Of Spiritual Reading, How Important It Is, and of Sundry Means That Will Help Us to Make It Well and Profitably

THE G is the sister of prayer and a great aid thereto.

So the Apostle Paul advises his disciple Timothy to attend to it. Attend to reading (I Tim. iv. 13). Of such importance is this spiritual reading for anyone who is trying to serve God that St. Athanasius says in an exhortation to his religious: “You will find none in earnest about his spiritual progress who does not give time to spiritual reading.” St. Jerome in his letter to Eustochium strongly recommends her to give herself to this holy reading: “Let sleep creep over you,” he says, “holding a book, and let the sacred page receive your drooping face”—Tenenti codicem somnus obrepat, et cadentem faciem pagina sancta suscipiat. All the saints greatly recommend this spiritual reading, and experience well shows us how profitable it is, since histories are full of the great conversions which the Lord has wrought by this means.

Because this reading is such a chief and important means for our advancement, the founders of religious orders, resting on the doctrine of the Apostle and the authority and experience of the saints, have ordained that their religious should make spiritual reading every day. Of the blessed St. Benedict, Humbertus says that he ordered that every day there should be a set time for this reading; and along with that he ordered that at that time two of the most ancient monks should go round visiting the monastery to see if there was anyone who left the duty out or hindered the rest. Thereby will be seen what importance he attached to it; and, by the way, it will also be understood that these visits, which it is customary to make every day here in religion during spiritual duties, are founded on the teaching and experience of the saints of old. For the first and second time St. Benedict ordered that the delinquent should be corrected mildly; but if he did not amend, that they should correct him and give him such a penance that the rest should fear and take warning. In the Society we have a rule for this spiritual reading, which says: “Let all twice a day give the time that is appointed for examen of conscience, prayer, meditation, and reading with all diligence in the Lord;” and the superior and prefect of spiritual things take care that everyone should always set aside some time for this. And speaking generally, this is a means commonly used by all who aim at virtue and perfection; and so that all may practise it with greater fruit, we will mention some things that will help thereto.

St. Ambrose, exhorting us to give to prayer and spiritual reading all the time we can, says: “Why do you not fill up with reading or with prayer all the spare time you have?

Why do you not go to visit Christ our Lord and converse with Him and hear Him? For when we pray, we converse with God; and when we read, we listen to God” —Deum alloquimur cum oramus: illum audimus cum divina legimus oracula. Let this, then, be the first means to make profit of spiritual reading, to make account that God is speaking to us and telling us that which we read there. St. Augustine also assigns this means: “When you read you should make account that God is telling you what you read, not merely that you may know it, but that you may fulfil and put it in execution.” And he adds another very good and devout consideration. ‘Do you know,” he says, “how we should read Holy Scripture? As when a person reads letters that have come from his native country, to see what news we have of heaven. We should read to see what the Scriptures have to tell us of our native land, where we have our parents and brethren, our friends and fellow citizens, and where we are desiring and sighing ourselves to be.”

St. Gregory says that Holy Scripture—and the same may be said of any other spiritual reading—is as a lookingglass put before the eyes of the soul that therein we may see our interior, the good and evil about us, the progress we are making, or how far we are from perfection. These good books tell us sometimes of the admirable doings of the saints to animate us to imitate them, that seeing their great victories and triumphs we may not be discouraged at our own temptations and trials. At other times they recount to us not only their virtues, but their falls, that by the one we may know what we have to imitate and by the other what we have to fear. So they put before us at one time a Job who rose like the crest of a wave to temptation, at another time a David who was overthrown thereby, that the one may animate us to confidence in the midst of trials and the other may make us humble and afraid in the midst of successes and consolations, that we should never have a secure confidence in ourselves, but walk always with great caution and reserve. So says St. Augustine: “You wills then, read Holy Writ to the best advantage if you use it as a mirror to see therein the image of your soul, striving to correct and remove whatever is there reprehended as unsightly and evil and to adorn and beautify it with the examples and virtues that you read of there.”

But, coming down more into detail as to the manner we should adopt herein, it is to be observed that for this reading to be profitable, it must not be done hastily or at a gallop, as when one reads stories, but very leisurely and attentively; for as an impetuous flow of water and a heavy shower does not penetrate or fertilize the earth, but gentle small rain; so for reading to enter and be drunk in by the heart, the reading must be done with pausing and pondering. And it is good, when we find any devout passage, to dwell on it a little and make there a sort of station, thinking over what is read and trying to move the affections of the will in the way that we do at meditation. At meditation, indeed, this is done more leisurely; we dwell more on things and ruminate and digest them more; but it should also be done in its way at spiritual reading. So the saints advise, and say that spiritual reading should be like the drinking of a hen, that drinks a little and then lifts up its head, and once more again drinks a little and again lifts up its head.

