Jeff Cavins - Thursday Evening Session - Applied Biblical Studies

welcome to our workshop today where we're gonna be talking about Lexi Oh Davina I was listening earlier to dr. Petrie and he was talking about Lexi Oh Davina and suddenly it dawned on me what will I talk about if he's talking about Lexi Oh Davina and he came down to me afterwards and he said oh he said I didn't take your material did I and he said I said every bit of it but what I'm going to be doing today actually in all seriousness is is very different in some ways I want to certainly review and go through those four points of Lexi Oh Davina but what I thought I would do in this workshop is is kind of take a step back and to take a very practical look at Lexi Oh Davina it's one thing to understand the theoretical aspect of it you know what it theologically what is what is Lexi Oh Davina it's it's a whole different thing to see it in action and to realize it and understand it in everyday living when you go back home the question is will you know how to do Lexi Oh Davina will it have been demonstrated for you so that you can you can do it so I'd like to do that today and I'm gonna start off after prayer by talking out just a little bit about the the practical relationship with Christ that we have and what it means to be a disciple of Christ and how Lexi Oh Davina and prayer fit into that everyday life of a disciple because it's one thing to say well you need to be a disciple of Jesus it's a totally different thing to learn how to do it and what does it look like on a daily basis it's like people who say well you need a prayer life and you say I certainly do but you don't have an image or a picture in your heart in your mind as to what that looks like on a daily basis in the most common response to the question how is your prayer life the most common response is it could be better and that's what typically people will say is well it could be better so let's make it better and let's let's have a workshop today where we actually go into that but let's start off in prayer and then we will we'll begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit amen Lord Jesus we thank you for giving us this great opportunity to study into to learn more about you we thank you that you have have saved us you are saving us and continue to save us as we are faithful in this covenant relationship we thank you that you have called us to a relationship and intimacy and you've even showed us in the in the Scriptures how to pray and how to have that close relationship with our Father we ask you to show us the areas of our life that need to change and to be more perfectly conformed to you and we thank you Lord for helping us to deal with excuses in our life as to why we don't spend more time with you we thank you for doing this in Jesus name Amen name of the Father Son in the Holy Spirit amen well I'd like to start off and and talk to you a little bit about what what it was like to be a disciple of Jesus 2,000 years ago and then I think that when we talk about Lexi o Divina I think it will make more sense to you in terms of a very personal intimate relationship with Jesus before I came back to the Catholic Church I had the privilege of studying in Israel and studying under some of the some of the great teachers in Israel and the United States in looking at the Jewish the Jewishness of Jesus are they Hebraic backgrounds to Christianity and when Jesus picked up his movement and began this movement 2,000 years ago which is what it was he chose a particular paradigm to to change the world and that paradigm was the rabbi disciple relationship that he had with his followers and I like to think of the kingdom of God 2,000 years ago as not so much Jesus saying well I'm gonna start a church as much as he was saying I'm gonna start a movement I'm gonna start a movement this new New Covenant movement this kingdom movement my movement which is made up the church obviously and the churches is his bride but when we think about Christianity rather than just a set of I'd you know ideological statements or kind of pithy sayings like mouths Redbook or some other you know book of collected sayings Christianity is about following the king and it is about becoming like the king and it is about carrying out his will on a daily basis and if we're going to do that then it is assumed that we're going to have an ongoing relationship with him and that we're not going to simply go to school or go to a summer conference and say teach me everything about Jesus and what it meant to follow him and then I'll go out there and I'll just start doing that you know I'll just start telling people what he taught that Christianity is a is an intimate relationship that isn't a relationship that you are invited to and since you are invited to this relationship with Jesus it necessitates a decision on your part on whether you are going to be simply a fan of Jesus or a follower of Jesus a fan or a follower now there's a difference between being a fan of Jesus and a follower of Jesus a fan of Jesus the dictionary tells us what a fan is and that is an exuberant follower or an enthusiastic not a follower but an enthusiastic fan if you will and there's a lot of people that are very enthusiastic fans of Jesus they love to learn about Jesus they love to learn about apologetics they love to learn about Vatican 2 and so forth but but that's a fan a fan is someone who that's all they want to do but a follower of Jesus is a disciplined follower that lives completely differently they give you an example of what I'm talking about here and this is one of the things I want you to think about too is whether you're a fan or whether you are a follower of Jesus and if you are a fan of Jesus then most likely Alexio Davina is not going to mean that much to you but if you're a follower of Jesus then Lexi Oh Davina will become an indispensable tool on a daily basis to stay in touch with the Lord get Direction healing wisdom for everyday living let me give you an example of how we can get into the mode of simply becoming a fan a fan of Jesus is an exuberant you know fan there's somebody that's very excited about the issue of Christianity a number of years ago I was very interested in the arts still AM and I enjoyed painting and I like painting on canvas with oil impressionistic landscapes and I really enjoyed it it was good for me to go out and do that type of thing and then I ran into a situation where I didn't have anymore time and I couldn't go out and paint but I had this creative these creative juices you know flowing in me so I came up with this brilliant idea and the a brilliant idea is that if I don't have time to paint maybe I could take up photography so I started getting interested in photography and some of you I can tell by the smile on your face did the same thing it's a way for you to express yourself you know it's it's a way for you to capture beauty and so I went out as usual and I went and bought this beautiful digital Canon camera that a professional could use and I got two or three incredible lenses 8200 2.8 fast lenses you know very very ll series I mean I had it all I had a tripod I got my camera on there I've got a bag I got the lands on a couple of extra lenses and filters and now I went up to Barnes & Noble and I mean Barnes & Noble is a great example of a fan fest if you go to the magazine rack a Barnes & Noble it is evidence of every kind of fan that there is you can get caught up in anything and just become so excited about studying all of this and if you want to create your own wine there's a magazine you want to brew your own beer there's a magazine you want to be a vegetarian there's a magazine you into tofu there's a whole magazine on tofu that comes out every single month you like knitting macrame there's magazines sports triathletes Harley Davidsons motocross bikes walking