Gertrud of Helfta's Herald of Divine Love: Revelations through Lectio Divina (1997)

The personal prayer of Gertrud of Helfta, thirteenth century mystic of the Benedictine abbey of Helfta, which was highly influenced by Cisterican spirituality,(1) encompassed the practice of the art of lectio divina. This prayer form began with the slow, ruminative reading aloud of a biblical text or the recitation of a liturgical trope or line from a patristic commentary. The reading or gathering of the word with the eyes, so as to make a place for it in the soul, was the art of collecting words from a written page as one would gather stones from a field or fruit off a tree.(2)Monastic lectio aimed toward meditatio and oratio, whereby one pondered what was striking the heart as the words touched the ears, the eyes glanced over the page, the lips moved over the syllables and the hands held the book. This was an activity that engaged most of the senses. By the Middle Ages, lectio was seen as a kind of movement from lectio through meditatio to contemplatio and oratio.The monastic began, as noted earlier, with the slow, prayerful reading or chewing on the word, letting the phrase that spoke to the heart be turned over and over again in the mind. One was led then to meditatio, the applying oneself attentively to the exercise of committing the phrase to memory. Thus one imbibed the text that it might become food for the body and the soul. The repeated process of reading and meditation was a rumination or digesting of the word by savoring its full flavor. Led by the Spirit, one entered the silence of contemplation to rest in this living, nourishing word and went on to oration, the expression of praise and gratitude, petition or contrition of creature before creator.(3)This lectio process of monastic prayer led to a way in which scripture lived in the memory of the one praying. Certain words or phrases became mot-crochets or hook-words, from which one's spirituality derived its substance. Certain phrases would suggest other phrases, so that the writings of monastic authors down to the Middle Ages manifested a chain of associations.(4)These word-associations reveal the fruit of prayer. Often the written form of this fruit, that is, the biblical commentaries, treatises, songs and revelations of visions, are filled with repetitions, synonyms and other rhetorical forms which provide keys to the chain of associations. These repetitions serve as guide posts to the ruminating meditation itself, from which modern readers can trace the pathway of the prayer.Gertrud herself spoke of the need to learn the grammar of prayer by uncovering the living letters of the spirit of the divine law, that is, the scripture. Jean Leclercq has commented on the relationship between grammar and scripture thus:That grammar is considered as the `introduction to sacred Scripture' is clearly stated in the life of St. Hugh of Cluny, for example, and this application of grammatical analysis to Scripture resulted in a certain attachment to the written word itself, and a great importance given to texts and to the words. However, this application of grammar to Scripture has been practiced in monasticism in a way which is entirely its own because it is linked with the fundamental observances of monastic life.(5)Leclercq goes on to focus on the fundamental observance of lectio divina as the chief place where the relationship between grammar and scripture is applied to life.The importance of this relationship for Gertrud is articulated in chapter five of her Exercises. By means of a delightful word-play on the Greek letters, she urges the members of her community at prime to begin their meditation on mystical union with a prayer to be led into the school of love; then at terce they are to pray for the grace to be wholly attentive to the living nature of God's word in the soul.In her own words, she directs the following reflection:At Terce, pray to the Lord to inscribe on your heart the fiery law of his divine love with the living letters of his Spirit that you may cling to him inseparably at all hours. …