Encountering the Word of God Sunday Evening

Matthew Harrison

Saturday, June 28, 2008

There's a special event that happens every second Sunday at Toronto's St. Michael's Cathedral. Toronto's chief shepherd, Archbishop Thomas Collins, welcomes the faithful for an evening of Vespers and Lectio Divina. This divine reading is a meditation on scripture. For the past nine months the Archbishop has been working through the Sermon on the Mount. A couple weeks ago, he completed his final meditation (Matthew 7:13-29) on this beautiful portion of scripture found in the Gospel of Matthew and this Sunday, Salt + Light will be broadcasting it.

"Lectio Divina is a prayer. It is not a teaching. It’s not catechesis. It’s prayer." the Archbishop told me and a colleague recently, "It’s an encounter with Jesus and the word of God. It is not a study of the word of God."

The public event in the Cathedral is a combination of the reading Scripture, the Archbishop sharing thoughts on the Scripture, and a silent personal meditation. He even describes these elements as layers that, when repeated, form a "Lectio Lasagna"! (certainly lower in calories and higher in spiritual protein than other forms of the popular dish)

Lectio Divina is an excellent way to stop and reconsider Scripture -- to read it slowly, to contemplate it, to digest it, and to give it the time and attention it deserves.

You can catch Archbishop Collins' last edition of Lectio Divina on the Sermon on the Mount this Sunday, June 29th, at 9pm ET, only on Salt + Light Television!