The revealed Word of God has set Christ Jesus before us in order that we may have that on which to fix our eyes. We cannot, with Paul, strive to gain Christ and be found in Christ without precise existential and personal knowledge of who Christ is.
And this knowledge has been made available to us in the living and often paradoxical figure of Christ we encounter in the “Gospel.” Without continually feeding on the Gospel text, Christian contemplation withers and dies or mutates into something strange.
Thus, being with Jesus interiorly and contemplating Jesus in the Gospel objectively are almost synonymous events.
Fire of Mercy
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (now Fr. Simeon, OCSO)
What Fr Simeon speaks of is precisely why we study the sacred Scripture, why we do lectio divina, why we pray the Scripture in the Liturgy. God’s definitive (complete) revelation in Jesus Christ sets the stage for all other things.