Abstract
Pierced By Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition is about lectio divina. After an introduction followed by nine chapters, a conclusion, and eight theses on lectio, Boersma guides the reader through the theory, praxis, and art of lectio divina as understood in the (mainly) western monastic and medieval tradition. Although eschewing any notion that his book is a ‘how-to’ manual, it is in fact that, though also much more.
The introduction relies heavily on the medieval Carthusian Guigo II’s famous Ladder of Monks, which is discussed in the second chapter. Boersma begins by laying out the traditional steps in divine or sacred reading as they had come to be summarized in the western medieval monastic traditions: silence as the basic context for reading, repetitive reading interspersed with silence, meditating on individual words or phrases, and experiencing the challenging power of the Word of God as it pricks the heart in compunction, awakens it to conversion, invites repentance, and/or floods it with gratitude.
The first chapter deals with transfiguration and offers a sacramental reading of Holy Scripture in which lectio carries us through the medium of the word (sacramentum) to the inner reality (res) which has been signified through the fleshly manifestation, (thus borrowing heavily from traditional western sacramental theology). Chapter two examines Guigo II’s scheme and considers the ladder metaphor popular throughout the Middle Ages, in both east and west. Chapter three suggests that the traditional method of monastic reading is a particularly useful weapon in combatting in particular the vice of acedia.
Chapters four to six deal with meditatio, expounding the link between memory and meditation in Hugh of St Victor’s use of the image of Noah’s ark for teaching biblical truths. Chapter five looks at the use of food imagery, so prevalent in the tradition, notwithstanding, (or perhaps because of?) the emphasis on fasting in traditional monastic rules.
Chapter six examines the image of the Tree of Life, drawing on the work of St Bonaventure and others, and discusses how lectio divina unites us to the Lord’s sufferings on the cross. Chapter seven makes the transition from meditatio to oratio and argues that compunction leads to greater interiority and introspection.
Chapter eight tackles the perennial problem (perennial, at least in western spirituality) of the relationship between action and contemplation. The conclusion reached is soundly traditional. It would have been good to see here Meister Eckhart’s quirky rereading of the Martha/Mary dichotomy, if only to set a dissenting cat among the medieval monastic pigeons. In the final chapter it is argued that the contemplative silence attained in lectio divina is an initiation into the ‘Great Silence of God’s love in Christ.’
This book is in many ways a small tour de force in marshalling and managing patristic, monastic, and medieval resources for discussing not only the practice but the underlying theology involved in traditional lectio divina. There are, however, some strange anachronisms and inconsistencies along the way, for example the use of the Douay-Rheims Bible because it is ostensibly the English translation nearest to the Vulgate—though with the Psalms numbered according to the method now used in contemporary translations. The quaintness of much of this version, though (the English of which compares poorly with the AV), however much it may be held to mediate the original Latin, might prove a barrier to understanding for some readers; while the use of the traditional Roman Catholic (and Orthodox) numbering of the Psalms (as in the Douay-Rheims version itself) might perhaps have more easily connected readers to their medieval usage—instead of always having to count back one.
There is much of outstanding value in this book because Boersma is a highly competent exegete of patristic and medieval traditions. Indeed so much material is packed into this relatively short book that it is impossible do its content justice in a short review.
The chapter, for example, which draws on St Bonaventure’s Lignum vitae, locating the Tree of Life in the widespread arboreal imagery handed down since Fortunatus’s famous hymns, weaves together threads from Galatians, The Life of St Francis and Bonaventure’s own lectio divina, to manufacture a rich and often beautiful tapestry of words, which is then linked to St Ignatius’s much later ‘composition of place’ as presented in the Spiritual Exercises. Boersma is not uncritical of the negative impact of much medieval and particularly Franciscan devotionalism on later western spirituality (such as the tendency to separate the suffering humanity of Christ from the divine Logos in the incarnation, and the dangers of excessive voluntarism), but he insists on an essentially Franciscan perspective—divine reading is transformational and leads into the heart of biblical revelation, which means being pierced by the love of the crucified.
In Chapter nine, food imagery is examined, drawing on St Gregory the Great, Guigo, St Anselm of Canterbury and St Bernard. The chapter is amusingly, and perhaps a little provocatively, titled, ‘Chewing and Belching,’ but Boersma rightly stresses the importance of rumination imagery in monastic sources which so often compared the nourishment monks obtained in divine reading to cows chewing the cud. The sweetness of the sacred text leads to the ineffable sweetness of God’s presence in accordance with Psalm 34, Verse 8 (or as Boersma has to clarify, what we call Psalm 34, rather than Psalm 33, in our modern Bibles). The insistence however (supposedly following Augustine) that we are transformed into what (or rather who) we eat might have benefited from a more nuanced use of analogical language, better to preserve the dissimilarity in the metaphors employed. Apophasis is not lacking elsewhere in the book and could have been more effectively employed in this section.
There is therefore much to commend in this book, but a number of caveats are also necessary. The author’s comments on the film Into Great Silence hint at a romanticization of monastic life in a way which monks rarely permit themselves to engage in. In addition, the sheer amount of spiritual fare this book lays out for consumption is at times excessive, offering a heavily laden table of courses: from early and medieval monastic and scholastic texts, via Benedict XVI, Thomas Merton and Rowan Williams, to Cardinal Robert Sarah. Although the historical critical method of reading Scripture is not rejected, there seems to be little openness to the possibility that it might also offer insights fruitful for lectio, along with traditional monastic reading styles. One need only consult the work of David Stanley SJ (A Modern Scriptural Introduction to the Spiritual Exercise) to see how that might be done.
Finally, like the monks of old, having bit off, chewed, munched, ruminated, burped and regurgitated this book according to the method it proposes, I came away with the sense that sometimes less really can be more—feeling something like a touch of spiritual indigestion. Rich fare is on offer, but it needs to be consumed in small portions.