There are many and various ways for us to approach and encounter God. There is no one means of prayer has a monopoly over our journey to God. God welcomes and blesses every sincere effort we make to draw close to him.
With such an awareness in mind, the Catechism of the Catholic Church lists various wellsprings within the Church’s spiritual tradition. Each of these different wellsprings offers a unique way to draw close to God and nurture our interior relationship with him.
Among these various wellsprings, it’s no surprise that the Word of God receives first priority.
Quoting the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation, the Catechism explains: “The Church ‘forcefully and specially exhorts all the Christian faithful . . . to learn ‘the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ’ by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures…. Let them remember, however, that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue takes place between God and man. For ‘we speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles.’”
As believers, we cannot know who Jesus Christ is without reading and studying the Sacred Scriptures. As Christians, we need to be familiar and comfortable with the Bible and should frequently open its pages and be taught by God and his divine wisdom.
Our reading and studying of the Bible, however, should also be accompanied by prayer. The Bible should be an established part of our prayer life, since we need to learn the valuable skill of allowing the written Word of God to weave itself into our communication with God. We cannot study the words of God in one part of our life, while in another trying to internally listen to his words in our own hearts.
There is only one voice of God and the more we allow the words of the Bible to be a part of our prayer life, the more we will be able to hear and discern God’s words to us.
The Bible is a gift. It contains the deeds and words of God. It recounts for us the interaction of God among his people through the ages. It is also a living word. When we read the Bible, it is not the mere studying of an ancient manuscript or the simple gleaning of human wisdom from previous generations. The Bible is the living Word of God. When we engage the Bible, God will act and speak to us just as he did to our forebears.
The more we know about his deeds and words from the Bible, the more we can recognize and appreciate them in our own lives. The more we know the ways of God through the Bible, the more we can discern and see his ways in our journey of faith.
The Catechism summarizes this blending of the Bible and our personal prayer, and teaches us: “The spiritual writers, paraphrasing Matthew 7:7, summarize in this way the dispositions of the heart nourished by the word of God in prayer: ‘Seek in reading and you will find in meditating; knock in mental prayer and it will be opened to you by contemplation.’”
By opening and reading the Bible, we are led to meditation. The meditation of mental prayer will open our minds and hearts and lead us to deeper forms of prayer in contemplation. This movement of prayer begins and springboards from a devout reading of the Bible.
While we can pray spontaneously from our hearts, it is only our hearts we bring to God. Our hearts are fallen and oftentimes they are confused, wayward, and treacherous. Left to their own devices, our hearts can be unstable guides to the interior life. By bringing in the Bible, our prayer is given a stability beyond our efforts. In reading and praying with the Bible, God’s own words elevate and direct our own words to him.
Just as we cannot walk the way of the Lord Jesus without the grace of God, so we cannot truly pray without the words of God. We need the Bible if we are to pray with a mature heart. We need the Bible if we are going to pray and give our whole heart to the living God.
The Word of God, therefore, is the first wellspring that we need to drink from if we are going to be a people of prayer and grow in the spiritual life.
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