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Nourished by the Word: Reading the Bible Contemplatively

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Wilfrid Stinissen, the author, is a Carmelite friar and priest who frequently serves as a retreat master. The tone of the book reflects this orientation - he assumes very little prior knowledge yet never "talks down" to his audience. Rather, he assumes that as one matures as a Christian, your style of Scripture reading will change. Similarly, one reads for different purposes using different methods within a single day as one combines Mass, the Office, and personal reading and prayer.

He begins by exploring what the Word of God is and how it relates to our lives, noting that Scripture is life not theory. He stresses the continuity of the Old and New Testaments noting that God's gradual self-revelation applies not only through history but in our individual lives.

Next he looks at the traditional four senses of Scripture using the familar medieval verse:

"The meaning of the letter gives information about events;
Allegory teaches that one should believe;
The moral meaning about what we should so;
The anagogic about what we should strive for."

This is followed by a discussion of "playful interpretation" in which the sense of Scripture is a a personal, free-association application. As examples he uses St. Augustine and St. Bernhard of Clairvaux.

The next chapter discusses the interpretation of Scripture by mystics. This is the weakest chapter of the book. It discusses the use of Scripture in the writings of saints such as St. John of the Cross and the use of Scripture in understanding the experience of union with God. He then moves into a discussion of praying the psalms - in Mass, in the Divine Office ... When we prayer the Psalms we literally pray as our Savior prayed. His thrust is that the openness of the poetry of the psalms allows a certain freshness.

In the final chapter he addresses the necessity of regular reading of Scripture for all Christians. In his discussion of lectio divina, his comments on rumination and the tale of abuna Matta al-Miskin are in themselves worth the price of the volume. He stresses the need for a mixture of methods - lectio continua, Scripture study lessons, journals of mediations on the Scripture ....

The book as a whole provides a broad, interesting introduction to reading Scripture as the Word of God - as God's Word to us in our time and place.