The Rule of St Benedict places great emphasis on lectio divina, the meditative reading of sacred texts as a monastic practice, but this contact with the Word of God offers a means for all Christians to become empowered by the holy fire of Pentecost

The drama of Pentecost: mighty wind, flames of fire, the gift of tongues, can distract us from the more profound and lasting effect of the coming of the Holy Spirit: namely, the way this event transformed the apostles' - and through them, our - relationship with the Word of God, empowering these "uneducated and ordinary men" (Acts 4:13) to unlock the meaning of their ancient texts, the psalms and prophecies so familiar on one level but of which the deeper significance had, until then, remained veiled. Peter must have heard the words of the prophet Joel many times and had no doubt listened to many a rabbi expounding them, but on the day of Pentecost those "young men" who "shall see visions" and "old men" who "shall dream dreams" (Joel 2:28) appeared, not as pencil outlines on the faded page of the past but in full technicolour before him. Here we have the essence of lectio divina, to engage with a text in a living, life-transforming way, through the gift of the Holy Spirit; to perceive the Word in the words. This is what makes lectio more like prayer than study, and why we may have to broaden our vision of this term to include all contact with the Word of God. After all, a phone-call or voice message from a loved one is at least as, if not more, welcome than a text message or letter. No one has taught us this better than the Apostle John:

 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being" (John 1:1-3).

Today we tend to think of lectio divina as an almost exclusively individual activity; but it's important to realise that such personal reading of the Scriptures grew out of, and reinforced, their public proclamation in the liturgy. Catechumens in the early Church were encouraged to do some lectio at home when there was no exposition of the Bible in their local church. Even by St Benedict's time (the sixth century) the distinction between listening to the Word proclaimed aloud and the meditative reading of each monk wasn't as sharp as it became in later centuries, for the ancient practice of reading seems to have been to murmur texts quietly to oneself. (Remember how surprised Augustine was to discover Bishop Ambrose reading silently - something so unusual as to be worth mentioning in the Confessions [VI, 3].) "Listen readily to holy readings" is one of the 72 precepts for monks in St Benedict's Rule (4:56).

Today, when life can be so frenetic and fragmented, it is helpful to try to integrate these two modes - listening and reading - of exposure to Scripture, and to see our personal lectio as an appropriation of the Word proclaimed in the liturgy. The Paschaltide Mass readings have presented us with examples of each type of lectio which may also reflect something of Christ's different modes of presence on earth. Placed between Jesus' earthly presence in most of St Luke's gospel and his spiritual presence in word and sacrament in Acts, the Emmaus encounter (Luke 24:13-35) represents that transitional time of the resurrection appearances, loaded with both continuity and discontinuity as Jesus passes from one mode of presence to the other. While the eucharistic aspects of the story have tended to evoke the greater response from artists (surprised recognition at the breaking of bread is perhaps easier to portray - at least tastefully - than burning hearts), the Emmaus story also serves as an excellent model of "listening lectio", as the risen Christ unlocks the Scriptures for the assembly, a model taken up powerfully by Peter and the other Apostles in their Pentecostal preaching. Peter is in no doubt as to the source of this power:

"This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear" (Acts 2:32-33).

Later in Acts (8:26-40), Luke the artist paints another picture of lectio, one more akin to what we expect - an individual poring over a text. Here Philip, agent of the Holy Spirit, provides the key which opens the Christological import of the image of the lamb silent before his slaughterers (Isaiah 53:7) with which the Ethiopian eunuch had been struggling. "How can I, [understand] unless someone guides me?" asks the eunuch. Philip's disappearance immediately after the Ethiopian's baptism shows that with that sacrament comes the capacity to read Scripture in the light of the Holy Spirit. Such a reading, if authentically of the Spirit, will also be consonant with the teaching of the Church, the Body of Christ - Son and Spirit, the "two hands of God" always work together (Irenaeus of Lyons: see, for example, Against Heresies IV, pref., 4).

It sometimes surprises people that there is no separate chapter on lectio divina in The Rule of St Benedict (Guigo the Carthusian's four-stage model of reading, meditating, prayer and contemplation only appeared in the twelfth century). What St Benedict has to say on the subject comes mostly in Chapter 48 of his Rule, "Of the Daily Work". This in itself says a great deal about how Benedict regards lectio, that is, not as some slightly precious individualistic activity that leaves us wondering whether we are meditating or contemplating, but rather as something to be done systematically and regularly, to be worked at, just as God works on us through the Holy Spirit to conform us ever more closely to his Son. This work involves cleansing our hearts (for the cleansing action of the Word see John 15:3; 1 John 1:5-7) by exposing them to the truth as it is in Christ, a process which illuminates all that is dark within us and brings us to our true selves.

What can be even more puzzling is that nowhere does St Benedict tell us how to do lectio. He only insists that we should do it and tells us when (basically, every day and more often in Lent). However, there are many excellent guides available these days, such as Dom David Foster's book Reading with God (Continuum, 2005) and an article by Abbot Stephen Ortiger which appeared in these pages (14 April 2001): "Let this book read you" (the title says it all). Not that Scripture isn't sufficiently important to warrant its own chapter: it permeates the whole Rule, and is called by Benedict "the truest of guides", not simply for monks but for "human life" (The Rule of St Benedict 73:3). His monks are saturated in Scripture: 150 psalms per week, Scripture reading at each of the eight daily Offices; scriptural antiphons and canticles, Scripture read aloud at meals, not to mention the monk's own lectio. The entire monastery - and in microcosm, the heart of each monk - is nothing other than an echo chamber for the Word of God (Siegfried Sassoon spoke of "reverberant precincts of the soul" in his poem "Rogation" in Selected Poems, Faber and Faber, 1968). Indwelt by the Holy Spirit, each monastery, each monk and each Christian becomes a house of God, domus Dei, empowered, like the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost, to proclaim in word and song the Good News of salvation to the whole world. This gift-task is for each of the baptised. All we have to do is to open our hearts in faith to receive, or to receive anew, the gift of the Holy Spirit. As Peter said at that first Christian Pentecost, "For the promise is for you" (Acts 2:39).

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