Reception, Responsibility, and the Living Word in Liturgical Encounter
Summary: This article develops a unified theological vision of scriptural reception grounded in a pneumatological and sacramental understanding of the Word of God. Beginning with critical examination of the widespread formula “I am responsible for what I say, but not for what you understand,” the work articulates a rigorous hermeneutic that holds together the literal sense of Scripture, the depths of divine meaning, and the transformative action of the Holy Spirit in the reader. Rather than opposing historical-critical exegesis to spiritual reading, or text to interpretation, this approach proposes an integral structure in which the letter of Scripture functions as the necessary sacramental medium through which divine light is communicated in graduated depths according to the capacity and disposition of the receiver. The article situates this vision within the ecclesial practice of the Liturgy of the Word and Lectio Divina, understood not as methods of interpretation but as pneumatic events of encounter and transformation, constituted fundamentally by the praying act of faith in the presence of the Risen Christ. The concluding synthesis returns to the initial formula, now reformulated according to this sacramental logic: the divine Word gives itself fully in proclamation, but its fruit depends upon the believing reception of the hearer, wherein the Holy Spirit renders the Word living and effective.
I. Introduction: A Formula and Its Ambiguities
The phrase “I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand” has become widespread in contemporary discourse, though its origins remain uncertain and contested. While frequently attributed to Jacques Lacan, this attribution lacks reliable textual verification. The formula corresponds in spirit to Lacanian reflection on language and the speaking subject, yet the precise formulation appears to be a popular simplification or reformulation of Lacanian ideas rather than Lacan’s own words. It is very likely of French linguistic origin, given its structured parallelism and clear opposition between speaker and hearer.
What makes this formula worthy of serious theological attention, however, is not its philological pedigree but the hermeneutical questions it raises and, more fundamentally, how it may be misappropriated to disclaim responsibility for intelligible communication. At first glance, the formula appears to acknowledge a simple structural fact: there exists necessarily a gap between the intention of the speaker and the understanding of the listener, determined by the history, culture, knowledge, experience, and discernment of the one who hears. This observation is correct and corresponds to classical hermeneutical insight regarding the situated character of all understanding. Yet when this formula is used to absolve the speaker of responsibility for being understood “to suggest that meaning is somehow the responsibility of the listener alone” it becomes theologically problematic and hermeneutically naive. The tradition of theological interpretation, particularly within the Catholic understanding articulated by Vatican II and the Church’s ongoing magisterium, demands a more nuanced and responsible account of how meaning arises in the encounter between speaker and hearer, text and reader, divine communication and human reception.
This article begins with the hermeneutical inadequacy of that formula and moves toward a comprehensive reformulation rooted in sacramental theology and pneumatology. The journey necessarily passes through classical exegetical theology, the relationship between literal and spiritual senses, the nature of Scripture as both historical text and living revelation, and ultimately the irreducible role of the Holy Spirit in transforming dead letter into living Word. Only by holding these dimensions together “in their proper order and proportion” can we arrive at a theology of scriptural reception that honours both the stability of the text and the freedom of the reader, both the human dimension of Scripture and its divine authorship, both the work of scholarly analysis and the action of contemplative prayer.
II. The Hermeneutical Tradition and the Problem of Reception
A. The Three Poles of Interpretation
The entire hermeneutical tradition, from Schleiermacher through Gadamer to Ricoeur, insists on articulating three inseparable poles of interpretation: the author, the text, and the reader. To claim that the speaker bears no responsibility for what the hearer understands is to rupture this integral relationship and to propose what might be called a “weak theory of interpretation” in which the speaker almost entirely disclaims responsibility for reception.
Schleiermacher defines interpretation as a reconstruction of the meaning intended by the author, while simultaneously acknowledging that understanding can exceed the original intention. Gadamer radicalises this insight by showing that understanding is always a meeting of two horizons: “To understand is always to bring something into agreement with something.” Meaning, in this classical formulation, depends neither solely on the one who speaks nor solely on the one who hears, but arises in their encounter. Ricoeur sharpens this further: “The text is the mediation through which we understand ourselves,” and more provocatively, “What the text says matters more than what the author intended to say.” Once discourse is objectified “written or stabilised in some form” it acquires a relative autonomy that obliges both author and reader to accountability.
