture as information, as law, as story or as address?
  3. What do I gain and lose by imagining a Gospel scene?
  4. How do I know when imagination has become invention?
  5. Would an Examen at night help me, or would it feed anxiety?
  6. Who could I ask about the approach that fits my tradition?

Examples

Study and then prayer

On Monday a woman reads a commentary on Luke 8:22-25, the calming of the storm. On Tuesday she reads the passage slowly, imagines the boat and prays about a storm in her family. The two readings do different work. (A constructed example.)

The Examen at night

A man ends his day by thanking God for three specific things, asking light to see the day honestly, noting one failure and one good moment, asking forgiveness and naming one thing for tomorrow. It takes five minutes. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

The Catholic view

Catholics recognize several schools of prayer. The Benedictine school stresses lectio divina, the Ignatian school imaginative contemplation, and others such as the Carmelite stress interior prayer. The Church teaches that Scripture is read in the Church, and the Catechism recommends meditation, drawing on all these traditions.

The Orthodox view

Orthodox writers prize reading Scripture in the church’s setting, and they are cautious about methods using imagination or visualization. They teach prayer with attention in the heart, guided by an elder.

The Lutheran and Reformed view

Luther’s oratio, meditatio and tentatio and the Puritan treatises on meditation emphasize prayer over the written word. Protestants in this line hold that the Spirit works through the text, and they distrust techniques that suggest a method for producing experience.

The scholarly view

Biblical scholars stress historical and literary study, and some warn that devotional readings can import modern ideas. Others, within the field of theological interpretation, argue that reading Scripture as the church’s book requires prayer and faith as well as method.

Why it matters

Many people feel that their reading of Scripture is either too dry or too loose. Knowing the strengths and risks of each approach helps a reader to combine them. A rule of life that includes only study will miss the prayer. A rule that includes only meditation will miss the check that study provides.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Study and meditation are opposites.

Correction: The tradition has held them together. Scholars such as Origen and Augustine did both. A reader can benefit from alternating them.

Misunderstanding: Imagining a Gospel scene adds to the Bible.

Correction: Ignatius intended the imagination to serve the text and not replace it. The details should not be taken as fact, and the reader should return to the text. Still, some traditions are cautious about this practice.

Misunderstanding: Protestants do not meditate.

Correction: Luther and the Puritans wrote on meditation at length. The Protestant form is tied closely to the text and to doctrine.

Knowledge check

How does study differ from meditative reading?

Study asks what the text meant, in what setting and how it fits the whole Bible, using tools such as commentaries. Meditative reading asks how the text addresses the reader in prayer. Neither replaces the other, and a reader can alternate them.

What is Ignatian imaginative prayer?

In the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola the reader imagines a Gospel scene by seeing the persons, hearing their words and watching their actions, then enters the scene and speaks with Christ in a colloquy. It is intended to serve the text, and is best done with a guide.

What are the five steps of the Examen?

Give thanks for the day, ask for light to see it truly, review the day with attention to gifts and failures, express sorrow and ask forgiveness where needed, and look ahead to the next day. The prayer takes about five to ten minutes and is used even outside Catholic circles.

What did Luther mean by oratio, meditatio and tentatio?

Luther named three rules for studying theology: prayer, meditation and trial. Meditation meant repeated engagement with the words of Scripture, spoken and thought over. Trial meant the testing of suffering and doubt, which drives the reader back to the word.

Think it through

  1. When has study of a passage deepened your prayer, or prayer deepened your study?
  2. Is there a method in this lesson that would not suit your temperament, and why?
  3. What guard would you put around the use of imagination?

Independent assignment

Two readings of one passage

In your notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Choose a short Gospel story. On the first day, study it: look up the setting, note repeated words, read one commentary or study note. On the second day, read it in prayer using lectio divina or the Ignatian method of your choice. Write what each reading gave you and what it left out. Do not post it.

Further study