Spiritual Reading

Resources to Go Deeper:

General Advice on the Value of Spiritual Reading:

 “Spiritual reading refers to reading texts – books, articles, homilies, essays – that teach you about the spiritual life; it’s like taking a class from whoever wrote the book. In enlightens your conscience by helping you see yourself and the world around you from a Christian perspective. As such, it is an essential ingredient for growth as a Christian. Just as historians are always reading about history and teachers are always informing themselves about developments in pedagogy, so Christians should constantly be refining and expanding their understanding of how to be a follower of Christ… Both spiritual reading and meditation are useful –indeed, both are necessary for a healthy spiritual life –but it’s important not to confuse them.” – Fr. John Bartunek, The Better Part

“The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder…. What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection.” – St. Padre Pio

 “To get good from reading the lives of the saints and other spiritual books, we ought not to read out of curiosity, or skimmingly, but with pauses; and when we feel ourselves warmed, we ought not to pass on, but to stop and follow up the spirit which is stirring in us, and when we feel it no longer then to pursue our reading.” – St. Phillip Neri

 “If your mind finds enough appeal, light, and fruit in any of them [the subject of the meditation or contemplation], remain with that point and do not go any further. Imitate the bees, who do not leave a flow as long as they can extract any honey out of it. But if you do not come on anything that appeals to you after you have examined and tried it out for a while, then go on to another, but proceed calmly and simply in this matter and do not rush yourself.” – St. Francis de Sales 

“Take some spiritual book (New Testament, Imitation of Christ), read a few lines, pausing long in between – meditate a little on what you have read, trying to get the full meaning and to impress it on your mind. Draw some holy affection, love, contrition, etc., from the reading. Avoid reading or meditating too much. Every time you pause, remain as long as your mind finds it pleasant or useful to do so…There is no necessity to be always making new acts; it is often quite enough to remain in the presence of God silently turning over in your mind the words you have already meditated upon, or savoring the affections they have aroused in your heart… At the end, ask God for some grace or virtue, depending on what has been the subject of your meditations.” – Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard

“If I wish to become holy I must read about holy people. Their faith will strengthen mine. Their trust in divine providence will encourage mine. Above all their victory over self, the world and the evil spirit will spur me on to victory. How we need this encouragement! Only saints reproduce saints. There is such a thing as supernatural genealogy. Unless I read the lives of saintly people, their sentiment, their trials and victories, how can they reproduce themselves in me?… Who needs spiritual reading? Everyone who wants to become Christlike! There is no choice.” – Fr. John Hardon, S.J.

“Never force yourself to read a book that you do not enjoy. There are so many good books in the world that it is foolish to waste time on one that does not give you pleasure.” – Atwood Townsend  

“What counts, in the long run is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

One of the most well-known examples of someone being converted by solid and substantial Spiritual Reading is the conversion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Lying in bed after a serious leg shattering wound in the battle of Pamplona, Ignatius was given a book, Lives of the Saints. At first the future saint resisted, but then he accepted the reading. Almost immediately, his heart was set on fire by reading the glorious lives, sayings, and laudable deeds of God’s heroes — the saints! Ignatius cried out: “If Dominic could do it, so can I; if Francis could do it, so can I!”