This tradition of shared responsibility for meaning becomes even more structured in the domain of biblical exegesis. The conciliar constitution Dei Verbum of Vatican II insists on a double movement: “careful attention must be given to what the sacred writers truly intended to affirm” (DV 12), yet Scripture must also be read “in the same Spirit in which it was written.” This excludes both the subjectivism of the interpreter who projects arbitrary meanings and a purely intentionalist reduction that would close the text against the living action of the Spirit. The structural gap between speaker and hearer is not an excuse for interpretive irresponsibility; rather, it is the space for the work of meaning, where neither speaker nor listener can absolve themselves of their proper responsibility.
B. The Receiver’s Capacity and the Speaker’s Obligation
The formula with which we began can be salvaged and rendered accurate if it is properly refined and contextualized. It is indeed true that the speaker is not responsible for the intrinsic limitations of the reader: the limitations imposed by culture, formation, interior disposition, and the entire world of the hearer’s presuppositions. These belong to what Aquinas called the “mode of the receiver” (“Quidquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis”). In a striking passage, Augustine insists: “Non errat Scriptura, sed errat lector” (“Scripture does not err, but the reader errs”). These classical formulations acknowledge precisely what the modern formula intends: there are limits on the side of the reader that cannot be attributed to the text itself.
Yet even here, the tradition does not permit complete separation of responsibilities. The author or speaker retains a real obligation to adjust the communication to the capacity of reception. Thomas Aquinas, in his treatment of teaching, insists that one must “descend to the level of the learner” (Summa Theologiae, I, q.1, a.9). Truth may be profound, but it must be mediated in a proportionate way. The formula therefore becomes tenable only if it is understood as a partial affirmation: yes, the speaker is not responsible for the intrinsic limitations of the reader; but they remain responsible for the clarity, adequacy, and pedagogical quality of what they communicate. The depth of discourse can exceed the one who hears it, and this limitation need not come from the speaker “without thereby abolishing the speaker’s” responsibility to make that depth accessible.
III. Scripture as Divine Word: The Question of Multiple Senses
A. God as Principal Author and the Fullness of Meaning
When we move from general hermeneutical principles to the specific domain of Scripture, a decisive shift occurs. Scripture is not merely a human document whose meaning is negotiable according to contemporary interests. Scripture possesses a divine dimension that transforms the entire interpretive situation. Since God is the principal author, Scripture carries a richness of meaning that necessarily exceeds the conscious intention of the human author. Thomas Aquinas formulates this with characteristic precision: “Auctor sacrae Scripturae est Deus” (Summa Theologiae, I, q.1, a.10). And he immediately draws a profound hermeneutical consequence: “Deus uno actu omnia simul comprehendit; unde non solum verba, sed etiam res ipsas ad significandum potest accommodare.” In other words, God can make not only words, but even realities themselves signify. This opens an objective depth in the text, independent of human limits.
The medieval theological tradition recognised this divine depth through the doctrine of the multiple senses of Scripture “literal and spiritual. But this multiplicity does not imply arbitrariness; rather, it represents structured richness. Thomas again: “Sacra Scriptura plures habet sensus” (ibid.). A single text can be true at multiple levels without contradiction. Yet the spiritual senses are not floating interpretations superimposed upon the text; they are rooted in the literal sense. As Thomas insists: “Omnes sensus sacrae Scripturae fundentur super litteralem”; (“All the senses of Holy Scripture are founded on the literal sense”). The window image is apt: the light passing through the stained glass does not destroy the material form of the glass; rather, it is only visible through and because of that material form.
What is crucial here is that depth is not an escape from the text, but a progressive explication of what the text already contains in act. The danger of an unbridled spiritual reading is not that it seeks depth, but that it detaches depth from its moorings in the textual form. The patristic tradition understood this well. Origen, despite his famous use of spiritual allegory, maintained that interpretation must be governed by the rule of faith, precisely to prevent uncontrolled proliferation of meanings. Scripture grows with those who read it (Gregory the Great: “Scriptura sacra cum legentibus crescit”), but it grows as an unfolding of what is already contained, not as a radical remaking of the text’s meaning.
