In Meditatio, the Christian monk committed the divine words of his Lectio to memory as he pondered their meaning and, as he did so, he recited them aloud. This was not a dreary exercise: rabbinical students feel that chanting the sacred words reveals the inner music to the soul, and learning something "by heart" — a revealing phrase — helps one interiorize it and make it one's own.

Karen Armstrong, Visions of God