politics there are magazines for everything that fans of these topics come to and they'll buy three or four of them every month bring them home and they just love consuming more information about about this now what I did is I got my camera and everything and I went up to Barnes and Noble and I got about ten magazines on photography I got black-and-white photography creative photography photography today American photography I got all these different magazines and I came home and I started reading um I had my cameras set up I'm so excited I'm reading about f-stops and ISO and all these different things done with that magazine looking at the other one of review on this camera that's pretty cool and so forth got a new flash oh it can shoot out ten feet farther this is very cool next one I'm reading him I'm done with my magazines the next month rolls around and I'm back up at Barnes & Noble buying the next month worth of all of these magazines well after about four months or so I had a pile of magazines on the end table in our family room my camera's set there on the tripod and my wife walks in and she makes a profound statement she walks in and she says it looks at me and she goes like this she says Jeff I said what why don't you take a picture I said excuse me why don't you take a picture I will I said I will I'm learning right now I said I'm consuming all this I need to know what I'm doing it's a very sophisticated piece of equipment and I'm learning all about Sheils you're only gonna learn when you start doing it why don't you take a picture and it suddenly dawned on me that for four months I was consumed with photography could have spoken to any of you that know a lot about it and you would have said that cave-ins knows photography I'll tell you what he knows photography truth of the matter is I didn't I read all about it and I could mimic what the magazine said but the truth of the matter is I didn't know photography I knew some facts about it and that's what can happen you know it really wasn't my hobby it my hobby was learning about it and I really never ever became a good photographer and so I sold all my stuff and today this is my camera this is my camera today and I probably take more pictures for those listening on CD it's an iPhone and I take more pictures now here's the problem we can get into a rut as Catholics and that rut is this the rut is that we make a major mistake and that mistake is this that the studying of our faith the accumulation of knowledge the bringing together of the whole picture of Catholicism becomes our hobby that Catholicism becomes our hobby we get a bigger thrill out of learning about it than doing it just like I got a bigger thrill out of studying photography than snapping off a picture and so the rut that we can get into is that the accumulation of the faith get this becomes our faith and some will say well you are you Catholic oh man am i Catholic and you're talking to me you talking to me you're asking if I'm Catholic and my Catholic have you seen my library I got every book by mcdee ascension press and osv and and from you know all these other servants and other publishers you ought to see my library I got books that are out of print it's incredible I got an amazing library plus I have about four subscriptions to monthly periodicals I watch EWTN I listen to relevant radio and I have a fish on my bumper sticker you're asking me if I'm Catholic hello I even got a few t-shirts Jesus Saves you know I am so Catholic there say well I didn't ask you what you consume I asked you if you're Catholic and what they're really asking is not do you believe all of that but are you a follower of Jesus or a fan of Jesus now in the first century and I want to build up to this with Lexi odevened exciting it'll make much more sense there was actually a way that you became a disciple of a rabbi during Jesus days there were there were hundreds of rabbis and from Galilee and the average rabbi had about five disciples during Jesus day a lot of people don't realize that but Jesus with twelve actually had quite a few but the average rabbi would have about five Hillel the great Hillel from suppori from the city right outside of Nazareth he had 70 disciples Jesus had twelve so the average does the average rabbi had five disciples and the the question that we want to want to answer here before we get into Lexi Oh Davina is how did you actually become the disciple of a rabbi and once you became the disciple of a rabbi 2,000 years ago what was expected of you on a daily basis now let me let me share with you very briefly here how a young boy would grow up during Jesus day in three phases of his life and the choices that he had to make particularly if he is if he had his mind set on I'm gonna be a rabbi some day or I'm gonna be a disciple of a great rabbi some day and here's how it went in Jesus day a boy that was from the of about five about five to the age of around ten right around in there a young boy would start off for the first few years of his life studying in a particular school called the bait safe fair safe fair means book so from there roughly the ages of right around five to nine right around in there a young boy would begin to five to ten study in the bait safe fair that means he had a teacher visiting rabbis and this young boy would begin to learn the Torah he'd begin to learn the five books of Moses and he'd began to memorize them and they would use honey on a slate everyone got their own isolate and that everyone had their little isolate and the rabbi would and the teacher would put letters of the Hebrew alphabet with honey on the slate and when the young boy learned those letters that could be spelled could spell words the little boy was allowed to lick the honey off the slate and they would learn that learning the Word of God is sweet to the taste so Jerome said that say Jerome said that in the fourth century that he hardly ever ran into a young boy that didn't have massive amounts whether they were poor or rich massive amounts of Scripture memorized so then when they're done right around the age of ten they would enter into their second phase right about ten to fourteen years old they would enter their second phase of education and that second phase of education was was the bait towel mood ta l mu D the bait towel mood was the second phase and this is where you begin to learn more of Scripture and you begin to learn more about the great rabbis and you also begin a second phase of your education it's not just Torah and not just the Bible but you are also from the ages of ten to fourteen learning about your father's trade so if your father was a fisherman you begin to learn about being a fisherman if your father was a carpenter you begin to learn all about being a carpenter because that's what you will likely do when you are older you will be walking in the footsteps of your father and you'll do what your father did now also between the ages of 10 and 14 the education was was colored by what's called Q&A questions and answers and so a rabbi would teach by asking you a question you would answer by asking a question and so for example I'll use math as the example if the teacher were to say to you young Matthew young Samuel tell me what is 2+2 well little Samuel the last thing he's gonna say is 4 because if he says rabbi it's for everyone in the group's gonna say duh of course it is he doesn't want to know if you just know the answer he wants to know he wants to know do you know it from every angle can you demonstrate that you understand the question and the answer so if the teacher said what's 2+2 then that young Samuel would answer rabbi what is 8 minus 4 you see what he's doing it's kind of like a spiritual jeopardy you answer with a question rabbi says to little Matthew what's 2+2 he says what's the square root of 16 so he said the rabbi's very good so they've