Keep exactly one book going, and read a fixed short portion of it every day — ten or fifteen minutes is enough, and is better than an hour once a month. Read slowly, with a pencil, marking the lines that convict you. When a sentence stops you, stop with it: close the book and turn the line into prayer, then go on. Keep a small notebook of the passages worth returning to. Choose from what the Church has proved rather than from what is new: the Confessions of St Augustine, the Imitation of Christ, St Francis de Sales's Introduction to the Devout Life, St Thérèse's Story of a Soul, the Catechism read straight through in short daily portions, a good life of a saint. Ask a confessor or spiritual director for the next book rather than choosing by mood, and reread the best ones — spiritual reading works by repetition, not by coverage. Never let it displace Scripture, which remains the first and greatest of these books.

The Catechism, treating meditation, lists the books that assist it: the Sacred Scriptures and especially the Gospels, holy icons, the liturgical texts of the day, the writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, and the great books of creation and of history.

Spiritual reading

The common practice of the whole Church

About 15 minutes

Daily

spiritual_reading