Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation (Transforming Resources)

by M. Robert Mulholland

Prayer, as a classical spiritual discipline, is primarily relational, not functional. Henri Nouwen, the modern Catholic spiritual writer, characterizes the nature of prayer succinctly: In a situation in which the world is threatened by annihilation, prayer does not mean much when we undertake it only as an attempt to influence God, or as a search for a spiritual fallout shelter, or as an offering of comfort in stress-filled times. . . . Prayer is the act by which we divest ourselves of all false belongings and become free to belong to God and God alone.3

Nouwen points us to the essence of prayer as a classical spiritual discipline—prayer as the reality of our relationship with God.

We want to move closer to God, the source and goal of our existence, but at the same time we realize that the closer we come to God the stronger will be his demand

to let go of the many “safe” structures we have built around ourselves. Prayer is such a radical act because it requires us to criticize our whole way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves and accept our new self, which is Christ. . . . Prayer therefore is the act of dying to all that we consider to be our own and of being born to a new existence which is not of this world.4

Prayer as a classical spiritual discipline draws us into God’s involvement in the brokenness of the world on God’s terms, not ours.

But then the vision introduces a new element. The angel scoops up the prayers of the saints, now incandescent from being purified by the sacrificial fire and inflamed in the presence of God, and casts them onto the earth. The result is thunder, voices, lightning and earthquake—all biblical images of the disruptive presence of God in the fallen world.5

John’s vision is a powerful representation of the nature of prayer. Prayer is the act by which the people of God become incorporated into the presence and action of God in the world. Prayer becomes a sacrificial offering of ourselves to God, to become agents of God’s presence and action in the

daily events and situations of our lives. How d...

from the idea of prayer as asking God to change our situation without any i...

This is why we should, as individuals and communities of faith, make use of the prayers of the church that have come down to us from the past. This is why, as individuals and communities of faith, we should pray the Psalter. This is the essence of the classical spiritual discipline of prayer: not our private, individualized prayers, but immersing ourselves in the deep, sacrificial prayers of the saints through which the church through the ages has offered itself to be the body of Christ in the world. Unless our individual prayer life exists within the greater support structure of the prayers of the saints, it will tend to become very narrow, individualized and privatized, and we will shy away from yielding control of our existence for God’s purposes in our world.

“Let everyone know your life is being lived in another structure of being, one in which the Lord is constantly a vital presence.”7

These instructions on prayer are for the community first, the individual members second. It is within the body of Christ that the reality of the new order of being in Christ is maintained and nurtured as the ruling perspective for life and activity. The community of faith is the primary and essential means by which individual believers are nurtured to understand and live their lives as citizens of God’s New Jerusalem in the midst of a fallen-Babylon world.

Paul next reminds the Christian community in Philippi not to be “anxious.” The term is descriptive of a mode of existence characterized by attempting to control one’s life.

This kind of anxiety arises whenever we attempt to impose and maintain our own manipulative control on the world, whenever we attempt to squeeze the world into our own mold. The world, of course, resists our control and threatens the e...

constructed around our lives. How can we be liber...

mode of exi...

Paul tells the Philippians that such liberation comes when “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, [we] let [our] requests be made known to God” (Phil 4:6 RSV). Notice the list that precedes our requests. “In everything” denotes an established posture of relationship with God that becomes the context within which we experience all the events and relationships of our lives. “By prayer” indicates the active exercise of this established relationship as the initial response to each event and relationship. “Supplication” implies an awareness of our inability to meet the events and relationships of our lives in our own strength or by our own resources. “With thanksgiving” reveals a posture of being that is yielded and res...

This kind of corporate prayer, which nurtures and supports the same kind of individual prayer, is the paradigm of the classical spiritual discipline of prayer. When our prayers, corporate and individual, conform to this model, Paul tells us that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep [our] hearts and [our] minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7 RSV). God’s shalom (peace) is the order of life in relationship with God in which true wholeness and fulfillment are experienced. This is not an escapist kind of peace; it exists in the midst of events and r...

dehumanizing dynamics of the world have been shaken and undone in age after age. This is the essence of the classical spiritual discipline of prayer, and the context within which we ...

By this contrast I do not intend to suggest that informational reading is bad and formational reading is good. Each has its proper place. The difficulty arises from the fact that we are so deeply conditioned by informational reading that it tends to be the mode by which we approach all reading. The deeply ingrained habits of informational reading tend to take over whenever we open a book. We do not naturally engage in formational reading. We need to be alert to this fact if we are going to engage in spiritual reading.

We will see, as we explore each component of lectio divina, that one of its great strengths is its holistic interplay between the sensing-intuitive and thinking-feeling aspects of our preference patterns.

