Until a few decades ago, in the Catholic Church, many believed that a layman could not reach the level of spirituality and holiness of the people who had consecrated their life to Our Lord. The nuns at the college where my wife studied over 60 years ago, for example, had told their students that they would undoubtedly be given a higher special place in heaven than other mortals.

I am a layman and I can only smile at this idea, because every day I read a passage from the Gospel of the day. In each piece I try to find guidance on how one can put the Lord's teachings into practice while beeing in his - or her - own human particular condition. It's clear that one should interpret the Gospels' spirit and not the letter.
It is known for whom and in what period the 4 synoptic Gospels are written, the canonical ones chosen by Saint Jerome, (on the right: the Saint Jerome of Caravaggio) and also that when a translation is made from one language to another it is frequent that one can give a different meaning to the words. Punctuation is also very important.erent meaning to the words. The punctuation is very important too.

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord ..."

has a very different meaning from this

"The voice of one crying: in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord ..."

I think this is the best version, because the ancients found peace and meditation in the desert. They went there to find and better understand God's voice, as did St. John the Baptist and Jesus himself.
Instead in the first case it can be understood that the Voice is shouting in the desert where no one hears it.

Above all, I imagine that in the original texts there was no codified punctuation, and that the copies of the ancient books were written by scribes, perhaps friars of abbeys. There is no doubt that God helped them and that they did their best, but certainly someone could have misunderstood something.
Think of how many different meanings the words of a text written in Aramaic have, which is translated first into Greek, then from the Greek text to the Latin translation, and finally from the Greek or Latin translation to one of today's vernacular languages.
There are many lay people, priests and scholars who have detailed the available texts of the New Testament in the different languages and have revealed many discrepancies.

In conclusion, I believe that one should briefly pray to Jesus for assistance before reading a Gospel passage and meditating on it, to discover and find a direction to govern one's ordinary daily life.
Any place is good for starting this type of short meditation, even if it is better to stay close to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The surrounding silence is good to be able to feel his presence better.
But let us remember: a) that God's ways are usually not ours b) It is useless to expect Him to solve for us what we can do ourselves. c) right intention is essential to pray well.

Lino Bertuzzi