Tolle, lege: on restoring the heart and hearth through reading

Reading the Two Books by the light of Christ

Tolle Lege, 1464-5, Benozzo Gozzoli, Fresco, Church of Saint Augustine, Gimigniano, Italy

Catholic Tradition, embodied in so many beautiful forms, is also a literary tradition. While Dom Jean Leclercq OSB once described monastic culture as a literary culture, I think this can be equally applied to Catholic culture at large. The memoria of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, salvation history, the deposit of faith, conciliar dogma, lives and teachings of the Fathers, Doctors and saints of the Church; these are preserved predominantly in writing. We must then either read these writings or have them read to us by others. Not to do so is really a kind of anti-tradition. The roots of the words traitor and treason are the same for tradition yet with an opposite meaning. The latin noun traditio derives from the verb tradere: to give up, hand over, deliver or transmit. As Eusebius of Caesarea reported, to earn the name traditor during the Roman persecutions meant that a Catholic was guilty, among other betrayals, of handing over a copy of the Scriptures to the heathen authorities to be burned: “We saw with our very eyes ... the Divine and Sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the marketplaces" (Hist. eccl. 8.2.l). I see little difference between such betrayal and the failure to transmit the Faith to our children and to the next generation. This begins with reading and listening. As the maxim goes, nemo dat quod non habet - no one can give what he does not have.

The kind of reading I mean is neither just personal or liturgical, secular or religious, rather I mean all of the above. On the one hand, the lections, chant, orations and even the very rites of the Mass are infused with sacred Scripture and Tradition. The Divine office yet again, especially Matins, is also a treasure trove of patristic commentary that magnifies the Gospel. On the other hand, there are many more biblical, patristic, scholastic, theological and spiritual texts that can illuminate our minds and inflame our hearts with a greater knowledge and love of Christ. At the same time, the subject matter of our reading need not be limited to religious topics, since St. Paul recommends that “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.” (Phil 4:8). The western canon of classical literature, including pagan ancient Greek and Roman literature comes especially to mind here. I have met some Catholics, even religious, who maintain that it was well and good for the Church Fathers to have read the pagans, but now there’s really no need since we can just read them instead! This mentality overlooks the entire witness of medieval Christianity and beyond. The fact that monks took such pains as to prepare the parchment from a flock of sheep or goats, or vellum from calves, the mixing of inks, the careful and tedious labour of copying by hand, ought to reveal what these works meant to pious men. Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Herodotus, Euclid, Galen, Pliny, Livy and Tacitus were read and appreciated by monastics, men consecrated for God alone. Dom Leclercq speaks on behalf of all monks thus:

"We are called”, says St. Paul, “in liberty”: let us serve our King then, through liberal studies. It is in our power to orient the arts toward divine knowledge. The literature of this world can be an ornament for our souls as well as of our style, if we but know how to direct it to the worship of God…The result of this kind of pedagogy was to set free the consciences of both teachers and pupils with regard to the pagan authors and to develop in all, a power of enthusiasm and the capacity for admiration. Wisdom was sought in the pages of pagan literature and the searcher discovered it because he already possessed it; the texts gave it an added luster. (The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, pp.148-150)

Reading the Books of Scripture and Creation by the light of Christ

Before the Fall, all creatures were mirrors of Divine Wisdom. But now “we see as through a glass, darkly”. Whereas in the beginning Adam and Eve read creation as a book, sin blurred their vision and now we squint to make out the words. A veil lies even over the Scriptures which hides their meaning from plain view. That we sweat from our brow is no mistake, for it is there the reason works, toiling against ignorance and concupiscence. We are not left in darkness, however. Our Lord said “I am the light of the world, he that followeth me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). Through His grace in our souls, the eyes of our heart can learn to see His truth clearly; we can take up the books of Scripture and Creation and read once again. In the prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict, the Father of Monks spurs on his brethren to “the toil of obedience” as the way to “return to Him from whom by the sloth of disobedience thou hast gone away”. This obedience is listening with the heart, which is both humble and silent before the Lord.