Hereby is seen how reading is sister and companion to meditation; so much so that, when we wish to start a person at mental prayer and would go with him little by little according as the disposition of the person requires, we counsel him first of all to read devout books, making in the reading proper stations and pauses, as has been said; for thereby the Lord is often wont to raise a person to mental prayer. And also in the case of others, who cannot get into meditation and fancy they can make nothing of it, they are usually advised to take some book and join prayer with reading, reading a little and meditating and praying thereupon and then again reading a little; for in this way the understanding being, as it were, tied to the words of the reading, it finds no room to pour itself out in divers imaginations and thoughts as it did when it was free and loose. Thus we may combine meditation with reading. This is why the saints so much recommend spiritual reading, giving it almost the same praises and commendations that they give to meditation. They say it is the spiritual food of the soul, making her strong and steady against temptations; that it engenders in her good thoughts and desires of heaven; that it gives light to our understanding and inflames and kindles the will; that it drives away worldly sadness and causes true cheerfulness, spiritual and according to God, and other such things.

The blessed St. Bernard gives another admonition, how to make profit of spiritual reading. He says: “He who applies himself to reading should seek not so much science as savor’—Non tam quaerat scientiam quam saporem. Mere knowledge of the understanding is a dry thing if it does not reach the will, feeding the affections and nourishing devotion; for that is what makes reading juicy and fruitful, and is the end and purpose thereof. This is a very important admonition, since there is a great difference between reading for knowledge and reading for spiritual advancement, between reading for others and reading for oneself; the former is study, the latter is spiritual reading. If in reading you set your eyes on knowing things or on gathering matter for subsequent preaching or talking to others, that will be studying for others, and not spiritual reading for your own advancement. There will be other times for that. Everything has its time (Eccles. iii. 1). The time of spiritual reading is not for that, but for what we have said.

The saints also recommend us not to read much at one sitting, nor get through many pages, not to weary the spirit with lengthy reading instead of refreshing it; very good and necessary advice for certain persons who seem to place their happiness in reading much and getting through many books. As the body is not nourished by much eating, but by good digestion of what one does eat; so neither is the soul nourished by reading much, but by ruminating and well digesting what is read. For the same reason they say also that spiritual reading should not be of difficult things, but of plain things, rather devout than difficult, since difficult things are apt to fatigue and dry up devotion. Hugo of St. Victor quotes an example of a servant of God who was admonished by revelation to drop the reading of those things, and read the lives and martyrdom of the saints and other plain and devout things, whereby he profited much. St. Bernard goes on again to say: “Something of our daily reading should every day be taken down into the stomach of memory, there to be more minutely digested, and thence again brought up and ruminated again and again— something to our purpose, something that makes for the end we have in view, something to engage our attention so that it may have no inclination to wander away to strange ground.” As we do not eat our daily meals simply for pastime, but that on the strength of the sustenance we take we may be able to work all that day and all our life long; so our reading, which is the food and spiritual sustenance of the soul inasmuch as it is the words of God, is not meant merely to give us good occupation for the time of reading, but to profit us all the day after. To this end it will be a good practice, before we begin to read, to raise our heart to God and beg this grace that we may drink in and well take to heart what we read, thereby to become more earnest in pursuit of virtue, more disabused of error, more determined to do what behooves us. So we read that blessed Gregory was wont to prefix prayer to his reading and say: Depart from me, ye malignant, and I will search into the commandments of my God (Psalm cxviii. 115).

That we may set a higher value on this reading and animate ourselves the more to it, the saints compare spiritual reading with hearing the word of God and say that, though reading has not the liveliness of the living voice, it has other advantages which sermons have not. In the first place, a preacher cannot be at hand at all times like a good book. Secondly, a happy saying of a preacher passes off into the air and so cannot have so great an effect upon me; but a good thing said in a book may be turned over again and again, ruminated and pondered, and so take greater effect. Thirdly, in a good book I find a good and outspoken counselor; for, as a philosopher said well, what at times a friend or adviser dare not tell me, a book will tell me fearlessly, and warn me of my vices and defects, scold me and exhort me. Fourthly, by reading I enter into conversation with those who have written the book; at one time I can go and have a period of conversation with St. Gregory, at another time with St. Basil, at another with St. Chrysostom, hear them and listen to what they say, as if I were then their disciple. So they say, and with good reason, that good books are a public treasure for the great benefits and riches that we can draw from thence.

