Enzo Bianchi

In the face of mass tragedy and terror in a post 9/11 world, we wonder where God is. But this is not a new question. Significant figures throughout history have struggled to see where God's hand was at work and what it means to trust him. These include the prophets and patriarchs.

Bianchi is the founder and prior of the ecumenical monastic, Bose Community in Italy (founded in 1965, just after Vatican II). He is a perceptive spiritual writer ( I have previously read and highly recommend his show more Echoes of the Word). In God Where Are You? Practical Answers to Spiritual Questions, Encho explores several Old Testament saints. His treatment of each of these patriarchs and prophets yield fruitful insights into the spiritual life:

Abraham was called to go to the land that God would show him. Abraham's faith in God in going is a model for us. Especially because Abraham is given a promise that will not be fulfilled in his lifetime (i.e. possession of the land, become a great nation, etc.). Even in his reception of a promised offspring, Isaac, he models for us a spirit of relinquishment of all he holds dear. So the father of our faith (and the Jewish faith) faces circumstances and ordeals that make faith in God difficult.
Jacob was the deceiver who cheated his brother out of his brother out of his birthright and inheritance. Despite his scoundrel nature, he was a child of promise. Two events changed Jacobs life forever. The first was his dream of a ladder from heaven to earth while he was on lam. The second happened when he returns home many years later and wrestles with God at the ford of Jabbok. The second event was the culmination of a lifetime of struggling with God, but it is through the struggling that Jacob (and we) discover that a new life is possible.
Moses is a man who saw God's glory and is physically transformed by the time he spends with God on the mountain. He is privileged to hear God--YHWH, I AM Who I AM--and he is commissioned to lead God's people out of slavery to the promised land. He is commssioned by God, but also struggles with God, interceding for the people when they stand under His judgment. IT is through Moses' struggle with God, he learns to think of others as better than himself. He leads the Israelites to the cusp of the promised land, though he himself would not enter.
Elijah fearful and depressed longing to die, meets God in the silence on Mount Horeb.
Isaiah's call underscores how our encounters with God call us to be obedient servants of His word.
Ultimately these ancient encounters reveal that life with God has never been easy but that God has revealed himself to us in the midst of his people (129) and in the person of Jesus Christ and in those who live in him (133). In Jesus we find we are not just on our search for God, but God is searching for us.

Bianchi's prose is simple and unadorned, but he speaks deep things. He is well read in Jewish and Christian spirituality and synthesizes their wisdom. I didn't agree with his interpretation at ever turn. But I was challenged and think his reputation as a Christian writer is justified (Rowan Williams writes the forward and calls Bianchi one of the most significant Christian voices in Europe). Currently, I would give this book four stars, but I already want to read it again, so it may grow on me. ★★★★

Notice of material connection: I received this book from Paraclete Press for the purposes of this review. show less

Visitors to the Egyptian and Palestinian wilderness in the fourth century, would ask the elder monks for ‘a word.’ The words given them, flowed out of the prayer and spiritual lives of the Desert Fathers. These words were collected into anthologies of sayings and circulated, allowing wider (and later) audiences to receive their ‘pearls of wisdom’ (introduction, xiv). These ‘words’ were echoes of the Word and reflected the prayer life, communal wisdom and understanding of show more scripture that came to us through the desert.

Enzo Bianchi is the founder of the ecumenical monastic Bose Community in Italy (founded in 1965, just after Vatican II). He is prior of this community and has published books on the spiritual life which have been translated into several different languages (Goodreads lists 30 separate entries for him, mostly not English). In Echoes of the Word: A New King of Monk on the Meaning of Life, Bianchi draws inspiration from the collections of ‘words’ of the desert saints. This too is a collection of words on various aspects of the spiritual life. Bianchi writes:

In these pages, then, I have sought to let myself be guided by the biblical and patrisitic tradition that has preceded and formed me in responding to the requests of those who continue to ask me, with sincerity and passion for “a reason for my hope” (see 1 Pet. 3:15). In this nonlinear but always directed journey, the reader will at times find him- or herself returning to terrain already traveled, but each time a different perspective is revealed,the point of view changes, a different choice is made at the crossroads. (Introduction, xv).

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, who writes the forward to this collection, says of Bianchi’s book, “I feel like I’m in the presence of someone who’s really alive. And it makes me want to go deeper–to tap into the same living water from which this abba drinks” (x). I had a similar experience reading through these ‘words’ Each of these 45 meditations consist of 3-5 pages, making this book appropriate for supplemental devotional reading. I will not do Bianchi the disservice of trying to summarize the full contents of his book here, but allow me to share several insights that emerged for me as I mulled over his words:

1.Bianchi describes the experience of the desert as a place where God speaks (as to the Israelites or Elijah). But this is liminal space–a places between places. We are not meant to settle in the desert. Where my spiritual life has felt desolate, and I felt like ‘deserting,’ the challenge for me is to keep walking and trusting that God has a place for me. This is a poignant word for me right now, as I feel like I am at a stuck place.

2.Several ‘words’ circle around the theme of vigilance, attention, listening, remembrance. The spiritual life is about listening. It is about watching and waiting. It is about cultivating attentiveness. When I think of seasons where I’ve been adrift–spiritually, relationally, emotionally–it is times where I have not paid attention to God, to others and myself. Bianchi’s words exhort me to cultivate awareness and to listen well.

3.Prayer is of vital importance. This is basic Christian truth and Bianchi devotes a significant portion of this book to describing the inner dynamics of prayer. Bianchi emphasizes God’s alerity (otherness) as much as he does God’s transcendence. Yes, God is omnipresent and available to us, but the posture of listening in prayer (and in life) means that we are cultivating responsiveness to something outside ourselves. This is different than mere mindfulness, or the popular pantheism in some of the new spiritualities. Prayer honors God’s otherness and so allows for the possibility of real and true relationship with the King of the universe.

4.Our spiritial life has a direct real world impact on our relationships and communities. In his first word, Bianchi quotes Maximus the Confessor, “Our divinization takes place when the divine love comes to dwell within us, to the point where we forgive our enemies as Christ did on the cross. When is it you become God? When you are able like Christ on the cross, to say, ‘Father, forgive them,’ or even, ‘ Father, I give my life for them’” In later chapters, Bianchi describes loving enemies, humility, self-knowledge, solitude, community. Each of these are aspects of our communal life. Our spiritual life is meant to transform all of life.

5.Our experience of the spiritual life is bounded by limitations in the here and now: illness, old age, death. This is part of what it means to be human. Communally we share in each other’s weakness. Theologically we have hope, even as we grown under our earthly tents.

This is a helpful collection of words. I find some ‘words’ more poignant than others, but do not doubt that if I inhabited a different spiritual season, other words would reveal their depths to me. This is a book to be read and savored and then re-read later. I plan to return to certain chapters later (i.e. I loved his summaries of the spiritual life, asceticism and Lectio Divina). Bianchi also does a great job of synthesizing patristic and monastic wisdom and applying it to today’s world. I warmly commend this book to anyone who seeks to deepen their spiritual growth. I give it five stars: ★★★★★

Thank you to Paraclete Press for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I was not asked to write a positive review. show less

When I first picked up a book from Enzo Bianchi, I had no idea who he was. As the founder and prior of the Bose Community (a lay monastic community in the Benedictine tradition) and as consultor of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (appointed by Pope Francis in 2014), he is a major voice in monastic and Christian spirituality. Lectio Divina: From God's Word to Our Lives is now the third book I have read from him (and the third book translated to English and published by show more Paraclete Press). In each book, Enzo has challenged me to new depths in my spiritual life.
Bianchi's treatment of Lectio Divina was more than I expected. Most other Lectio Divina books I have read, either give simple practical guidelines and a method for the practice, or are gleanings from the author's private devotional life. Bianchi does give practical advice on how to practice (especially in part two of this book) but he also gives a fuller treatment of the hermeneutics of spiritual interpretation. He references Ratzinger, De Lubac, Urs von Balthasar and others, as well as a range of patrisitic sources (Augustine, Origen, Ambrose, etc). For Bianchi, the practice of Lectio is not a subjective, privatized word from God, but an attentive reading (attending to the Spirit, to Christ and the text). He uses critical methods; yet reading in this way, is always about spiritual encounter.