– Scriptures Grow With Us, The Experience of the Fathers of the Church
B. Graduated Reception According to Capacity
A fundamental principle runs through the entire theological tradition: each person receives according to their capacity. The classical formula is Aquinas’s “Quidquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis.” This principle is not a concession to relativism but an acknowledgment of how divine communication must work when addressed to finite, progressive creatures. God does not overwhelm the human intelligence; he instructs it gradually, according to its capacity for understanding and receptivity.
Within this framework, the relationship between the divine author and the different levels of meaning in Scripture becomes clear. A single text, willed by God, possesses a fullness of meaning, but this fullness is received in a graduated manner, according to the disposition, purification, and spiritual intelligence of the reader. This is not a diminishment of the text’s meaning; rather, it is the way divine communication actually works in time and history. The mystical theologians understood this as the soul’s journey through progressive stages of spiritual maturation, where Christ nourishes the faithful from depth to depth, as the living water flows from the side of the temple in Ezekiel’s vision. Each stage of growth of the human being has its corresponding nourishment. The text is not passive material; it is a living mediation that meets the reader precisely where they are and draws them forward into deeper union with God.
IV. The Holy Spirit and the Living Word: Beyond the Letter-Spirit Opposition
A. The Integration of Exegesis and Spiritual Reading
Much of the modern exegetical crisis can be traced to a false opposition between historical-critical analysis and spiritual depth. The Pontifical Biblical Commission has explicitly acknowledged that a method limiting itself to purely historical analysis risks “leaving aside the theological dimension of the text.” Yet the same tradition affirms that historical-critical work is indispensable. Why? Because the spiritual sense does not float above the text in free projection; it is grounded in the literal sense. Historical-critical exegesis is not a closure in itself; it becomes a closure only if it claims to be self-sufficient.
The danger identified in much contemporary exegesis is what might be called an “exegetical positivism” in which the literal sense is sometimes confused with the total sense, and the glass pane is examined in such detail that the light passing through it is forgotten. Yet the solution is not to relativize the historical-critical method; it is to situate it within an integral hermeneutic, where the literal sense is the necessary point of access to a depth that surpasses it without ever contradicting it. Dei Verbum’s dual insistence is decisive: careful attention to what the authors intended to affirm, yet always reading Scripture “in the same Spirit in which it was written.” These two requirements are inseparable, and each corrects the other.
The true problem is not the analysis of the text as such, but the treatment of the sign (the letter) as an autonomous object closed upon itself, instead of receiving it as the present bearer of a living divine action. In every sacrament we have both sign and grace, both materiality and communication of grace. They cannot be separated as long as we are in the flesh. Therefore, the sacramentality of the communication of the Word of God is the true exegesis. It is neither merely literal nor merely spiritual; it is both together, always, and at all levels of spiritual depth.
B. The Unity of the Holy Spirit and the Living Word
The deepest ground of scriptural interpretation lies not in methodology but in the action of the Holy Spirit. Our ignorance of the Holy Spirit has led us astray in endless discussions about the proper way to read Scripture, about literal and spiritual senses, about exegetical methods. Yet the fundamental reality is this: the Holy Spirit is at once the author of the text, and the text is, at the outset, only a text. The Holy Spirit fully uses all the capacities and faculties of the human author, but the author of Scripture is ultimately the Holy Spirit.
When we read Scripture, we read it in prayer, making ourselves docile to the Holy Spirit who has written it, using fully the human mediation. The Holy Spirit is the author of our sanctification; he is the one who gives us the Word of God, adjusting it to our capacity and to our immediate needs in this moment. There is Scripture as the fixed text, but there is also the Word, which is living. The Word is living, and it is the Holy Spirit who brings us from Scripture to the Word. It is crucial to recognize that the Word and the Holy Spirit are not two separate realities placed side by side, but a unified divine reality. When we speak of the sacrament of the Word, the material sign is the letter of Scripture, while the divine reality signified and at work is the single movement of God himself, which is the unity of the Holy Spirit and the living Word.
