Lectio divina — Latin for 'divine reading' — is the monastic way of reading Scripture. It is not the rapid reading of study, nor the analysis of the scholar, but a slow and attentive dwelling on a short passage, returning to it, listening within it for the word God would speak today.
The twelfth-century Carthusian Guigo II gave the practice its classic four-rung shape: lectio, reading the text; meditatio, turning it over in the mind; oratio, responding to God in prayer; and contemplatio, resting silently in his presence. The rungs are a ladder, not a formula.
Born in the monasteries, lectio divina has in recent generations been recovered widely by lay Christians across the traditions. It rests on a conviction the whole Church shares: that Scripture is not only to be studied but to be prayed.