demonstrated that they know the topic and incidentally what do we see Jesus doing in the temple at 12 years old he is in the temple teaching and asking questions so Jesus is employed employing this methodology in his own teaching 2,000 years ago now in this second school the baked-on mood you're learning more Torah you're learning about the rabbis you might even have a couple of rabbis that you're thinking wow I wish I could study under them every mother wanted her son to grow up and be a great sage a great rabbi but the thing about it is is that it's not just up to you to fall a great rabbi you have to be invited to follow the rabbi you have to be invited to come into a new relationship with the great rabbi where you give up everything and you take on the rabbis mindset and his views and his goals and his style and his objectives his mission you you're gonna do that so at the end of our end of this time right around 14 the decision is made you're gonna go on and do your father's trade are you gonna follow a great rabbi well you could certainly petition a great rabbi and come to Hillel and say I want to follow you I want to be your Tom Meade I want to be your disciple or the rabbi would approach you at 14 and he would say one of two things he would either say go apply your father's trade which means I'm not choosing you and I don't think you have what it takes to become like me I don't think you have what it takes to become like me go do your father's trade now there's nothing wrong with doing your father's trade there's dignity and work but you are not going to become the student or at all need of a great rabbi or sage the second thing that the rabbi would say to the young man if he said if he didn't say go apply your father's trade as he would say left a Hirai left a Hirai come follow me come follow me now we all know that phrase don't we from the gospel where Jesus says come follow me I'll make you fishers and men that phrase left a Hirai is not something that Jesus made up it was a formulation statement formula of statement that all the rabbi's used and it was the formal invitation to come follow them and what that meant was I think as a rabbi if I say to you Chuck Mary penny David Susan Roger Helen left it means I'm inviting you to give up everything and to come follow me that's what it means but when a rabbi says that get this it also means I think you can become like me I see it in you I think you have the seeds of greatness I think you can become like me and one day when you become like me you'll make disciples of your own you'll make disciples so the idea is that if you're chosen you'll make disciples and you will go out and you will make more disciples later now the rabbi's would say this they would say look ah her I come follow me but then they would also make another statement that we we've heard before but we kind of think that Jesus made it up but he didn't and they would say this and this is what Jesus said in Matthew 11:28 and 29 he said in Matthew 11:28 come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest and then he said in verse 29 take my yoke upon you and learn from me take my yoke upon you now what did that mean to take my yoke upon you if I'm the rabbi and I say to you all today take my yoke upon you what I'm saying is I want you to adopt and make your own my worldview to take the yoke of a rabbi means to see the world through the eyes of the rabbi to respond the way the rabbi does to walk the way the rabbi does to do everything the way that the rabbi does and so that people that are listening to you may ask are you I can tell by the way you're talking I can tell by the way that you that you go about the whole family issue or the birth control issue or the the pro-life you know whatever it is they'll say you must be a follower of Hillel oh I am it was obvious you talk like him you walk like him you treat people the way he treats people you have this worldview is hillel so when Jesus began his public ministry 2,000 years ago certainly we have the hypostatic Union he's one person to nature's human and divine that's true but one thing that we often forget is this he was a rabbi he was a rabbi who called disciples to himself into a radical intimate relationship that would end in chosen people growing up and becoming like him and going out and carrying out his mission and that's the difference between a fan and a follower a fan doesn't live the life of a disciple the fan doesn't live the life of a tall mead a student of Jesus a fan can come and go and a fan can pick up the magazine when they feel like it and they can they can go several months without doing anything and suddenly they're a fan again but that's not what the life of a disciple I spoke to one of the great teachers over in Israel years ago and it was after a talk that he gave his name was Schmo Elsa Frye and at Hebrew University and he gave a talk on discipleship in Jesus day and he made her a rather startling statement when he said that when you became a disciple of a rabbi 2,000 years ago there was no such thing as part-time you never said to a rabbi love your ideas love that one talk got all your tapes don't get me wrong but I can only do this on Tuesdays so can we meet on Tuesdays or I've got Tuesday afternoon I've got Saturday and Friday afternoon open we can meet he said that there was no such thing that when you said yes to left a car I come follow me it meant you left everything and you became totally committed and that doesn't mean that you have to give up your job you know and sell your house and wear a robe and start wandering the country but it means that suddenly if you say yes to Jesus when he gives the invitation will you be my disciple come follow me and you say yes it means that now every area of your life your leisure time your money your heart your marriage your children your house your job the way you spend money all of it is now under the yoke of this rabbi and so the question has to be asked how do I live my life now under the yoke of this rabbi Jesus who is different than any other rabbi in that he was God and that that he was going to change the world how are you gonna live your life now pause there for a second because there's something very very powerful that we might have missed in all of that little explanation and the powerful point is this what were the disciples doing when Jesus invited them to follow him they were fishing weren't they they were doing their father's trade which means that around the age of 14 none of them were chosen they weren't chosen by a great rabbi have you ever grown up and played kickball or basketball or field hockey growing up and and everybody they're gonna divide into teams and say Joel Jack and and George you guys you guys are captains and then when you each choose from the ten of us well let's see okay George I'll take Larry I'll take Bill I'll take John I'll take Mike I'll take Harvey I'll take Sam who's left over oh cave-ins you can have them have you ever felt like that before you know when they're dividing up teams and you're the last one oh well we'll take him the disciples were like the last one nobody took him no they weren't studying under any great rabbi I don't know if you've ever felt like that before but when you look at the disciples you're looking at chosen men chosen by not just a great rabbi but chosen by the Son of God to come follow him which means something really really important that you might have totally missed and that's this the fact that Jesus chooses you to follow him means he believes you can become like him that is a powerful powerful thought that you can become like Jesus in that powerful so the fact that he's saying Helen Larry Susan Peggy John Howard come follow me it means I it means you can become like me but here's the key you can't become like Jesus just by picking up magazines and reading them you can't