A large, good heart

Only when the Lord has made your heart new can it be open and ready to listen. The Lord has promised to give a new heart to anyone who asks (Ez 18:31), to soften and mold our hearts until they fit the Word. But before we will raise them up, we must be convinced in the first place that these hearts of ours are hardened (Ps 119:36).

Every day God cries out to us: 'If only you would listen to my voice! Harden not your hearts!' (Ps 95:8; Heb 3:7). The hardened heart claims that it is God's Word which is hard. Even believers do this: 'This is a hard word; who can accept it?' (Jn 6:60). Ask God to give you a big heart, a heart that can hear (leb shomea'), as Solomon the wise once did (1 K 3:5).
When you sit down to do lectio divina, remember the parable in which the Lord is pictured as a sower in the act of sowing the Word. You are one of the four types of soil: either rocky, or a footpath open to everything that passes, or a patch of thorns, or good, rich soil. The Word must find this good, rich soil in you; then 'when you have heard the Word with a good, whole heart, (en kardía kalê kaì agathê), you will keep it and produce fruit by faithful perseverance' (Lk 8:15).