Liturgical reading

I love the beautiful portraits of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where the Archangel Gabriel appears before her when she is seated before the Scriptures in prayerful contemplation. She embodies everything we must strive toward in listening to and reading the Word of God, no matter the form under which Divine Wisdom is disguised. Humility, silence and obedience open the eyes of our heart to His Truth. Our Lord Himself showed He preferred to dwell in the Heart of His Mother even more than Her womb. When a woman from a crowd cried out to Him: “Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck”, Jesus replied: “Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.” (Luke 11:27)

Annunciation, c.1475, Piermatteo Lauro de' Manfredi da Amelia, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Two examples of hearing and keeping the Word are St. Antony of the Desert and St. Francis of Assisi. Both of them heard the exact same Gospel passage being preached during Mass: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me” (Matthew 19:21) Both of them, rich young men, took up the invitation to poverty which the one in the Gospel did not. The reality of God’s Word being eternal means it can reach through all time and space to our hearts, if they are open. We see what beautiful fulfillment the words of Christ find in the hearts of these great saints compared to the one who
“went away sad”. It is remarkable that both of these spiritual giants were inspired by the Word of God during the Mass. While Our Lord dwells with us above all in His Real Presence, He is present in the inspired Word. St. Jerome’s Eucharistic analogy is a powerful one in recalling us to the reverence that the words of Scripture deserve:

“For me, the Gospel is the Body of Christ; for me, the holy Scriptures are his teaching. And when he says: whoever does not eat my flesh and drink my blood (Jn 6:53), even though these words can also be understood of the [Eucharistic] Mystery, Christ’s body and blood are really the word of Scripture, God’s teaching. When we approach the [Eucharistic] Mystery, if a crumb falls to the ground we are troubled. Yet when we are listening to the word of God, and God’s Word and Christ’s flesh and blood are being poured into our ears yet we pay no heed, what great peril should we not feel? (Commentary on the Psalms, In Psalmum 147)

Personal reading of Scripture

The inherent power of the Word of God to speak to the depth of our souls is poignantly captured in the moment when St. Augustine and his lifelong friend, Alypius, converted to Christ. Augustine had moments before been agonising over his doubt and delay in being baptised, when he relates in his Confessions:

“So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, "Take up and read; Take up and read." Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find. For I had heard of Antony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he received the admonition, as if what was being read was spoken to him: Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me: and by such oracle he was forthwith converted unto Thee. Eagerly then I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I laid the volume of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.

Then putting my finger between, or some other mark, I shut the volume, and with a calmed countenance made it known to Alypius. And what was wrought in him, which I knew not, he thus showed me. He asked to see what I had read: I showed him; and he looked even further than I had read, and I knew not what followed. This followed, him that is weak in the faith, receive; which he applied to himself, and disclosed to me. And by this admonition was he strengthened; and by a good resolution and purpose, and most corresponding to his character, wherein he did always very far differ from me, for the better, without any turbulent delay he joined me. Thence we go in to my mother; we tell her; she rejoiceth: we relate in order how it took place; she leaps for joy, and triumpheth, and blesseth Thee, Who are able to do above that which we ask or think; for she perceived that Thou hadst given her more for me, than she was wont to beg by her pitiful and most sorrowful groanings.” (Book VIII, 13)

St. Benedict counselled more reading during Lent and on all Sundays in a chapter of the Rule dedicated to daily work (Regula, ch.48). Cultivating the humility, recollection and obedience to seek God in prayerful reading is no doubt a labour of love as we struggle against pride, distraction and dissipation. Such an effort is prone to discouragement unless we place our confidence and hope in God’s mercy instead of our own merits. The tears of compunction which so many holy souls have written about are not shed merely over the misery of our failure. Rather, they flow from an ever deepening realisation of how much our Lord loves us despite our failure to requite the love of His Most Sacred Heart. It was out of this contrition that Augustine was called quite literally to hear God’s consoling voice addressing him in Scripture; It was through the blur of tears that Magdalene mistook our Lord for the gardener, until she heard His tender voice. Before we listen to the lections at Mass, we beat our fists upon our chests and chant “Kyrie, Eleison!” because humility is the language in which Christ hears our prayers.

