On the Origin of Christ’s Words and the Deepest Foundation of Lectio Divina

This article develops and clarifies key elements of Part I: The Word Becomes Words (p. 15 and following) in the book Lectio Divina at the School of Mary, unfolding some of its theological and spiritual implications in a more explicit form.

Summary: This article explores the theological origin of the words spoken by Christ during his earthly ministry, tracing them back to the rationes aeternae—the eternal ideas known within the one uncreated Word of the Father. Drawing principally upon the Gospel of John and the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, it demonstrates that Christ’s human words, though formed in a created human intellect and expressed in temporal language, are the historical manifestation of what the Father eternally “speaks” in the Son. This theological framework illuminates the deepest foundation of Lectio Divina: the practice is not merely a reading of ancient texts but a participation in the living movement by which the infinite Word continues to touch the created order. The article concludes by reflecting on Psalm 1 and the Desert Fathers, showing that continual meditation on the Word constitutes the normal vocation of the human being oriented toward God.

Introduction

“The words that I say to you I do not speak of myself; but the Father, dwelling in me, performs his own works” (John 14:10). This declaration of Christ opens onto a profound theological question: what is the ultimate origin of the words Jesus spoke? Are they merely the insights of a wise teacher, or do they possess a deeper source—one that reaches into the eternal life of God himself?

The Gospel of John consistently presents Christ as speaking not from himself but from the Father. “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me” (John 7:16). “What I have heard from him, I declare to the world” (John 8:26). This Johannine language of “hearing” and “seeing” the Father suggests that the human words of Christ are not isolated human productions but the temporal expression of an eternal divine communication.

To understand this mystery, one must enter into the precision of classical Catholic theology, particularly as articulated by Saint Thomas Aquinas. There one finds the doctrines of the eternal Word, the divine ideas, and the human knowledge of Christ—doctrines that, when carefully integrated, reveal the origin of Christ’s words and simultaneously illuminate the deepest foundation of the ancient practice of Lectio Divina.

Part I: The Eternal Word and the Divine Ideas

The One Uncreated Word

In the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, following the Augustinian tradition, the eternal Word is not a succession of thoughts or a multiplicity of divine utterances. The Word is unique, simple, and subsistent: it is the single and perfect Word of the Father.

God knows himself perfectly, and this act of self-knowledge generates the Word. The Word is therefore the eternal conception that God has of himself. But this “conception” is not an idea among others; it is a divine Person—the Son.

“Verbum Dei est conceptio divini intellectus.” “The Word of God is the conception of the divine intellect.” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 34, a. 1)

And again: “Deus, intelligendo se, Verbum generat.” “God, in knowing himself, generates the Word.” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 27, a. 2)

Precisely because God is absolutely simple (simpliciter simplex), there is no multiplicity of successive thoughts in him. In the human mind, multiple thoughts arise because the intellect passes from one object to another. In God, the intellect is a single, eternal, simple, and total act.

“In Deo intellectus et intelligibile et ipsum intelligere sunt omnino idem.” “In God, intellect, intelligible, and act of understanding are one and the same thing.” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 14, a. 4)

Therefore, strictly speaking, there are not in Saint Thomas “eternal words” in the plural as several distinct uncreated verbs. There is only one uncreated Word: the Son.

The Rationes Aeternae

However, within this single Word, God knows all things. All creatures are known in the Word. Saint Augustine spoke of the rationes aeternae—the “eternal reasons” or “divine ideas”—present in the divine intellect. Saint Thomas takes up this doctrine:

“Ideae sunt formae exemplares rerum in mente divina existentes.” “Ideas are the exemplary forms of things existing in the divine intellect.” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 15, a. 1)

Thus one can say analogically that all divine “thoughts” are contained in the single Word, but they do not constitute several subsisting words. They are known within the one simple act of divine knowledge.

The distinction is essential:

  • The eternal Word = one divine Person, uncreated, subsistent.
  • The divine ideas = a logical multiplicity of creatures known by God within this one Word.

Saint John of the Cross expresses this with admirable precision: “The Father has spoken only one Word: it is his Son; and he speaks it always in an eternal silence.” (Sayings and Maxims, 21)

This formula is profoundly Thomistic: one single eternal Word, simple, infinite, in which everything is said.

Preserving Divine Simplicity

It is necessary to emphasise that the rationes aeternae do not form “parts” of the Word, nor juxtaposed thoughts within God. God is absolutely simple. The multiplicity of ideas arises not from an internal fragmentation of the Word but from the diverse relations according to which the one divine essence can be imitated by creatures.

