SPIRITUAL READING

SPIRITUAL READING

I should hold in high esteem spiritual reading – for in this way God and the saints of God speak to me. In prayer, I speak to them; in spiritual reading, they speak to me.

St. Gregory aptly compares spiritual reading with a looking-glass. Spiritual books are a mirror which Almighty God places before our eyes so that by viewing ourselves therein, we may correct what is amiss and adorn ourselves with every virtue.

And as vain women often go to the glass, and remove any little speck from the face, or adjust their hair and deck themselves out with a thousand devices to make themselves lovely in the eyes of others; so should the Christian set before him good books, that he may discover in them the defects he must remove, and the virtues with which he must adorn himself in order to become pleasing in the eyes of his God.

As St. Augustine said, holy books are like so many letters addressed to us from our heavenly country by Almighty God our tender Father, and by the Saints our brothers and sisters in our heavenly family. They give us directions how to make a successful pilgrimage from earth to heaven.

Since I wish to arrive at the land of the blessed and to win a place of honor there, I shall often open and read these letters from paradise.

Source: A THOUGHT A DAY – Little Thoughts for Little People to Help Them Become God’s Great Saints, Assembled by A Father of the Society of St. Paul, Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines: ST PAULS PHILIPPINES, 1992, pages 50-51.

Jakarta, 2 February 2014

A Christian Pilgrim