Fairy Tale, 1896, Carlton Alfred Smith

Restoring the hearth of the home by reading

The rhythm of reading and listening which takes place in our spiritual life ought to be mirrored in the life of the family, the ecclesia domestica. Not only should parents and children be reading by themselves, but members should be reading to one another. The practise of parents reading aloud to their children is an irreplaceable good. John Senior’s proposal in The Restoration of Christian Culture to “smash the television set” and restore the hearth, where stories are told and music is made by the family members themselves, is perhaps today the most powerful form of cultural restoration a family can participate in on the domestic scale. His idea of reading a thousand good books to our children to prepare their imaginations and minds for taking on the great books later is profoundly wise and practical. In all likelihood, it may be the first time many of us will enjoy most of these stories ourselves as we restore the line of transmission of wholesome, classical literature. As the memories, imaginations and hearts of our children are formed, ours too can be restored under the same influence. We need to get away from the filth of the saeculum. Not only that, but many of the best stories have been retold and ruined. Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid is nothing short of a saint compared to Walt Disney’s inane Ariel.There is a stark contrast in the heritage of such good reading, blossoming out of Christendom as compared with the vast majority of the postmodern, post-Christian media of today. What is more, the habitual and purely passive consumption of audiovisual technology replaces mother and father as the centre of communication in the family, as everyone directs their gaze screenwards. It is a joy to observe the reactions of my children to a story being read to them, their commentary and questions often being a means of teaching them in a heart-to-heart way without any contrived pre-text. The same is true for the classroom, where it is not merely the act of reading aloud to children but reading that which is truly worthy of their dignity as images of God. The exposure to true, good and beautiful texts in their childhood years will cultivate a habit of deep attentiveness that can mature into obedience and contemplation over time. In one sense, the history of the Church is recapitulated in a childhood where the greatest of pagan poetry and prose can ultimately serve as a preparation for the Gospel, where all that is true, good and beautiful leads to Him who is Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

Of course, words are but signs that refer to things. The reality underlying what we read is beyond the letters, their meaning existing in the objects to which our minds are able to grasp by the power of our intellect. We have to experience life to make sense of much of what we read, for “knowledge begins in the senses”. Yet even our Lord was able to communicate profound mysteries and spiritual truths by simple parables and analogies that even children can follow. The restoration of realism is intimately woven into the restoration of culture, an insight that Dom Francis Bethel OSB draws out of the thought of John Senior. The Gospel and all of Scripture is coloured with agricultural language: the parable of the Sower, the tares and the wheat, The Good Shepherd, The Vine and the branches, the mustard seed, the Grain of wheat which must die - all of these presume a basic familiarity with man’s common vocation to till and keep the earth. Farming is just one element of Revelation that relies on our experience of creation to be understood, in the same way that grace builds on nature. A life that is too far removed from the natural rhythms of daylight, the seasons, the work by which we eat, the soil, the stars in the night sky, animals, plants, forests, rivers, mountains, creeks and waterfalls - is deprived of so many traces of the Creator.

What is worse is that the sterile, concrete, plastic-wrapped, artificially climate-controlled and lit environment modern man has built for himself locates man in an order all of his own making instead of co-operating in the one already made for him by God. The fact that many people who discover we have milked our own dairy cows and goats aren’t aware those animals first have to produce offspring in order to produce milk has been a telling reminder to me of the tyrannical distance between nature and man that industrialised culture has opened up between the two. This is why we cannot afford for ourselves or our children to leave either the books of Scripture or creation upon the shelf. Just as the words of a book refer to things, those things in turn become as signs that point still further to a deeper reality, so that the words of Scripture tell of Christ and the sacramental cosmos reflects Divine Wisdom. I wonder if the reason why the ancients and medievals had such a deep insight into the spiritual senses of Scripture was because it was not only the words but the things themselves they had a greater hold upon. What I mean to say is that experiencing real life in nature as opposed to an artificially abstracted one is going to reveal the truth of Scripture and reality more so than becoming an expert in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, though of course these things are valuable in their own way. St Bernard avowed that “it was principally in the fields and woods he received, by contemplation and prayer, the understanding of the Scriptures”. It only stands to reason that the further we go from the fields and woods, the weaker our insight into Scripture becomes. On what can grace build if it cannot build on nature?

During this lenten season, may the light of Christ open our eyes once more that we may see and read His Wisdom with clarity. One remedy cherished by the Benedictine tradition are the tears of compunction that cleanse the eyes of the heart.

I share a prayer for the gift of tears to conclude:

Almighty and most gentle God, who didst cause a fountain of living water to gush from the rock in order to quench the thirst of thy people, draw from our stony hearts tears of compunction: that we may be able to mourn for our sins and earn forgiveness for them from thy mercy. Through Christ our Lord. Amen

Pax,

Mark Cornelius