“Pluralitas idearum est secundum diversos respectus creaturarum ad divinam essentiam.” “The multiplicity of ideas comes from the diverse relations of creatures to the divine essence.” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 15, a. 2)

An analogy may help. White light is simple, yet it contains virtually all the colours of the spectrum. The colours do not divide the light into parts; they manifest different possibilities of the diffusion of a single light. In an infinitely higher way, the divine essence is simple, but creatures reflect this single perfection in diverse ways. The rationes aeternae are precisely these possibilities eternally known in the Word.

Thus there is no composition in God. The multiplicity lies on the side of the relations of creatures to God, not on the side of the divine being itself.

Part II: The Human Words of Christ and Their Eternal Origin

The Created Human Intellect of Christ

According to classical Christology, Christ possesses a created human intellect and a created human will. His human soul receives infused knowledge and, according to Saint Thomas, the beatific vision. The soul of Christ knows the Father in a direct manner. Thus the human words of Christ truly proceed from his human intellect, but this intellect is wholly united to the eternal Word.

“Anima Christi cognoscit in Verbo omnia quae pertinent ad eius missionem.” “The soul of Christ knows in the Word everything that belongs to his mission.” (Summa Theologiae, III, q. 10, a. 2)

From Uncreated Knowledge to Created Expression

When Christ speaks, there is:

  1. A created human word,
  2. Formed in his human intellect,
  3. But entirely transparent to the eternal knowledge of the Word.

The human words of Jesus—sounds, language, Aramaic formulations, human concepts—belong fully to the created order. Yet what they express proceeds immediately from his union with the Father.

Can one say, then, that the origin of Christ’s words lies in the rationes aeternae, the uncreated realities known within the eternal Word? Yes, with careful precision. What exists eternally in God as uncreated knowledge is expressed in time under a created form. The movement is:

  1. Eternal vision in the Word,
  2. Created reception in the human intellect of Christ,
  3. Human expression in historical words.

This is not an ontological mutation of the uncreated into the created. The rationes aeternae remain eternal in God. What appears in time is their created expression—the historical manifestation of eternal truth through a created human intelligence.

In John 12:49, Jesus says: “I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me has himself commanded me what I should say and what I should speak.” And in John 8:38: “I speak of what I have seen with my Father.”

There is truly in Saint John this idea of a continual “vision” of the Father by the incarnate Son, a vision that becomes human speech in time.

The Created “Husk” and the Divine Content

The human words of Christ possess, as it were, a “created husk” (or skin, like a fruit’s skin)—the materiality of language, the sounds of Aramaic, the temporal unfolding of discourse. But the content contained within this husk is divine, life-giving.

This illuminates John 6:63: “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (τὰ ῥήματα … πνεῦμά ἐστιν καὶ ζωή ἐστιν). Christ does not simply say that his words “give” the Spirit or “bring” life. He says that they arespirit and life. The tradition sees in this a word inhabited by the Holy Spirit, bearing divine life itself.

Why? Because these words proceed from the living Word united to the Father in the Spirit. Under the created materiality of language, an uncreated reality is communicated.

Part III: The Origin of Lectio Divina

Scripture as the Living Place of the Word

If the human words of Christ draw their ultimate origin from the eternal knowledge of the Father expressed in the Word, then the Scriptures—which bear these words—become something immense. They are not merely inspired documents of the past, nor simply doctrinal teaching. They become the present place of an operation of the living Word.

Origen already said: “The Scriptures are like the Incarnation of the Word.” And Saint Ambrose: “When we read the divine Scriptures, God walks with us in paradise.” The created letter becomes transparent to an active presence of the uncreated. Scripture becomes the living place where the infinity of the Word continually touches the created.

Lectio Divina as Participation in Divine Communication

In authentic Lectio Divina, the believer encounters a created human word—Scripture, words, language, letters—but this word bears the living Word and is rooted in God’s eternal knowledge.

Lectio Divina is therefore not primarily an intellectual work on a text; it is a progressive participation in the living knowledge that the Word has of the Father.

This is why Hebrews 4:12 says: “The word of God is living and effective.” And Guigo II, in The Ladder of Monks, describes Lectio as a movement in which the soul passes from the letter to the inner taste of God.

