Lectio Divina and Living with Illness:  Reading the Sacred Text of your Body.

Many of us live with illnesses or chronic conditions that prevent us from fully living our lives in the way we desire.   Even though there may be no physical cure for our suffering, God invites us to work toward the healing that comes from deep listening and close awareness of God’s presence in our lives.

Lectio Divina, the Benedictine practice of reading and savoring Holy Scripture, guides many of our prayer practices and the spirituality of our daily lives through the stages of silencio, lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio.

What if we were to extend that practice to our own bodies? What if we were to acknowledge that our bodies are a sacred text and that we can learn from them by slowly “reading” and deeply listening to our bodies, meditating on their messages to us and then lifting our body’s pain and suffering in prayer to God?

Please join Sheryl Rose, spiritual director and oblate, for this new in-person workshop “Lectio Divina and Living with Illness:  Reading the Sacred Text of your Body.” 

Much of the material is based on the book Broken Body Healing Spirit:  Lectio Divina and Living with Illness by Mary C.  Earle.  (Reading the book is helpful, but not required.)

Additional presenters are Sr. Paula Hagen, a long-time enthusiast of Lectio Divina and Julie Kelly, MSN, a healthcare practitioner whose patients live with chronic illness.