A time of silence for God to speak

And don't forget to make the time you set aside for lectio adequate for this task. Don't try for a quick fix. You need time to calm down, to come to peace. A few minutes are not enough. For good lectio, according to the Fathers, you need at least an hour.

We hear so many words every day; we read so many! We have to be careful not to drown the Word with our own words. There is no end to talk in the world. It's everywhere. How can the Word speak in all this din? Doing lectio divina at a regular time every day gives you the opportunity to evaluate the world's words in the light of God's Word. The world speaks to us constantly, and both the quantity and quality of the world's words can scramble the sound of God's voice until it bears no fruit in us from day to day (cf. Mk 4:1320). What sense does it make to read everything we can get our hands on, to feed ourselves on all the world's issues, to stuff ourselves with things that leave the heart divided and unfocused and then to pretend that we are living by the Word which comes from the mouth of God? We have to exercise some prudence and make some choices between words and the Word, or else we will end up as nothing but dilettantes, hearers who become paralyzed when our path leads us up against any real challenge.

From: ENZO BIANCHI, Praying the Word, An Introduction to «Lectio Divina»,
Cistercian Publication, Kalamazoo 1998, pp. 88-89.