The human words of Scripture bear within them a light coming from the eternal Word, and the Holy Spirit causes this light to pass into the intellect and heart of the believer—not as mere information, but as a real participation in the life of the Word.

Saint Gregory the Great said: “Divine words grow together with the one who reads them.” And Origen: “Blessed is he who, reading the words of God, hears the Word of God himself.”

Lectio Divina thus reaches its summit when the believer passes from words to the Word, from discourse to presence, from conceptual understanding to communion.

The Sacramental Logic of the Word

Scripture participates in the sacramental logic of the Incarnation: the invisible gives itself in the visible without ceasing to be invisible in itself.

Saint Augustine wrote: “I am the food of the strong; grow, and you will eat me. You will not change me into yourself as the food of your flesh, but you will be changed into me.” (Confessions, VII, 10)

In ordinary nourishment, the food becomes us. In the spiritual order, it is we who are assimilated to the Word. Lectio Divina participates in this deep eucharistic movement: the Word nourishes the soul in order to configure it to himself.

This echoes the entire patristic tradition of divinisation. Saint Peter writes: “That you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). And Saint John of the Cross: “The soul seems to be God rather than a soul; it is so by participation” (Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 5).

The words of the uncreated Word, when eaten and assimilated, make us become him by participation—never by identity of essence, but by transforming union in love.

Part IV: The Unfolding of the Infinite Word in Time

“I Still Have Many Things to Say to You”

Christ declared: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12–13).

This text is fundamental for the theology of doctrinal development. Christ does not announce another revelation after himself, but an interior, historical, and pneumatological deepening of the one Revelation already given in him.

Saint Vincent of Lérins expressed this magnificently: “Therefore let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge and wisdom… but only within the same dogma, the same sense, and the same judgement.”
(Commonitorium, 23)

The Inexhaustibility of the Word

Since God is infinite, the depth of the Word is inexhaustible. Saint John suggests this at the end of his Gospel: “There are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

This statement opens onto the inexhaustibility of the mystery of Christ.

The incarnate Word fully contains divine revelation: “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Yet this fullness cannot be received instantaneously by human history. It must be gradually unfolded in time by the Spirit.

Why? Because the created is finite. Human history is successive. Human intelligence grows progressively. The Church itself matures in its understanding of the mystery.

Doctrinal development is not the addition of something foreign; it is the historical unfolding of a richness already contained in the Word.

God’s Desire to Communicate Himself

Saint Thomas says: Bonum est diffusivum sui—”The good is diffusive of itself.” God, the sovereign Good, tends to communicate himself. Creation itself proceeds from this diffusive goodness. The Incarnation is the summit of this diffusion: no longer merely gifts from God, but God himself giving himself.

When Christ says, “You will do greater works than these” (John 14:12), this can be understood within this logic of the historical expansion of divine life. Not that the Church surpasses Christ as source, but because the fruitfulness of the incarnate Word continues to unfold in the Body of Christ through the Spirit.

And Lectio Divina participates deeply in this movement. In Lectio, the Word continues to unfold its interior riches within souls throughout history. Scripture becomes not a closed text but the living place where the infinity of the Word continually touches the created.

Part V: Psalm 1 and the Vocation of the Human Being

“Blessed Is the Man”

Psalm 1 opens with a declaration that runs through the entire ancient spiritual tradition as a fundamental axis of human existence oriented toward God: “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, and murmurs his law day and night.” (Psalm 1:1–2)

The Hebrew verb hagah is extremely rich: it means to murmur, to ruminate, to meditate softly, to repeat inwardly. It denotes less an intellectual analysis than a progressive assimilation of the being by the Word.

The Desert Fathers and the Fathers of the Church

This is precisely what the Desert Fathers lived. For them, Scripture was not primarily an academic object. It had to descend into the heart until it became a permanent inner breath. The monk literally became inhabited by the Word.

The Apophthegmata constantly show monks repeating a verse for days, weeks, or entire years. The Word had to penetrate the whole interior structure of the human being.

Evagrius Ponticus understood that transformation takes place precisely through the purification of the intellect (nous) by the continual meditation of Scripture and pure prayer.

Among the Fathers of the Church also, theology is almost always born from this contemplative familiarity with the Word. Their exegesis is fundamentally sapiential before being scientific. Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa—all lived in this conviction that Scripture is the living place where the Word continues to act.

