Lectio
“You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time.”
— St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 103
Meditatio
During my morning prayers, the thought occurred to me, “We spend so much time debating, arguing, and dividing ourselves over the word of God, what we believe it means, and what that says about anyone who believes differently, that we forget that there is only one Word of God and that he existed with and as God from the beginning and will remain with and as God until the end.” As is my contemplative prayer practice, I gently allowed the thought to pass, noticing it but not clinging to it, quietly consenting to the well-lit darkness that is God’s expansive nature unfolding in and as this moment and my awareness of it.
As the bell rang and my prayer hour came to a close, I slowly opened my eyes, bowed my head, and, rosary in hand, prayed the Hail Mary, the Jesus Prayer, and the Our Father before starting my morning routine and taking my daughter to the bus stop. My wife and I went for a walk together and discussed practical concerns such as scheduling, complicated family relationships, and what we can do to grow closer together as a couple in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. When we got home, we each cleaned up and got ready to go to work, and then helped one another pack up gift baskets that she and our daughter made for the staff at my daughter’s school for the end of the year, which we delivered together before parting ways for the day.
I went to my jiu-jitsu academy to take care of some admin tasks, to catch up with my sister-in-law whose help I needed for an event we have coming up, and to take class from one of our black belts and some friends of mine — one of the perks of the job. After class, a couple of us stayed after and talked about family — a near ubiquitous theme in my life at the moment — as well as some overlapping concepts between Christ’s teachings of non-violent, love-centered resistance, the Buddhist parable about not accepting the gift of someone’s anger and it, therefore, belonging to the giver, and jiu-jitsu strategy and practice.
On my way home, I stopped by our other academy to drop some things off and then picked up some lunch from the Amish market. During the ride, I began listening to the audiobook version of Henri Nouwen’s posthumously compiled and released Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life. Nouwen is one of a handful of authors who I return to over and over again because his expression of the word of God resonates deeply within me.
When I returned home, I unpacked my stuff, cleaned up after jiu-jitsu, made my lunch, and packed some snacks for Saturday’s jiu-jitsu tournament at which I’ll be coaching some of our kids. While in the kitchen, I put on Father Mike Schmitz’s Catechism in a Year podcast, which I started listening to a couple of weeks ago. As I prepped and ate my food, I heard Father Mike read the line from the Catechism, “Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, is one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely” (§102), and my ears immediately perked up. He continued on with the words of St. Augustine that you’ll find above — the same voice that had, in a sense, already spoken in my morning prayer without my knowing it.
This stopped me in my tracks and the whole day flashed through my mind. From my experience in prayer to my walk with my wife to jiu-jitsu and our conversation after to the Henri Nouwen audiobook on discernment I started in the car while running errands to the Catechism passage read by Father Mike, all of it beautifully orchestrated beyond my abilities or understanding. All of it spoken into being by and through the one, true Word, Jesus Christ, and my ability to hear and see it all spoken to me through that same Word in and as the Holy Spirit spoken in and as my very soul.
All of these little whispers extensions of the one, true Utterance of God spoken in and as Love for us. What is there to debate, to argue about, or to divide us once we see this, once we hear this Word in all of its forms — these seeds of the Word, as Justin Martyr called them — and acknowledge, like St. Augustine, that every attempt to speak and hear the Word of God is vanity of vanities (as the Teacher knew when he wrote Ecclesiastes) and yet grace, for our thoughts and words are mere echoes of this single Utterance of Love with God and as God in the beginning, and with God and as God throughout all time.
In the Ignatian tradition, this is what it means to find God in all things, or rather to be found by God in all things — not in spite of the ordinary, but within it and as it — which is the spiritual essence of discernment. The Greeks called it kairos, the graced moment when the veil between God and man is lifted and time becomes transparent to eternity — not a vision, not a miracle, just an ordinary Friday: a prayer hour, a walk with my wife, a jiu-jitsu class, an audiobook in the car, a podcast in the kitchen. All of it, friction and all, spoken into being by the one Word who has no need of separate syllables and is not subject to time, debate, argument, or division.
Oratio
whispered Word of Love
echoing out in time
seeds of life
sown in the soil
of the cosmos
sprouting up
as you and I
images of love
reflections
refractions
of Godself
whispering
the Word
Love
Contemplatio
Where in the ordinary movements of your day did you sense the Word whispering — and did you recognize it in the moment, or only in hindsight?
Related Scripture
“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” — Hebrews 4:12, NRSVCE
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Lectio Divina: Love Unfolding, which reflects on Heidi Russell’s insight that the Spirit unfolds the wholeness of God as Love into all of reality — a natural companion to this post’s meditation on the one Word spoken in and as Love throughout all time.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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