become like Jesus by just picking up commentaries and listening to CDs or going to conferences and just become like him that becoming like Jesus is part of it is the study it is the reading of the word it is the the understanding of the sacraments it is understanding the heart of the church it's understanding all of that but at the basis of all of it is a dynamic daily relationship that isn't part-time and it's not a fan but it is a committed follower who every day makes it a priority to be with the rabbi Jesus to be with who is not only a rabbi but as you know by coming to this conference he's also the bridegroom a bridal spousal relationship and so that makes this relationship between the student and the rabbi even more special than any other relationship in the first century so if you said yes to Jesus it meant that there was going to be a radical reorientation or reorientation of your life everything was going to be now centered on that relationship and this is where Lexi Oh Davina can come in because what Lexi Oh Davina does is it gives you a a point during the day where you have the conversation to say that you are a radical follower of the greatest rabbi in Lord and King and the creator of the universe and to say that I don't talk to him and he doesn't talk to me is crazy crazy as Hebrew for stupid okay so you you can't do that you cannot do that you have to be sold out and you have to make it a priority whether it's 15 minutes or 20 minutes a day to make some type of effort to get together with him every day now Pope Benedict emeritus said that Lexi Oh Davina was the key to the new springtime imagine a pope saying that saying you want if he was to come to your house and say do you first of all do you need a new spring time in your life and some people say absolutely I need a new spring time in my life I really really do well Pope Benedict said that Lexi Oh Davina is the key to the new springtime now is he saying that this four parts before is four steps of Alexio meditate CEO or at CEO contemplate CEO is he saying that that that just in itself is the key or is he saying that what you get out of it that's the key that's the key and that is that dynamic intimate relationship with the Lord you know this relationship that we have with Christ every day is so key to your spiritual health and your mental health it's very very key to you dealing with the problems in your life and the heard and the obstacles that you face and it's it's very key if you're married you have children you need that time with the master to listen to the direction now I used to be grew up Catholic and I left when I was about 21 became a Protestant minister I was away for about 15 years and out of those 15 years for 12 I was a pastor of two Protestant churches and our church was made up of about 60% ex-catholic and one of the things that the ex Catholics told us all the time is that we came over to your church why because we needed to hear a word from God we wanted to hear from God in our life and went now we know they would say now we know we can hear from God but you know what you don't have to leave the Catholic Church to hear from God the Scriptures are central in our lives as Catholics and every day you've got the opportunity to hear a personal word from God and so I would ask you in this workshop today could you use a personal word from God could you use some direction in your life most of us would say if I could just spend an hour with Pope Francis how to ask him all the questions I'll never bother him again and everything will be fine well that's one that's one solution but well let me hand this to you let me let me go a step better than an hour with Pope Francis what if I could give you twenty minutes every day with Jesus himself would you take it absolutely the idea of a divine appointment every day to hear from him is incredible so what I'd like to do is to tell you talk a little bit first before we get into the four steps and then we're gonna actually take a scripture and go through it together to show you how I would do this you know if I were doing Lexi Oh Davina on a particular Scripture and then we'll go we'll go through that together but before we get actually into that let's talk about some of the practical aspects of doing Lexi o Divina Lexi o Divina as you heard in dr. Petrie's great talk earlier is a force is four steps Lexi o Divina divine Reed is what this is about it's praying the scriptures and there's a few things that you have to decide on before you actually make this a habit in your life so let me go through some of those the first is you want a Bible you need some kind of Bible whether that is a physical Bible or whether that Bibles in your iPad or whether it's in the Magnificat wherever it is you need you need the Word of God now what i really suggest if you're going to develop a daily habit of meeting with christ to hear from him and talk to talk with him as a as a follower not a fan as a disciple not not a curiosity seeker but if you're gonna do that you got to get a Bible and get a Bible that you can live in and what I mean by get a Bible that you can live in is I mean get a Bible that you can write in highlight and use and become very familiar with now I have three Bibles this is the third one that I've been using over the last 36 years the first two are pretty beat-up they've been rebound one of them twice they are so marked up that it looks like a chicken with ink on his feet did the jive and and just all kinds of notes you know in my Bible from the years of spending time with the rabbi spending time with the Lord and talking and I have one now that I am using I'm using the RSV Catholic Edition they're available over at the bookstore Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition there's two of them that we recommend that people use and one of them is the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition because it's also quoted in the Catechism the Catholic Church it's approved by the bishops very very readable most of the Bible teachers that you see at a conference like this use the RSV Catholic edition the second is the new American Bible the new American Bible is Bible called the NAB and it's used in the mass and it's also approved by the bishops and it is it's very good for for reading the NAB Bible like a st. Joseph's Edition and some of those have notes at the bottom they have notes about the certain aspects of the text those notes it needs to be stated are not divinely inspired but they are there to help you along the way if you have some questions some Bibles have really good notes some Bibles have some notes that are quite debatable and so I tend to stick with Bibles that have the text to do Alexio davina and not get my mind off into a bunch of other things because this is a talk between God and and my and myself there's another great Bible that's out and it's the Ignatius buy a Study Bible the New Testament is very helpful and it does have some phenomenal notes and dr. Hahn and Curtis Mitch and others have been working on that for four years and it's going to be an indispensable tool for us as Catholics but get a Bible that you can live in and write in now one of the things that I really encourage people to do is to make the Bible personal and the church teaches us that the Bible is a love letter written to the beloved to you and love letters are the types of things where you get one and you read it not just once but you read it over and over and sometimes you go back to particular paragraphs because you can't you think oh that was beautiful that she thinks that about me and then you'll take all those letters and you put them together in a rubber band maybe they don't do that anymore maybe they put them all in a file in their computer now all those love letters but the Bible is a love letter written written to us so get a Bible that you can live