We were created to know, love and serve God here on earth, and to see and enjoy him forever in heaven, but we cannot love a person unless we know that person. We come to know the person of Christ from his own words and what others have written about him in the Bible.
The facts that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was called the ‘Word’ (Jn 1:1) and that one of the few words spoken by the Father was ‘Listen to him’ (Mt 17:5) leave us in no doubt about the importance of lectio divina or prayerful reading. The aim of lectio divina is to encounter Christ, for he has the ‘words of eternal life’ (Jn 6:67), he was ‘sent to bring the good news to the poor’ (Lk 4:18) and ‘to know him is eternal life’. (Jn 17:3)