Visio Divina

Many modern contemplatives are familiar with the classic monastic approach to scripture meditation called Lectio Divina… a way of reading short passages several times reflectively in order to be invited by the Spirit to a personal response. Less known but equally impactful is the visual equivalent: spiritually-themed art, either ancient or modern, that has the ability to circumvent our rational categories and filters to land directly in the heart.

Very early in the church’s development, artistically-inclined seekers began to paint and use various mediums to depict, not just momentous events from God’s story, but the soul of those events. To actually impart the grace embedded in those events. To make them come alive internally and personally in a way that words cannot. Perhaps our modern experience that comes closest is being moved deeply in an artful worship service (Musica Divina?).

This is not a rejection of rational or mind-based worship; rather, it’s a recognition that all three intelligence centers—body, mind, and heart—are distinct pathways to communing with God. Encounters that are difficult, maybe impossible, to replicate from another intelligence center. Advent is a beautiful opportunity to lean into the grace and beauty of such worship.

Take five minutes now to scroll back up to the image above, a wall mural located appropriately in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem built in the fourth century (which I vaguely remember visiting at age eleven). Simply gaze over the details, noticing what they convey. What do you see? The postures, the expressions, the colors, the eyes, even the animals… What feels uplifting or inviting about this scene? Can you place yourself there?

Now look at three other very different nativity icons—one Asian, one African, one Mediterranean. How do you experience these depictions? How do they stir different emotions and impact your soul in other ways. Which of them are you most drawn to…and why?

What do you sense the Spirit speaking to you or moving within you as you gaze? Do you feel your heart-center coming online? Savor the moment. Now take another few minutes to express your heart response to God in prayer or journaling. These are some of the ways that mystics, modern and ancient, seek to continually enlarge their intimacy with the God who fills all and in whom “we live and move and have our being.”

Now let’s zoom out to the big picture…

If the eye is the window to the soul, the window goes both ways. Not only are we learning to receive God’s immanent love through visual art; just as importantly, we’re learning to see things the way God sees them! Jesus calls the eye “the lamp of the body” and invites us to bring the light of God’s reality into our inner world. And this is a gamechanger.

Now we begin to see the art in all of life. The angst fades, and we start to see the pathos, the humanity, that divine echo in the human condition that drew Jesus to Advent. The need to come near, the yearning to love us humans back to life. This is the endgame of Visio Divina. Come Lord Jesus.