I am afraid that for many Catholics the term “spiritual reading” is either a strange expression, and they are not sure what it means, or they have heard that monks and nuns do it — whatever it is. But spiritual reading is neither strange nor exotic, as by now centuries of Christian experience testifies. In order to do some justice to this very practical subject, I propose to ask a series of questions and answer them as we go along. My hope is to end up with one good answer to the one question which is the subject of our reflections: spiritual reading — who needs it?
Why is reading, any reading, important? Why is reading influential? What is spiritual reading? Why is spiritual reading necessary? Then a few closing words about implications.
Why Reading is Important
We begin to get some idea about the importance of reading from the simple fact that so many people are doing it. Thousands of newspapers throughout the world, some with daily circulation of more than a million; thousands of periodicals, some with monthly circulation of many millions; thousands of books published annually, some by now with a publication history that is astronomical. Reading must be important, seeing the influence that the printed word has had on human civilization.
A good date for dating the beginning of the modern world is the dawn of the Age of Print. Man’s history will never be the same. But the real proof for the significance of the printed word is the seldom realized fact that when God began what we call His public revelation, first to the Jews and then to the people of the New Israel who followed Christ, He made sure that the substance of this revelation was not only communicated orally, but was written down under divine inspiration. The existence of the Bible, written in an age when very few people could read or write, is a lasting testimonial to what the Holy Spirit thinks of reading. He first of all made sure that the Semitic people discovered what we call phonetic writing about 2,000 B.C. and then provided to inspire persons to set down on parchment what God wanted all mankind to know about the divine mind and will until the end of time. God invented writing to make reading of Scriptures possible.
Why is Reading Influential?
Not only is reading important, but perhaps more than any other means of social communication, it is, in my judgment, the most influential. This calls for some explanation in view of the marvelous discoveries of the electronics media — the telephone and telegraph, radio and television, the film and radio and their derivatives. I have no intention of making any competitive comparisons between the written word and other means of transmitting ideas or attitudes from one person to others. My intention is the more practical one of emphasizing why the written, generally the printed, word is so influential.
Reading is so influential because the ideas expressed in a piece of good writing are concentrated; they are not diffused. Again, what is published is, by the law of economics if for no other reason, done professionally by persons who know what they are saying and say it intelligently and persuasively, even when they may not be writing truthfully. The written word, being in competition with other written words, is done carefully and, by and large, in such a way that a maximum of thought goes into a minimum of content. Moreover, what is being read is normally done in solitude — the mind of the writer affecting the mind of the reader in a quiet, reflective and by definition sympathetic mood. If I don’t like what I’m reading, I simply close the book and the author never knows.
Whereas when I am speaking, I know exactly when somebody in the audience does not want to listen. If they are kind, they go to sleep. Some manifest their being bored or displeased in more dramatic ways. But not so with a reader. The one who reads wants to be told. Still again, what is read remains written. Whence for all times has remained as part of our Faith the famous words of Pilate: “Quod scripse scripsi” (What I have written, is written). Consequently, it can be read and reread years, centuries later. What is written, as every author hopes, is written not only for his own generation but for generations yet unborn.
Finally, unlike other forms of discourse, the written word can be gone over and analyzed. It can be studied and scrutinized and as a consequence it can have an impact on the human spirit that is incalculable. It is therefore understandably indelible. Somewhere years ago when I began studying Latin, there was a phrase written which you may be sure I memorized: “Verba volant, scripta manent” (Spoken words fly, what is written stays).
What is Spiritual Reading?
We can begin by describing it in terms of what it is not, and that is easy. Spiritual reading is not secular reading. But more positively, spiritual reading is that reading whose purpose as writing is to assist the believer to better know, love and serve God, and thereby become more God-like, which means more holy, especially in his life of prayer and the practice of Christian virtue. Notice I said that spiritual reading is that reading whose purpose as writing is to assist the believer. Why put it just that way? Sounds odd! The reason is that there is a sense in which any kind of reading, even the most obviously secular, like the daily papers or a popular novel, may, and by now I have been told, is considered spiritual reading, when my purpose in reading is spiritual. By that standard, reading Time or Newsweek or worse, provided a person could say “my purpose is spiritual,” makes it spiritual. Not so. You cannot canonize the secular.
I am not here then speaking of spiritual reading in that broad sense. Spiritual reading in our consideration is writing that was written with a spiritual purpose, and not only one that may happen to be read with perhaps a religious intention in mind. Quite frankly, all our reading—even the most secular—should be spiritualized, but that is not the same as spiritual reading.
Concretely the forms that this kind of spiritual reading can take are not as numerous as may seem. I will reduce them to five — just five: the Scriptures, or the Bible; the teachings of the Church, or Sacred Doctrine; the History of the Church in general, or any one of the myriad of aspects of the Church’s passage through time; biography, or the lives and thoughts of saintly persons, either by themselves or by someone else; then, in a class by itself, any kind of reflection on any of the preceding categories which may be learned or personal, scholarly or practical, or any combination of these. You will notice where I placed the last category, in the last place.