The image of the flaming sword clarifies this: there is not a sword on the one hand and fire on the other, but a single divine reality, whose “tip” (the Word) is the mode by which it reaches and pierces human intelligence and heart. The Spirit, through the Word, enters into us. One cannot separate the two. This is why any overly sharp division between “text,” “meaning,” “Spirit,” and “interpretation” risks breaking what is actually a unified event of divine communication. Scripture is not first of all a textual object to be interpreted, but a living mediation of the Holy Spirit, in which the same Spirit is at once the author of the text, the principle of its understanding, and the agent of the transformation of the reader. This is not “text and then interpretation”; it is a pneumatic event of communication.
V. The Liturgy of the Word and Lectio Divina as Sacramental Encounter
A. The Daily Experience of Sacramental Reception
This sacramental understanding is not merely theoretical; it is lived daily among the faithful through two essential instruments of grace: the proclamation of the Word of God in the Liturgy of the Word, and the digestion of this grace in Lectio Divina. The very structure of the liturgical readings “the existence of two readings on weekdays and three on Sundays” embodies a profound hermeneutical principle. The existence of multiple readings forces a change of level. First, we respect the literal sense of each text. Yet then, driven by an act of faith in the encounter with the Word, we are led to a different, deeper level, not outside the texts but within their theological coherence as arranged by the Church for that specific day.
This experience is constant among those who practice Lectio Divina seriously: a progressive passage from the diversity of texts to an interior unification of the message, not by reduction but by deepening. The Fathers of the Church describe this phenomenon as an intellectus spiritualis, a spiritual understanding that does not abolish the literal sense but brings it into a broader coherence. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini, insists that the Word of God proclaimed in the liturgy possesses a real dimension of sacramentality, in that it is a place of effective communication of grace through the Word. The Liturgy of the Word is not merely informative reading; it is an act in which God speaks today to his people as a present event of salvation.
The Church proposes multiple readings not accidentally but by design, creating a field of internal resonance of the biblical message, where texts are interpreted not separately but in tension and in unity. The passage from the “literal level” to the “spiritual level” is not a break between two distinct realms, but rather a movement from analytical reading of textual units to unified understanding of meaning in the Spirit, where the different passages illuminate one another within a single movement. Augustine describes this dynamic when he writes: “cum Scriptura Dei perlegitur, Deus loquitur” (“when the Scripture of God is read, God speaks”). Authentic understanding is that which leads to charity, implying a passage from fragmented understanding to interior unity of lived meaning.
B. Prayer, Faith, and the Act of Encounter
Yet a crucial dimension has been insufficiently emphasized in theological treatment of Scripture: the necessity of prayer and the act of faith. One must pray. That is to say, one must exercise an act of faith in the presence of the Risen Christ who wishes to speak to us. The Church invites us to make this act of faith during the Liturgy of the Word through the well-known text of Vatican II: “It is Christ himself present among us who speaks when the Scripture is proclaimed in the Church.” We do not merely hear human words about Christ; we hear Christ himself speaking. Yet this presence remains objectively given but subjectively unreceived without the faith response of the hearer.
The act of faith, the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the opening of the heart to the presence of the Risen Christ; these are not preliminary psychological conditions. They are constitutive modes of access to the living Word. Without them, there is not simply “less fruits”; there is a rupture in the living relationship with the One who speaks. Saint Augustine expresses this when he observes: “You see the letter, but it is God who speaks to you inwardly.” This interior hearing presupposes the opening of one’s entire being, which is itself a living act of faith.
The Liturgy of the Word and Lectio Divina constitute a single movement of reception of the Word, which begins in proclamation and is prolonged in interior assimilation. The image of “digestion” is theologically apt: the Word is not only received but progressively integrated into the life of the subject. This is why the distinction between “meditation” and “lectio divina” must be carefully maintained. Meditation can suggest a mental activity confined to reflection on the text. Lectio divina, by contrast, is not first of all reflection; it is an exposure of the intelligence and heart to a present divine action, made possible by faith and the invocation of the Holy Spirit. The Mass is a prayer; Lectio Divina is a prayer. Both are events of encounter with the living Christ.
