MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER 
BENEDICT XVI 
TO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD 
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 21st WORLD YOUTH DAY
 (9 APRIL 2006)

A time-honoured way to study and savour the word of God is lectio divina which constitutes a real and veritable spiritual journey marked out in stages. After the lectio, which consists of reading and rereading a passage from Sacred Scripture and taking in the main elements, we proceed to meditatio. This is a moment of interior reflection in which the soul turns to God and tries to understand what his word is saying to us today. Then comes oratio in which we linger to talk with God directly. Finally we come to contemplatio. This helps us to keep our hearts attentive to the presence of Christ whose word is "a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts" (2 Pet 1:19). Reading, study and meditation of the Word should then flow into a life of consistent fidelity to Christ and his teachings.

Does anyone else practice contemplatio? Or am I a rare breed?

"Finally we come to contemplatio. This helps us to keep our hearts attentive to the presence of Christ whose word is "a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts" (2 Pet 1:19). Reading, study and meditation of the Word should then flow into a life of consistent fidelity to Christ and his teachings."

What is hitting home at the moment is how very personal and yet how very impersonal the experience of the divine in contemplatio is...
As personal and private as it feels ... and as much as the experience shapes and challenges me on who I am and how I want to be in the world...
it makes clear that on another level..perhaps a more important level ....this is not about me . It's somehow about orienting all of creation toward its proper end..and I am a part of that..but only a part

Joyce--on detachment---- I have found that in those times when I am able to allow contemplatio to happen most fully it does flow into life in the form of a different sort of valuing . I tend to be a bit more Augustinian in this... I do not experience contemplatio as leading to detachment from all material (created) things, nor from all feelings...but instead I find that when I am connected with Him in contemplatio --- afterwards---my death grasp on things and feelings loosens, I become softer, more flexible and more able to have appropriate attachments to the appropriate things and feelings.

And in this , of course an infinite attachment and desire is appropriate only to the divine. An infinite attachment to finite things is just addiction.. or as Augustine would say a form of bondage or slavery.

And yet I find that in those times when I allow that contemplatio to form me, to form my responses I can more easily cling to what matters and let go of what does not.

Very Best

Renee