✠

Slow, prayerful reading of a short Scripture passage.

How to pray it →
Praying with Scripture

Lectio Divina

Ways to Pray / Lectio Divina

History & origin

What tradition says, and what historians say

Lectio divina is Latin for “divine” or “sacred reading.” It is a slow, prayerful way of reading Scripture, letting a short passage become a conversation with God. Early Christian writers such as Origen (3rd century) spoke of reading Scripture with attention and prayer, and the Rule of St. Benedict (c. 530) set hours each day for monks to spend in lectio.

Around 1150 Guigo II, prior of the Grande Chartreuse (the mother house of the Carthusian monks in the French Alps), described it as a ladder of four rungs in his Ladder of Monks: reading (lectio), meditation (meditatio), prayer (oratio) and contemplation (contemplatio). Pope Benedict XVI described the same steps for everyone in 2010.

How to pray it

Step by step

  1. Read (lectio): choose a short passage, perhaps the day’s Gospel. Read it slowly, aloud if you can, two or three times.
  2. Meditate (meditatio): notice a word or phrase that stands out. Turn it over. What is God saying to you through it?
  3. Pray (oratio): answer God in your own words: thanks, sorrow, a request.
  4. Contemplate (contemplatio): rest quietly in God’s presence without many words.
  5. Many add a fifth step, action: one small thing to do that day.
A passage to start with

The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment: he hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name’s sake. For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me.

Psalm 22(23):1–4, Douay-Rheims (Challoner). Public domain.

What the Church teaches

The Catechism names lectio divina as a way “where the Word of God is so read and meditated that it becomes prayer” (CCC 1177; see also CCC 2708). Benedict XVI’s Verbum Domini §§86–87 sets out its steps.

← All ways to pray

Sources & notes

Sources & notes

Prayer texts are traditional public-domain English forms, Douay-Rheims Scripture, Latin originals, or our own literal renderings where marked. Passages labelled Tradition or Legend are pious accounts that historians have not confirmed. Prayer and sacramentals are not a substitute for medical, legal or other professional help, and no prayer guarantees a particular outcome.