The Normal Breathing of the Human Being

In the biblical and patristic vision, the human being is created by the Word and for the Word. Saint John opens his Gospel: “All things were made through him” (John 1:3). And Saint Paul: “All things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).

The ultimate vocation of the human being is a return to the Word—not as pantheistic dissolution, but as filial participation in Trinitarian life.

Psalm 1 almost describes a complete theological anthropology: the righteous one is one whose interiority is continuously irrigated by the divine Word. And this Word makes him fruitful: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water.” (Psalm 1:3)

The image is magnificent. The water is divine life communicated by the Word. The human being does not produce his own fruitfulness; he becomes fruitful because he remains beside this source.

This is exactly the Johannine logic: “Remain in me, as I remain in you” (John 15:4).

Lectio Divina as Destiny and Way

If the human being is created by the Word and for the Word, then continually receiving the Word is not a secondary devotion; it is the gradual entry into one’s own ontological finality.

Lectio Divina is therefore not optional: it is the destiny of the human being—because one returns to the Eternal Word. It is also the way—because the words of the uncreated Word, when eaten and assimilated, make us become him by participation.

The great contemplatives see Scripture not primarily as an object of study but as a place of ontological transformation by grace. To remain continually exposed to the Word is the normal mode of breathing of the human being turned toward God.

Saint John of the Cross lived this almost to the letter: he never let go of his Bible. His whole thought is saturated with Scripture because his soul was structured by the Word.

Saint John of the Cross affirms: “The words of God are always full of spirit and life.” (Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 29)

And again: “The Father uttered one Word, which was his Son, and he is always uttering it in an eternal silence; and in silence it must be heard by the soul.”

Here is exactly the movement: behind the created letter there is an eternal, living, divine source, which communicates itself in the Spirit.

All that has been said so far does not remain at the level of theological clarification alone. If the Word is truly living, if Scripture is the privileged place of the encounter with the Eternal Word in the Spirit, then this reality necessarily reshapes the very way in which we live the faith, pray, teach, and build the Church. Theology, at this point, cannot remain abstract without contradicting its own object. It must become form of life. It is therefore necessary to draw out some concrete consequences for the spiritual life of the believer and for the Church as a whole.

VI. Practical Consequences for the Life of the Church and for Our Daily Spiritual Life

If the Word of God is not only a message but the living and active presence of the Eternal Son, then what Scripture itself affirms becomes decisive: “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). In this sense, Scripture is not only to be read, but to be received as an event of encounter. If the Scriptures are the privileged place where this Word addresses us personally in the Spirit, then a series of concrete consequences follows for the spiritual life of the believer and for the life of the Church as a whole. What has been said is not merely doctrinal clarification; it touches the very structure of Christian existence.

The first and most immediate consequence is that Scripture cannot be approached as a purely academic or informational text. It is not first an object of study but a place of encounter. As the text already affirms, theology is born from meeting the Living Word Himself, and not from “simply thinking about texts that speak of God” but from “meeting the Living Word Himself” (schoolofmary.org). This means that any reduction of Scripture to analysis alone, however legitimate in its own order, becomes insufficient if it does not open onto personal communion and transformation.

From this follows the vital importance of Lectio Divina in the life of the Church. It is not an optional devotional practice alongside theology, but its very internal logic when theology is understood as encounter. Lectio Divina restores the unity between hearing, understanding, and being transformed. It is precisely because the Word is living that it demands a living reception. Without this, theology risks becoming what has been described as a “mental puzzle, detached from the student’s own journey of faith” (schoolofmary.org). In other words, it loses its proper form as participation in Revelation.

This vision corresponds deeply to the teaching of Dei Verbum, which states that “in Sacred Scripture the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet His children and talks with them” (Dei Verbum, 21). Scripture is therefore not a distant deposit of doctrine, but the living place of dialogue between God and His people. It is within this dialogue that Lectio Divina finds its true meaning, as the Church’s way of allowing herself to be addressed, formed, and transformed by the Word.

In practical terms, this means that every Christian, and especially those formed for ministry, must learn again how to read Scripture in a way that is simultaneously intelligent, faithful, and prayerful. Intelligence alone is not enough, nor is affective devotion without understanding. The method of Lectio Divina integrates both: careful attention to the text, docility to the Spirit, and personal response in life. It is not simply reading about God, but listening to God addressing me today.