In part one, Bianchi commends spiritual interpretation. In chapter on,e he describes Origen's exegetical method. Origen is representative of the Christian biblical exegesis practiced until the sixteenth century, before the critical era began and we had 'simply one possible way of reading the Bible' (9). So chapter two explores the relevance of spiritual exegesis for today, arguing for the Bible's centrality in the life of the church, and the way it testifies about Jesus throughout the canon; however this isn't a repudiation of critical gains in reading the Bible, though historical method is dethroned of ultimate importance. In chapter three, Bianchi explores God's Word--Jesus Christ--and helps us think through how the Bible is also God's word ( both inspired and human, reflecting the incarnation). Chapter four examines the unity of scripture and the way both testaments testify about Christ its center. In chapter five, Bianchi connects spiritual interpretation with the classic four-fold sense of scripture (literal-historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical). He relates each of these four levels of meaning to the four stages of Lectio Divina (Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, and Contemplatio). This was a new insight for me.
Part two is less conceptual and more practical. After giving a brief overview of the history of biblical interpretation in chapter six, Bianchi spends chapter seven walking his readers through the practice of Lectio Divina: (1) set aside a time and a place, (2) pray for the Spirit to open up the Word to us, (3) Read with an eye to the literal-historical meaning of the text, meditating and investigating the scripture to get at its deeper meaning, (4) pray and enter into the dialogue with the text in order to make more room for the Lord in your life, and finally (5) contemplate the passage and and have our gaze transformed into God's way of seeing. Chapter eight describes challenges during Lectio Divina (i.e. that Catholics have experienced a 'long estrangement from the Bible, the need for dailiness, and failure to read the Bible critically, engaged and Christologically. Finally chapter nine describes other challenges to practicing Lectio Divina (the text's otherness, the need for community, etc.).

Of the three books I have read from Bianchi, this may be my favorite. Bianchi takes us on a journey through patristics, spiritual theology, exegesis, contemporary Catholic theology and hermeneutics. Bianchi synthesizes these disciplines well and I came away with some fresh insights. I appreciate the way Bianchi connected the practice of Lectio Divina to the theology of spiritual exegesis operating in the church for centuries. I loved that he incorporated critical insights and study into meditation. In Bianchi's approach, the Lectio part of Lectio Divina involves reading with sensitivity and accuracy, discovering the intent and message of the original text (the literal-historical meaning). Meditatio involves study--checking commentaries, study notes, etc--in order to discover the theological and canonical connections. This, and Bianchi's insistence that Lectio Divina is a communal discipline, guards from its practice becoming purely subjective and private. Bianchi's approach is theologically sophisticated.

And that is perhaps the weakness of this book. I tracked my way through Bianchi's theology of scripture, Revelation, biblical exegesis, patristics and Christology. Had this been my first trek through these disciplines, I would have found this a hard read. Okay, I still found it a hard read, but I think a complete neophyte would be a little lost in places. I recommend this book highly to readers of theology and Christian spirituality, but I think Bianchi's Echoes of the Word (Paraclete, 2013) may be more accessible for the general reader. I give this book five stars!

Notice of material connection, I received this book from Paraclete Press in exchange for my honest review. show less

An invitation into lectio divina, the reading of the Scriptures.

The author encourages a reconsideration and acceptance of the Origenist fourfold way of interpreting Scripture (literal, allegorical, moral/tropological, and analogical); writes much about encouraging the reading of Scripture both individually but especially communally; and commends lectio divina and its four steps: lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio. In this perspective one moves through the objective attempt to show more understand the text in context and then more subjectively to seek to apply it to one's own life and experience. The author also speaks about challenges in terms of reading and understanding Scripture and even just in reading and understanding in and of itself.

The author is Roman Catholic, writes within a Roman Catholic framework, and ostensibly primarily to Roman Catholics. Knowledge of basic Latin, and at least a bit of Greek, proves helpful in understanding him; much is left untranslated.

The book undoubtedly serves its primary purpose, but I was disappointed that very little time was spent in discussing the development of the spiritual discipline of lectio divina; this book is more about discussing issues surrounding lectio divina than lectio divina itself. Nevertheless, it has some good food for thought in terms of our relationship to the Scriptures and what we seek to get out of them.

**--galley received as part of early review program show less