The encounter with the living Word today, in regular and ordinary fashion, requires prayer, requires renewed act of faith within prayer. It is the act of faith, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that enables us to enter into contact with the living Word, that allows the living Word to touch us, to touch our soul, our intelligence, our will, our emotions, our feelings, and to transform them, purify them, elevate them, and enlighten them. We enter the liturgy through an opening of faith, of the heart, and of charity. We enter Lectio Divina as a digestive prolongation of the Liturgy of the Word through prayer, through the act of faith, through the opening of our entire being to the presence of the Risen Christ.
VI. A Reformulation of the Initial Formula
We can now return to the formula with which we began, armed with a more adequate theological framework. What Scripture, Christ, and the Church say to us is this: “I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand.” Yet this must be understood in a rigorously qualified way. There are indeed two real responsibilities, but they are neither symmetrical nor independent. We must distinguish between them, and the first responsibility does not dispense us from the second.
On the side of the proclaimed Word “which we identify with Christ speaking in the Spirit” there is a responsibility of truth, of clear self-giving, and of fidelity to the human form assumed. The Word gives itself fully in the proclamation. This responsibility is fully borne by God, who communicates himself “through men in human fashion” (Dei Verbum 12). The divine Word does not withdraw. On the side of the receiver, there is another responsibility, which cannot be gainsaid: that of believing reception. This consists in the act of faith, prayer, the invocation of the Holy Spirit, and the interior openness that makes possible not only intellectual understanding but effective encounter and transformation.
The fruit of the Word in the intelligence and in life depends upon the believing response of the receiver. Responsibility is neither dissolved into divine efficacy nor inverted into the autonomy of the subject; it is conjoint within one and the same event of grace and faith. The Word of God gives itself fully in the proclamation, but its fruit in the hearer depends upon the believing response, a response that consists precisely in entering into the very movement of the Holy Spirit who renders this Word living and effective. To understand the sacramental mechanism is to recognize that the Word of God is not only to be interpreted but to be received in a praying act of faith, in which the Holy Spirit is at once the one who speaks, the one who inspires, and the one who opens the intelligence to the living truth of Christ present.
VII. Conclusion: Toward an Integral Pneumatic Hermeneutic
This reflection has traced a path from a simple formula about responsibility in communication toward a comprehensive theology of scriptural reception grounded in pneumatology and sacramental theology. Along this path, we have been obliged to integrate classical principles of hermeneutics with theological principles of inspiration, to hold together the historical and the eternal dimensions of Scripture, to reconcile the necessity of exegetical analysis with the indispensability of spiritual prayer, and ultimately to recognise that the Word of God is not primarily an object of interpretation but an event of encounter and transformation.
What emerges is a vision in which there is neither opposition between letter and spirit, nor hierarchy of text and meaning, but an integral structure of mediation. The letter of Scripture is not an obstacle to the light of divine truth; it is the very condition of the manifestation of that light. The Holy Spirit does not act outside or against the textual form, but through it. The multiple readings arranged by the Church for each day create not confusion but a field of theological resonance in which the unity of God’s saving purpose becomes luminous. The interpreter does not construct meaning; rather, the interpreter is progressively constructed by the Word, purified and transformed in the act of faith and prayer.
The crisis of scriptural interpretation in modern theology stems not from the application of historical-critical methods as such, but from their absolutisation, from the treatment of the text as a dead historical object closed against the action of the living Spirit. Yet the solution is not to abandon historical responsibility but to situate it within a larger pneumatic reality. The Liturgy of the Word and Lectio Divina remain the true places of Scripture’s reception, not as methods of reading but as sacramental events in which God speaks today. Each believer, entering the Mass with an open heart, entering Lectio Divina with a praying faith, becomes a witness to the fact that “Scripture grows with those who read it.”
The Word of God proclaimed in the liturgy and received in Lectio Divina comes to meet us, touches us, enlightens us, transforms us, and purifies us. All this takes place within the readings themselves, not outside them, yet through a mystery that exceeds and transfigures the text without abolishing it. This is the sacramentality of the Word: sign and grace in an inseparable unity; letter and spirit in an integral movement; human intention and divine depth in a single economy of salvation. To understand this is not to master the text but to surrender oneself to the presence of Christ, to invoke the Holy Spirit with genuine docility, and to allow the living Word to lead us, as the psalmist says, from strength to strength, from depth to depth, toward the fullness of union with God.
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Bibliography
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