Finally, such are the advantages and profits that follow from spiritual reading that St. Jerome, treating of the inward fire of the soul, asks: ‘Where is this fire?” and answers: “Doubtless, in the Holy Scriptures, by the reading whereof the soul is set on fire with God and purified from all vices.” And he quotes to this effect what the disciples said, when Christ our Redeemer had appeared to them on the road to Emmaus: Was not our heart burning within us, while he spoke to us on the way, and laid open to us the Scriptures? (Luke xxiv. 32). And to the same effect the psalmist: The utterances of the Lord are holy utterances, silver tested by fire (Psalm xi. 7). And St. Ambrose: “That the reading of Holy Writ is life, the Lord Himself witnesses, saying: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life (John vi. 64). Therefore, that we may live a spiritual life and walk always in the spirit, inflamed with the love of God, let us give ourselves much to spiritual reading and practise it in the manner that has been said.

Hence it follows that they do ill who, once having read a good book, throw it into a corner and say: “I have done with that.” A good book is not meant to be read once over only; the second time over it will do you more good, and the third time more, and so you will ever find it new, as they find by experience who have a desire to profit. That is a very good thing also which some do; when they find anything in a book that moves them much and gives them particular satisfaction they take a note and mark it, to have always at hand some arguments of greater weight and cogency, matter wherein they are more likely to find some marrow of devotion and consolation suitable to the several times and occasions that occur.

Out of many examples of the good of spiritual reading, I will borrow one from St. Augustine that is very instructive. St. Augustine, then, tells the story how an African knight named Poticianus came one day to pay him a visit and gave him news of the wonders that were publicly related of the blessed St. Anthony. He went on to say that one afternoon, when the emperor was in the city of Treves, taken up with witnessing certain public games which were being celebrated there, himself and three friends belonging to the court went out for a stroll in the country. Two of them, apart from the rest, went into the cell of a monk and found there a book in which was written the life of St. Anthony. One of them began to read it; and suddenly, his heart set on fire with holy love and disgusted with himself, he said to his friend: ‘‘Tell me, I pray, what is it that we aim at gaining with all our labors that we undergo, fighting so many years in so many wars? Can we possibly come to any better fortune in the palace than to be what is called within the inner circle of the emperor? But in that state what is there that is not precarious and fraught with great danger? And is it to this so great danger that we are making our way through heaven knows how many other dangers? But if I want to be a friend of God, I can be so at once.” Saying these words, in labor with the birth of a new life within him, he cast his eyes once more on the book, and underwent an inward change and was detached from all the things of the world, as appeared at once; for, after he had done reading, great waves of emotion rose in his heart, and he said with a deep sigh to his friend: “Now I am quiet and at ease; I have renounced our hopes and expectations and am determined to serve God, and from this hour I mean to stay in this place; if you do not care to imitate me, do not try to divert me from my purpose.” The other answered that he could not separate from him, nor cease to bear him company in the hope of such a reward. So they both began to raise the spiritual edifice and follow Christ at the due cost, which was the abandonment of all things. And what was no less wonderful, both were married, and their wives, when they heard of the case, consecrated themselves to God and made a vow of virginity. St. Augustine relates this story, and it was to him a very moving example, so much so that on the spot he cried out to a friend in great excitement of mind, saying: “What are we doing? What is this that you have heard? The unlearned rise up and carry off the kingdom of heaven, and we with all our learning are being plunged into the abyss!” So complaining and so feeling, the saint says that he went into a garden that he had there and threw himself under a fig tree and gave free vent to his tears. With great anguish and trouble of heart he began to say: “How long, O Lord, how long art Thou going to be displeased with me? Is there to be no end to Thy anger? Remember not, O Lord, our former iniquities!” And he went on repeating time after time these words: “How long? How long?

Tomorrow, tomorrow. Why not today? Why not today put an end to my turpitudes?” And saying this with great emotion, he heard a voice which said to him: “Take and read; take and read.”’ Then he says he rose to take up a holy book that he had by him to read in. For he had heard of that same Anthony, that upon one reading of the Gospel which he happened to hear, which said: Go, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven (Matt. xix. 21), he had determined to leave all things and follow Christ. Moved by this example and still more by the voice that he had heard, he says he took the book and began to read in it; and there and then God poured upon him such a great light that he left all things in the world and gave himself entirely over to the service of God.