in as far as marking your Bible there's two things that I recommend you can go out and get one of these big wet markers but you're going to be very disappointed very quickly because when you find out that you are underlining first Corinthians chapter 13 when you turn the page you'll notice that 14 and 15 were also marked at that point because it bled right through and one of the hardest things for people to do with a brand-new Bible is to make the first stroke the first time you underline it so you get your ruler you get your pins they have a certain ceremony they've come around you know it's very difficult for people don't just jump in and if there are certain verses that you want to study and do Lexi o Divina on you might want to mark it in your Bible there's also another way that I can suggest here in a moment but there's there's two things that I recommend when it comes to writing in your Bible one is to get a pen that is a very fine point pen that doesn't bleed through all the pages now as someone who's been studying for years and years and looking for those write pens I can tell you that there is one out there that I use consistently called zebra it's a zebra pen it's found at any office store zebra just like the animal zebra and it comes in blue red and and black and it's very fine point and when you write words or cross references to the Catechism or something you feel like the Lord is saying to you and you write that in there you can be pretty much assured that it's not gonna go bleeding through to all the other pages the other is highlighting and I don't tend to use wet markers in my Bible for the reason I stated previously and that is that they bleed so what I use is colored pencils and I use one called prism and it's you could use almost any of them but I carry about three or four different colors with me and I'm mark I mark my Bible accordingly now there's a lot of different ways to mark your Bible you can mark it by color with green being something related to life blue with the Blessed Mother red with salvation there's a lot of ways that you can do it there aren't there isn't a right way in a wrong way but when it comes to Alexio Divina you can use a yellow highlighter if you want to to underline or highlight certain words or phrases in the text that jump out at you and really grab your your attention so get a Bible get it was marker the next thing is you'll want to get some kind of small notebook and the small notebook I recommend like a moleskin notebook you can get them at Barnes & Noble in other places mo l e s ki n e I think mol skeena and it's a French little book that has a binder and we want some place where you can daily write down a few of your insights and action steps that you're going to take as a result of spending this time with with Jesus the next thing that you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to get a place a place that you can use as a habitat a place that you can go to it might be the den might be the back porch might be your bedroom might be before you even get out of bed but but someplace that that you can go to the coffee break and work whatever it might be that you can do often most of the time when people don't have a habit when it comes to place they have a tendency to not do it and they wait till they have the convenient time rather than making it a priority so you have a Bible markers you have a notebook you have a place and now you need a time and the time doesn't matter as much as what fits into your life most people prefer the morning because it sets the day for them and a lot of people who do lexy o davina do it in the morning so that they have some sum up so they have some apparat paparazzi o so you have something to they have something to do during the day something to act on as a result of listening to the Lord whether it's in a relationship or their attitude or their language or whatever it might be they can carry out what they discover in lexie o during the day and sometimes you know people that use lectio divina also use the examined prayer at the end of the day and if you don't know about that google it examine prayer father Tim Timothy Gallagher has a wonderful book on the examine prayer and they might even have it over there at the bookstore and it's about recollecting at the end of the day how did my day go and kind of watching your day on YouTube you know you're looking at your day going oh that wasn't too good at the meeting today and and you make the corrections at the end of the day so this so what we're talking about here is an examined life now let's go through those four steps together in the time that we have and I'll show you I'll show you what basically we're talking about in what dr. Petrie was talking about in those four steps so I'm not going to go over the material he had because I think he did a fantastic job but we'll do a practical walkthrough here in what I do and what I would encourage others to do and like I said there's not one specific way there's a lot of different variations on Lexi o but the four steps are pretty solid and and that's what that's what I use takes about 20 minutes it's about 20 minutes every every day for me to be able to open the Word of God and I start off usually by going to my my place I've got my Bible I got my notebook and I start off in prayer something very simple of Lord opened my eyes to see wonderful things from your word today help me and guide me I'm gonna I want to talk to you today about about my life now the decision has to be made what are you gonna meditate on what part of the Bible are you gonna meditate on once again there isn't a right or wrong some people choose to go through a gospel pope john paul ii went through the Gospel of John every month during his pontificate that's owning a gospel I mean he loved it I liked Matthew you can go through a gospel you can go through Psalms you can use the readings of the Magnificat you can start with another book of the Bible if you want to proverbs you can you can start anywhere to pray the scriptures if you don't know where to start I would suggest a gospel or the gospel of the day doing Lexi Oh Davina on that and typically people do not take a whole chapter they take just a few verses and once again that's up to you you want to take three or four verses you want to look at the divisions in the Bible and see how the people who put together the Bible in modern times give you some natural breaks you can certainly do that but just decide on something nothing magical about it just decide on it and see how it goes in using that that strategy so I start off with just a quick prayer now what I'm gonna do for the sake of demo because I'd like to I'd like to use so let me just saw Psalm 1 should we do that we use salt Psalm 1 that's it because it's fairly short and what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through this together and I'm going to ask you to enter into it you know we we have some times so this is a workshop and we can do it we can do it together now the psalm 1 it's the first Psalm and it has a lot to do with the Word of God now the first step that we go through is called Lexi Oh Lexi Oh means reading so the very first thing you're going to do is you are going to read the actual text and I suggest that people read it if they're doing this alone I suggest that people read it out loud and read it quietly and purposefully out loud now the goal in your first go through in reading this is going to be to capture some information okay now what you're doing in this first stage is you are not meditating on it you're not talking to God about it yet you're not coming to any conclusions about anything you're not trying to figure it out what you're doing in this first stage of Lexi o is you're saying God speak to me speak to now as I read this I'm gonna ask around this room what word what phrase stood out