Table 4. Lectio Divina Silencio Preparation for spiritual reading Inner shift from control to receptivity from information to formation from observation to obedience Lectio Reading/receiving Nurtures “sensing” dynamic Meditatio Processing Nurtures “thinking” dynamic Oratio Response to God from the heart Nurtures “feeling” dynamic Contemplatio Yielding and waiting upon God Nurtures “intuitive” dynamic Incarnatio Living out the text

One of John Wesley’s guidelines for reading the Bible deals pointedly with this shift. Wesley suggests that we come to the text “with a single eye, to know the whole will of God,

The first half of Wesley’s guideline, if left by itself, can be totally informational. We can honestly and sincerely desire to know the whole will of God for our lives, but then set it alongside our own set of purposes so that we can choose what we think is the best. The second half of Wesley’s guideline introduces the shift required in the deep inner posture of our being: shifting control of the process from ourselves to God. It is a deep commitment of our being to God’s purposes, even before we know what those purposes may be.

Lectio might be likened to taking food into our mouths, receiving the nourishment our lives need from God.

Meditatio is the activity of processing what we have received in lectio, and flows naturally from our reading. If lectio is viewed as receiving food, meditatio is the process of chewing it.

In meditatio we seek understanding and comprehension of the text. We may need to engage in study of the passage, look up un...

And not simply to hear (“to know the whole will of God”) but to respond (“a fixed intent to do it”).

read and encountered, and flows naturally from meditatio. At this point we enter into personal dialogue with God. This activity nurtures the feeling side of our temperament. We share with God the feelings the text has aroused in us, feelings such as love, joy, sorrow, anger, repentance, desire, need, conviction, consecration. We pour out our heart to God in complete openness and honesty, especially as the text has probed aspects of our being and doing in the midst of various issues and relationships. At the

close of oratio, contemplatio moves us into a posture of released waiting on God for whatever God wants to do in us, with us, through us. This activity nurtures the intuitive side of our temperament. It is a posture of yieldedness to God. Some translations of the psalm capture it well: “Truly I have set my soul in silence and in peace, like a weaned child at its mother’s breast” (Ps 131:2).13 The unweaned child is at its mother’s breast for what it wants—milk. The weaned child, however, is content to rest in its loving mother’s arms and receive whatever she desires to give. Contemplatio is the posture of the weaned child. We abandon ourselves to God and to whatever God wants to do with us.

“Whatever light you then receive should be used to the uttermost, and that immediately. Let there be no delay. Whatever you resolve begin to execute the first moment you can.”14 This step brings us full circle to what we do in silencio. There we placed ourselves before the text to seek the whole will of God with “a fixed resolution to do it.” Incarnatio is the fulfillment of that resolution. The classical spiritual discipline of spiritual reading is one of the most vital in our growth toward wholeness in the image of Christ for others. Out of the discipline of spiritual reading come many of the highly individualized and personal disciplines that God calls us to offer as means of transforming grace. LITURGY This somewhat daunting term literally means “the work of the people.” It has mistakenly come to be used almost exclusively for elaborate patterns of worship and celebration. Liturgy certainly includes such high times of community activity, but it also includes the simple orders of worship, the spontaneous celebrations of God, our personal structures of daily devotion and all the patterns of activity by which we seek to enter into deeper relationship with God, corporate relationship with one another and faithful response to God in our daily lives. If prayer and spiritual reading are the means by which we are awakened to the deeper realities of life in Christ and called into the discipleship of a new order of being in Christ, then liturgy is the diverse structure of behavi...

Our attitudes, our perspectives, our ways of relating to others, our methods of responding to the circumstances of the world around us, our self-image, even our understanding of God have all been shaped by the destructive values and dehumanizing structures (liturgies) of the world’s brokenness.

Daily those values have been and are still the atmosphere we

live in. Daily those structures set limits on our actions. The media, the entertainment world, the advertising industry all serve to maintain, reinforce and extend the destructive value systems and behavior patterns of our non-Christian culture. Political, economic and social structures exert tremendous pressure ...

Liturgy consists of the corporate and individual patterns of devotion, worship, fellowship and obedience that enable us increasingly to manifest in the world God’s kingdom of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, cleansing, healing and holiness. This is why Kenneth Leech affirms: The liturgy is thus a deeply subversive act, a spiritual force working within the fallen world to undermine it and renew it. . . . To take part in the Christian liturgy is to take on one’s role in a new kingdom: one that “shall have no end.” It is the political act of all time and is therefore potentially seditious within the secular politics of a specific time and place. . . . Liturgy should be an act of festivity, of joy, of liberation, an act in which the powers of the age to come are celebrated in anticipation.