What Should I Read? Part 1

 Do you ever wonder what you should read...

There are so many Catholic, Orthodox, and other Christian books out there that it feels like we have endless options for reading materials to help us grow in our faith...

And more are being published every day!

The sheer number of choices we have feels overwhelming.

I often sit at my computer, scroll through Amazon, and salivate at all the new reading material I discover simply by typing "Catholic" or "Orthodox" into the search bar. I create long "Wish Lists" to house books that I can't afford right now, but would like to buy (and read, of course) at some later date.

To be honest, I often buy books with the best of intentions, and then end up never reading them because I've lost interest and moved on to something else. It's a problem that I've had for some years now. I acquire books quickly, pile them up, read only a handful of them, and the rest just sit there until I decide to donate them to my parish library.

One year I tallied up how much money I spent on books in a year, and was quite convicted and ashamed at the number that flashed onto the calculator in front of me (it wasn't a small number). Since then I've worked to be more intentional about what I read, and by extension what books I buy.

Fortunately, praying through the Desert Fathers has helped me with that.

The "Why" of Spiritual Reading

Your spiritual reading has a purpose. When you stay focused on that purpose, it helps you weed out the books that you don't really need to read - and that could actually prove spiritually harmful to read.

What is the purpose of spiritual reading? Here's what St. Athanasius has to say about it in his classic The Life of St. Anthony:

"May our Lord help and strengthen... the reader to read and perform everything which is commanded herein.... that by constant meditation on the following stories your mind may be drawn to perfection, so that you may not be repeating with your mouths only the following triumphs, and others which are like to them, but that also in your persons you may be preachers of the example of these lives and deeds." (Paradise of the Holy Fathers, vol. 1, pg.15)

And further on he says:

"[W]e shall begin to instruct your minds step by step; for the acts of the blessed Anthony form a perfect example for the solitary ascetics. (Paradise, vol. 1, pg. 16) 

 So what's the purpose of spiritual reading?

Inspiration - that your mind (or heart) - i.e. the very core of who you are - may be drawn to perfection.

Imitation - that through your actions - i.e. how you live your life - the light of Christ may shine through you (you may become a preacher of the Gospel).

Later on in The Paradise, when we come to Palladius' Lausiac History, the author goes to great pains to drive home the point that we shouldn't read Scripture, the lives and writings of the saints, and theological treatises simply to satisfy our curiosity or have something to talk about with our uber-Catholic friends (although we should have such friends!). In fact, doing so can be spiritually dangerous because it can lead to pride.

Like St. Athanasius, Palladius encourages his readers:

"Let us emulate their [the saints] example and endeavor to do with all our might what they did!.... I would rouse up our heavy minds to the contemplation of the things which are spiritually excellent, so that we may strive to imitate the most excellent lives and deeds of the pious men." (Paradise, vol. 1, pg. 83)

Again, inspiration and imitation.

Something that's really hit me lately: You can't "read your way to heaven." At some point, you have to start acting on what you read.

With that in mind, what should we be reading?

The Desert Fathers give us an answer, but I'm going to save that for several upcoming posts. Until then here's a suggestion: When you're looking to buy a new book for spiritual reading, ask yourself, "Is this book just to satisfy my curiosity, or is it something that'll inspire me to act?"