to you and what you're listening for when you read it is your your asking as you read it slowly and carefully you're looking for details you're looking for key words action words verbs nouns you're looking for people things you're looking for repeated phrases you're looking for patterns nothing's wrong and nothing's right all that is right in this situation is what seems to be screaming out at you I'm for you today now I could read this when I was 25 years old and certain words would pop out probably due to where I was at in my life that time but now I'm older and other phrases might pop out dealing with what I'm going through in my life right now and that's the beauty of God's Word is that it's not restricted to age or place and it's not restricted to only one person so what you're doing is all you're doing is listening to what phrase pops off you don't even have to ask why at this point you don't need to know why we'll get to that but just listen listen and this is a very hard thing for people to do is to just listen I was talking with Lauren who picked me up at the airport and she was telling me about a place in Minneapolis st. Paul at the West Bank of the University of Minnesota that is in the Guinness Book of World Record for it is the quietest room in the world 9 decibels and the guy has configured it the walls into such a degree that there is almost a total absence of sound and it's so quiet that people describe it as thick and very heavy and it's so quiet that some people after 45 minutes begin to hallucinate it has such an effect on their being I've only been in quiet places like Sinai desert you know Mount Sinai two o'clock in the morning was so quiet I told her I said I could hear the quiet and we're not used to quiet and when we get to a quiet place we automatically look on how we can fill it and God wants us to be so quiet that we can hear him speak now you have to understand if you're gonna do lectio divina that there is a presupposition here in that presupposition is that God speaks to us and the other presupposition is you can hear it and if you don't live by those two presuppositions what are we doing anyway if we really don't believe God speaks to his people and we don't believe that we were created in a way that we can understand what's the point we do believe that so let's get about the business of listening he knows what you're going through in your life right now he knows which word he wants to share with you so you're gonna you're gonna take notice of that so don't let this process overwhelm you all you're doing is gathering the facts at this point and making observations about them and this is where you're going to write in your notebook so in your notebook you're gonna write today's date the scripture that you are going to to meditate on and and pray and then we read it through so I'm gonna read it once for you now we normally would read it twice but due to time I'm gonna I'm gonna read it once today and I want you to listen and quiet your heart and listen to what God may be saying to you today in his word his fresh word Psalm 1 blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and it's leaf does not wither in all that he does he prospers the wicked are not so but are like chaff which the wind drives away therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish now as I read that slowly and meaningfully and with with intention there are a couple of words that pop out at me that are screaming and for you today now what I would normally do then is go back and read it one more time I guess we have the time - let me do it real quickly here let's read it one more time and take notice of what word or phrase speaking to you blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and it's leaf does not wither in all that he does he prospers the wicked are not so but are like chaff which the wind drives away therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord no the ways the way of the righteous the way of the wicked will perish now I'm just curious as I look out at you and I would simply ask how many of you go ahead and raise your hand over here uh-huh what word or phrase popped out at you anybody over here yes what's that streams of water the seats of scoffers meditates on the law day and night in the middle over here stands in the way of sinners what's that delights in the law of the Lord yields its fruit in due season oh you can't take their as they have that one I'm just kidding you you get so you got the same thing as they were talking about yep tree planted Springs of water over here blessed very good and one more plant advice okay so what we have here is is we went when we went around there around the whole whole room here and we got almost the whole thing God spoke to someone in their heart and now what you do with that is you write in your notebook or you can underline or highlight though that phrase and if you want you can even put the date next to it so that when years later and you go back and you see I meditated on this back and night back in 2014 and and I remember now what the Lord was sharing with me you can write it in your notebook too so write down that word that phrase maybe it's one maybe it's two it could be three you know and you write them down so what you've done so far is you have listened and it seems that God is pointing out certain things about this verse that are for you that's a personal word for you and and that's in him that's an important thing when I was reading it here what really what struck me was the idea of walks walks the word walks blessed is the man who walks walking was was a kind of came out at me and then also the planted by streams of water and so today for some reason walks and planted by streams of water that popped out at me now the next thing you're gonna do and that all and that only takes what that took us maybe five minutes where you read it through a couple times quietly and sometimes before you even begin that process it's a good idea to just be quiet for five minutes just quiet yourself yet get things out of your mind quiet yourself prepare yourself for your beloved and now you read it lexy oh now we move on to the second stage which is called meditate Co where obviously we get the word meditation from now meditation when I say you're gonna meditate on the scripture next I have to qualify that because you're Americans and you grew up with Bob Dylan and the Beatles and Maharaja HUJI hunga hunga and everything okay so and and there was this the sense back in the 60s and early 70s that meditation was an emptying of your mind it's this Eastern concept of meditation where you empty your mind of everything's everything and you get into a position and Alan and you become nothing well that doesn't have anything to do with biblical meditation a biblical meditation is actually opposite it is a filling of your mind with God's Word it is a meditation is entering into the story it's entering into the scripture it's seeing yourself in there and it's your beginning at this point to ask the questions of what this could mean and you're going deeper you're investigating and meditating on it so when I read this and then I began to enter into the meditation phase I began to enter into this Psalm and I see myself in this Psalm I see myself as the one who is walking the blessed man is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked but but but course or sitting in the seat of the scoffers but delighting in the law of the Lord and I see myself walking in this and delighting in the law of the Lord and meditating on it day and night and so I can capture a picture of what that is to be that person that meditates like this on the on the scripture the word for meditate in the Old Testament is a curious word it's it's the word ha ha H a G aah ha ha and the word ha ha is used in Isaiah 31 and verse 4 and Isaiah 31 and