A second consequence concerns the primacy of the Word in the Church’s pastoral life. If the Word is truly living and active, then proclamation is not the transmission of religious information but a sacramental act of encounter. The homily, catechesis, and theological teaching must therefore be reordered around this living centre. Their purpose is not merely to explain doctrine, but to place the hearer before the Word so that He may speak, wound, heal, and transform.

This also implies a renewed seriousness in preparation for ministry. Formation cannot be limited to intellectual competence. It must include formation in receptivity: the capacity to listen, to dwell, and to remain with the Word until it becomes interiorly effective. Without this, there is a danger that one may speak about Christ without truly living from Him.

A third consequence touches the interior life itself. If the Word is “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12), then spiritual life is not primarily self-construction but consent to a divine operation. The decisive question is no longer only what I think about God, but what the Word is doing in me. This shifts the axis of spirituality from control to receptivity, from self-initiative to abiding.

Here the figure of Mary becomes paradigmatic. Her entire spiritual posture is one of pure availability to the Word. She does not place limits on what is received, but allows it to become flesh in her life. In this sense, she is not only a model of faith but of the very method by which the Word becomes fruitful in history.

Finally, there is a consequence for the renewal of the Church itself. If the Church is born from the Word and continually regenerated by it, then every authentic renewal must be a return to a living contact with Scripture in the Spirit. Structural reforms, pastoral initiatives, and theological developments remain sterile if they are not rooted in this continual listening. The renewal of the Church is therefore inseparable from the renewal of her hearing.

This is why the daily return to the Word is not an individual spiritual option but an ecclesial necessity. To return to the beginning is to return to the Word, and to remain there is to allow the life of the Church and of each believer to be continually re-created from within.

If this is so, then what remains is not first a further explanation, but a return in simplicity to the Word Himself, allowing Him to accomplish in us what He alone can do. It is in this spirit that we can now come to the final consideration.

Conclusion

The words that Christ spoke during his earthly ministry possess an origin that reaches beyond the temporal into the eternal life of God. They are formed in the created human intellect of the incarnate Word, yet they express what the Father eternally knows and “speaks” in the Son. The rationes aeternae—the divine ideas known within the one simple Word—are the ultimate source of what Christ communicates in human language.

This theological foundation illuminates the deepest meaning of Lectio Divina. The practice is not merely the reading of ancient texts, nor simply an intellectual exercise. It is participation in the living movement by which the infinite Word continues to touch the created order through the Spirit. Scripture becomes, in the words of Gregory the Great, a place where the divine words grow together with the reader—because under the created letter, an uncreated wisdom is communicated.

Psalm 1 reveals that this continual meditation on the Word is the essential vocation of the human being. The Desert Fathers understood this; the Fathers of the Church lived from it. The human being is created by the Word and for the Word. To remain beside the living stream of Scripture is to be gradually configured to the Word by participation—not by identity of essence, but by transforming union in love.

Lectio Divina is therefore both destiny and way: the destiny of the human being returning to the Eternal Word, and the way by which the words of the uncreated Word, eaten and assimilated, make us become him by participation.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Sacred Scripture

  • Gospel according to Saint John (especially 1:1–18; 5:19; 6:63; 7:16; 8:26, 38; 12:49; 14:10–12; 15:4; 16:12–13; 21:25)
  • Psalm 1
  • Colossians 1:16; 2:9
  • Galatians 2:20
  • Hebrews 4:12
  • 2 Peter 1:4
  • Matthew 4:4
  • Isaiah 55:10–11

Saint Thomas Aquinas

  • Summa Theologiae, I, q. 14, a. 4; a. 6
  • Summa Theologiae, I, q. 15, a. 1; a. 2
  • Summa Theologiae, I, q. 27, a. 2
  • Summa Theologiae, I, q. 34, a. 1
  • Summa Theologiae, III, q. 10, a. 2

Saint Augustine of Hippo

  • Confessiones, VII, 10

Saint John of the Cross

  • Sayings and Maxims, 21
  • Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 5; II, 29
  • Living Flame of Love, II, 34

Saint Vincent of Lérins

  • Commonitorium, 23

Guigo II

  • Scala Claustralium (The Ladder of Monks)

Secondary Sources and Patristic References

  • Origen, various homilies and commentaries on Scripture
  • Saint Ambrose, commentaries on Scripture
  • Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob and homilies
  • Saint Jerome, Commentariorum in Isaiam
  • Evagrius Ponticus, writings on prayer and the spiritual life
  • Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar, theological writings on Christ as the “exegesis of the Father”
  • John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine