Reading spiritual and religious texts from Catholic traditions helps students at different educational levels discover these texts' significance for their personal formation. We can define personal formation as an open transformation process for students' existential, spiritual and moral formation. Through dialogical interaction between students and others in the present and the past, students can form themselves towards mature freedom and a meaningful and ethical life orientation for themselves and society. This formation process requires attention, openness, space, and interruption. We examine how a contemplative reading model, based on the monastic practice of lectio divina, can contribute to the personal formation of students at various educational levels. Cultivating a space for freedom - vacare - appears to be essential in this process. The structure of the four steps of lectio divina, which ritualise the reading process, can enable depth and growth. The Catholic pedagogical view on integrated personal formation (cognitive, affective, moral, and spiritual) is essential to this transformative reading process.