verse 4 says that the lion had goz over its prey now if you're as old as I am you know who Marlin Perkins was and Mutual of Omaha and this is the guy that would stand 20 feet in front of a lion who is eating a gazelle and he is talking about insurance which is a funny thing to talk about while you're standing there with a lion a man-eating lion you need life insurance and you need wisdom that's what you need Marlin you need some common sense come to me I teach the Bible so in in that show oftentimes they would have you know they talk about the lion and there's the gazelle and then the chase and the pounce and the lion would be you know biting the neck of the gazelle and then what do we see as we're going to a break the lion is hog eying over its prey that is that sound of the mmm that's the sound that it makes now some people will say that's a turn-off Jeff you know I'm not gonna think about that every time I want to meditate so we'll substitute it with Swiss chocolate it's a sound you make while you eat Swiss chocolate okay it's that mmm so good and so the idea of meditating is turning this over and over in your mind and engaging your mind and engaging you know as as Brant Petrie said every aspect of the soul and so it's sort of like the cow chewing the cud you'll never come up to a cow I can't ever remember seeing a cow that when I looked at the cow the cow just looked at me like this what are they always doing they're always for those listening on CD I'm doing a phenomenal imitation of a cow and that is chewing the cud they chew it goes down to one stomach comes back up goes down to another stomach comes back up how many stomachs do cows have four it goes up and down four times so they're constantly chewing on this and that's the image of meditating on a day and night you are chewing on this constantly so as I begin to meditate on this my talk here in front of you is my meditation to some degree or I'm thinking about do I meditate on God's Word all day long well probably not because I probably didn't sit down and put it into the mouth like Bram Petrie said reading is putting it into the mouth and if you put it into the mouth and you begin to chew on it in meditation all day it's amazing the flavors that you will extract from it not only in the in the actual 20-minute exercise of Lexi o Divina but throughout the rest of the day you'll begin to get those flavors you know yesterday yesterday I went down to Damon's over there and a bunch of guys and we had had an onion ring loaf and I don't typically eat onion ring lows because I heard that the bloomin onion over it Outback was the fattest thing on any menu in the country so I don't normally just gobble up those onion rings about yesterday I felt obliged to be a friend an eighth one and I ate it and this morning I woke up and I had onion breath this morning it lingers with me you know throughout the day in the night and that's what happens with the word of god when you meditate on it is that it lingers throughout the day and you think about it so Christian meditation is very very different in the meditation phase you get into the word so deeply that you begin discovering not just what it says but what it means what is the meaning of this now we're not getting into deep theological studies in Lexi o Divina this is a love letter we're listening we're just listening and we are meditating and so you ask questions about the details you noted in the first step you've been asking who what where when now you're asking why what does it mean what does it mean to walk in the ways of the Lord what does it mean to meditate day and night and that other phrase that popped out at me a plant the the person that does this is planted by streams of water I began to meditate on what it must be like to be a plant that is thoroughly rooted next to a stream now after I have meditated on this for a little bit then what I'm going to do is I am going to move then into the third phase called Orazio which is prayer but before we get to the prayer part of it we knit funny we think that the whole thing is prayer right we call it prayer but you really don't even get to what we call prayer to the third step you read your meditating on it you're listening now you're gonna begin a talk but before we get into that talking to the Lord about this I want to point one thing out when it comes to meditating one thing that will help you in your meditation is a paragraph 112 through 114 of the Catechism because one for 2012 through 114 give you some guidelines for interpreting Scripture that it always helps to know those guidelines in when it comes to meditating on God's Word and I'm not gonna go into all of those right now but I would encourage you to look them up you know it's reading Scripture within the tradition of the church and and you're not you're reading it within the context of the whole Canon and you're not there's a coherence of truths you're you're not you're not interpreting it in a way that is contrary to an established teaching in the church it's very simple three little guidelines that will help you in your meditation but then in paragraphs 116 and in 117 it gets into what's called the spiritual senses or the senses of Scripture and there it talks about the literal sense that is what's the intention of the author that's where you look into the genre you look into the history you look into you know all these practical things word studies these are all helpful when it comes to meditation not mandatory that you know all of it to do Luxio davina but it'll deepen your relationship and then it gets into three aspects of what's called the spiritual sense of Scripture so if you're studying a particular scripture or meditating on a scripture this gives you three things to ask when you're meditating on it one is the allegorical sense of this text what does that mean means how does this relate to Jesus Christ number two the moral sense how does it relate to me and my conduct and three the anagogical sense how does it relate to the future in heaven and times so those are some things that I would just throw in too deep in your meditation now when you're done meditating then you're going to move on to what we call Oh rot Co which is prayer or at CEO this is the place we've been looking for from the start for many of us we want start talking to God and it is a prayerful reading that brings about an intimate dialogue with God we hear God is speaking to us in Lexi o when read we mull it over and think about it meditate on it and are into it in meditation and now we start to talk to God about it and so when you're talking to God stay with him and expect an answer as you pray listen what is God saying to me what do I want to say back what does he expect of me here so if I were doing that right now after meditating for just a few minutes I would begin to talk to the Lord and I would ask Lord am i walking in the counsel of the wicked and I would think about my life yesterday the day before am i walking in the counsel of the wicked and or or am I delighting in your law and am I really meditating on it day and night does my life is my life characterized by being planted next to streams Lord and I could say this and this is the way I would sound in prayer Lord I want to be by those streams I want to be thoroughly rooted and planted I don't feel you some days like I am I feel like I'm uprooted I don't feel stable I don't feel like I'm being nourished what are the streams in my life that I could be routed by Bible study adoration going to adoration and praying and reading his word going to Mass and listening there's a lot of things that would come to mind about my life today and for some reason today the Lord is saying get rooted planted by the streams of living water and so now it's incumbent upon me to answer how am I gonna do this Lord what could I do today and some days you know I