By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
Australia’s Bishops have produced an online resource for the faithful to pray the Scriptures in Lent and Holy Week using the ancient method of Lectio Divina (Divine reading).
Twelve Bishops across Australia will participate in the reflection which includes an online video instruction on how to pray the Scriptures.
The Bishops encourage the faithful to pray the Scriptures in their own home, not just in church.
A final segment to be posted during Holy Week will involve a small number of Bishops and lay people sharing thoughts and reflections of their Lenten journey around the celebration of an Easter meal.
“It is hoped this final Segment (appropriate to the Season) will reflect the warmth, invitation, sharing, and community that has been built through people’s ‘getting together’ in their own homes over the seven-week period,” a Bishops’ conference statement said.
“We all understand that life sure doesn’t stop during Lent – it relentlessly marches on with work, sporting commitments, school plays, weddings etc. This coming year, why not plan to spend some quality time with those around you as you journey to Easter.”
Bishop David Walker of Broken Bay, a member of the Bishops Commission for Mission and Faith Formation, said in the introduction of Lectio Divina: Praying the Scriptures in Lent and Holy Week 2010 that the 40-day journey “through the desert of temporality and the dust from which we were formed is a countercultural endeavour”.
He said that while the self-obsessed culture may see Lent’s fasting, prayer, sacrificial giving and self-reflection as a result of low self-esteem, by participating in this season, “we boldly embrace our identity and appear every bit as odd as our first-century brothers and sisters in Christ”.
“While this dust seems at first to be only the dry remnant of a life ended, in fact it’s the (richness) of a God who creates life from void, who breathes God’s self into earth to bring forth us, the creature. The same God who brings forth living water from God’s own broken humanity,” he said. The dust is also a sobering reminder, he said, in a world of “collagen-injected lips” which still turn to dust, “even the pilates-lengthened muscles, the 12 essential vitamins and minerals and the bottled water” in which “we are told that we can live forever with the right combinations of exercise, diet and elective surgery”.
“We know – in those inevitable moments of disquieting silence (during the Ash Wednesday service) – that the oasis is not all it’s cracked up to be, and so we enter the desert where we can no longer turn from the inevitable dust, where the seemingly impossible happens: destructive self-centeredness is transformed into cruciform living,” Bishop Walker said.
“As we pray the Lenten lectio, individually or with others, may we discover anew the God who continually calls us to become transformed into this cruciform way of living in order to share more deeply in the Easter Mystery of resurrection life.”
The resource is available at www.thereflection.vividas.com.