-
The Soul’s Sole Longing: On Surrender, Resistance, and Returning to Love (Lectio Divina)
What happens when a soul that has turned toward God tries to turn away? Teresa of Ávila’s words open this reflection: the struggle is fierce, and in the end, struggle is of little avail against the Lord’s desire. Drawing on the Rahnerian insight that grace and freedom are equally gifts of God, and on…
-
Not Your Own Making: On Divine Calling, Consulting the Lord, and the Life For Which You Were Made (Lectio Divina)
Most of us spend our entire lives searching for our calling — moving from purpose to purpose, desire to desire, and false identity to false identity. But a calling is not something we create or decide upon. It is something we hear. And our true calling is merely to listen for God’s calling. The…
-
Beneath the Threat of Nothingness: Contemplative Prayer and the God Who Fills Every Void (Lectio Divina)
Contemplative prayer invites us into the darkness — into the silence and emptiness we most fear. Drawing on Meister Eckhart’s Sermon 4, this Lectio Divina reflection traces the movement from fear to trust: the fear of being alone and unloved, the surrender of everything we cling to, and the discovery that the vast emptiness…
-
Recollected Into God: Teresa of Ávila on the Soul’s Return to Wholeness (Lectio Divina)
We are not born broken. We are created in the image and likeness of a God whose first intention was love — whose first and last Word is Love. Born of and for love, we were born whole in a broken world. And yet, one injury and insult at a time, one hope and…
-
Instrument of Peace: The World Does Not Change Simply Because We Do (Lectio Divina)
What do we really believe the spiritual life promises us? In this Lectio Divina reflection, Robert Van Valkenburgh traces an insight that arose during a contemplative group gathering in which the so-called Prayer of St. Francis — beautifully attributed but almost certainly written by an anonymous French author in 1912 — became the occasion…
-
The True Self and the False Self: On Identity, Exile, and the Grace That Reveals Us (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on James Finley’s Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, this Lectio Divina explores the relationship between the true self and the false self — how the false self conceals the light of the true self, how Paul’s language of the old and new self illuminates that dynamic, and how it is grace, not effort, that…
-
The Whole That Is God: On Wholeness, Perception, and the Love That Holds the Universe Together (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on Ilia Delio’s vision of divine wholeness, this Lectio Divina explores the paradox at the heart of the contemplative life — that we are not separate from the Whole, but have forgotten this, and must remember what was never lost. A meditation on perception, the false self, and the slow, merciful work of…
-
The Gift of Wonder: Letting Go of Certainty and Resting in Mystery (Lectio Divina)
We spend so much of our lives grasping for certainty — as if knowing enough could protect us from pain, loss, or the sheer vastness of what we cannot control. But what if the part of us that demands to know is not the deepest part of us at all? Drawing on Serene Jones,…
-
The Empty Cup: Emptiness and Receptivity in Christ (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on a retelling of a classic Zen story, this post explores the Christian invitation to emptiness — not as vacancy, but as receptivity to God’s grace. Through the figures of the rich young man, John the Baptist, Mary, and the kenotic Christ of Philippians 2, it traces the pattern of self-emptying love at…
-
Silenced by Love: Finding Our True Identity in Christ (Lectio Divina)
We defend ourselves because we believe our identity can be injured by words. But the part of us that is wounded, offended, and exhausted is not the part of us where God abides. Drawing on the silence of Christ before His accusers and the contemplative wisdom of Father Malachy Napier, this post traces the…