may think to myself well there's all kinds of these beautiful streams of water in my life that I could be planted by and I'm just driving by him on the way home from work at the Cathedral I Drive by all kinds of Adoration chapels maybe I could stop today and spend 15 20 minutes with God and just say Lord I'm gonna read your word again I want to I want to be with you today and so this Orazio or @co is is this dialog it's the talking in psalm 1 we might start by considering which of the Menem am I like which Lord am I like do we meditate on God's Word day and night do we walk her stand or sit with sinners do we feel rooted or blown around by the wind what is God saying to me and and you need to listen at that at that point now once you get some sense of what God is saying to you and your condition and where you're at and what you might need today then you enter the fourth one which is contemplate Co and contemplate CEO is contemplation now contemplation the Catechism tells us what contemplation is in paragraphs 217 21 17 26 and 25 48 and it says a word it's a word quiet rest in the presence of the Lord the one who loves us where we are healed and made whole abiding in his love sharing in his passion for this we were made and so contemplation is not so much something that you do as something you enter into and you rest in the beloved's arms and you just so in the good things that have come out of reading meditating and praying in this small time together and so it's like lovers a husband and wife sitting by a lake at the end of the day on a bench holding hands and saying nothing but just enjoying the fruit of their labors their relationship things they talked about earlier in the day actions they made together it's enjoying that now we do this a lot men are great at contemplation but they don't contemplate typically on the things that we're talking about here here's what men do if you'll see this out in your neighborhood men like their cars and I have a big old harley-davidson I have a big black Road Glide Ultra harley-davidson the guy across the street has an Electra Glide and he's out there and I'm out there and what do we do we polish him all up you polish it all up in the tank and to wax the chrome and everything and the guy's got his Ford pickup truck out there and he washes it all down stands there and you know you know what he does then he stands in the driveway and does this and then he looks at the neighbors to see if they're looking that's what men do the contemplate they're just enjoying the fruit of their labor I know Emily used to tell me she'd say you know I contemplate when at the end of the day when kids were all in bed and everything was all picked up and everything and I'd stand there over Carly's crib and look at her sleeping she said just contemplate and enjoy the fruit of today a lot of us do that and when you're done with those first three steps you just spend time with your beloved resting resting now there's another step beyond this that we could call up Orazio and apparat Co is putting it into practice and one of the great gifts of Lexy Oh Davina is that God has spoken to you in a way that typically demands some change in your life some action some response and at the end of taking your notes for that day in your small notebook you might want to put action apparat Co what am I gonna do with this today well you know what for me today it's gonna be spending time in the presence of the Lord tonight after my talk tonight I'm praise and thanksgiving we're gonna have adoration for me that's my action item I'm going to enjoy the presence of the Lord and being planted firmly by that stream but apparat Co and if you don't do apparat co then you will end up with what I call frost rot Co not a word but you don't know that I guess you do now it's frustration you're gonna be frustrated so if you're not gonna put apparat co into practice not gonna put it into practice then you will be frustrated my good friend dr. Tim gray has a has a great analogy that he uses in his book he is a good book called praying scripture for a change learning how to pray lexy Oh Davina one of our fellow great adventure teachers and he in there he talks about how lexi o uses the grape the grapes and the vineyard as an as a analogy and he says that lexi o is picking grapes carefully the reading of it picking grapes carefully so they're not damaged work your way through the lines of text slowly and carefully paying attention so you can pull out the choice it's the images and so on and then meditate Co you stomp on the grapes you stomp on the grapes and squeeze out every drop of meaning that you can find and then Oh rot co allow the collected juices to ferment like prayer where the heart Ponder's the things you've meditated on feelings bubble up in prayerful response to God in con-tem-plat-- Co the wine is fermented and aged it's time to drink taste and see the goodness of the Lord and to add add to this apparat Co bottle it up and ship it out bottle it up and ship it out do it do it so I would just I would just close by by by kind of going back to where we started at the beginning are you a fan or you a follower fans don't do all this stuff fans just want to know how to do Alexio followers dual xeo fans just want to know what the words mean followers want to enter into the words and they want to enter into the text and they want to talk to God and they want God to talk to them fans want to know if God can talk to them followers want to hear him and so I would encourage you today on top of the great talk that dr. Petrie gave and this talked about the practical aspects of Lexi o Divina that together that you could take those and that would be life transforming for you and the best advice that I could have is start start today start tomorrow but start and come up with a plan and at least do it for a month you know they say that 30 days makes a habit and I would suggest that giving it at least 30 years to do but to make it a habit in your life and and enter into that relationship with a beloved you'll enjoy it it'll be a deeper relationship and guess what you'll know his heart and mind and you'll be able to take his yoke upon you and you'll know his ways you can carry him out throughout the day once again this is the key to the new springtime for the church but the new springtime for your life and it gives you a contact point every day that's set and if you have to make up your mind every day where and if you're gonna meet the Lord chances are it's gonna fall apart but if you set an establish schedule in time with your notebook in your Bible you stand a better chance of developing developing a habit so let's pray the name of the Father Son and the Holy Spirit Jesus we thank you today for loving us and inviting us to this intimate relationship we know Lord that were chosen by you which means you believe that we can become like you but we cannot become like you separate from you we need this relationship so draw us ever closer bring us into your heart help us to hear the beat of your heart in your mind we thank you for this in Jesus name Amen Father Son the Holy Spirit let me tell you something real quick before we believe I was talking to Mike remember I was talking to that room of silence in Saint Paul there was so quiet do you know one of the one person said they said that it's so quiet many people I guess have said this it's so quiet that you can hear the blood rushing through your veins we need to become so quiet with Jesus where we can hear his heartbeat in our time together god bless you have a great day you

Channel: Steubenville Conferences

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Keywords: Steubenville Conferences, Catholic, Franciscan University, Catholic Ministry, New Evangelization

Id: yEgtWvnM6Gk

Length: 76min 24sec (4584 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 19 2014