Though this column usually tries to address issues at the intersection of our faith and empirical science, this month I have taken the liberty of reflecting on literature.
“What are you reading these days?” I blushed at the question which had been asked by a fellow Ph.D. in Theology. Internally, I queued up a number of different responses to excuse the fact that I wasn’t reading any new theology books and hadn’t engaged in any new research in quite some time. But instead of offering excuses, I just confessed, “I love Laurie King’s series about Sherlock Holmes and his young companion, Mary Russell, who has a degree in Theology from Oxford. Laurie King just released a new book, and I had a hard time putting it down.”
I first discovered Laurie King’s “Mary Russell” series the summer my mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. The books provided a welcome respite from the grief of knowing what would come. At the time, I wondered whether such escapism was spiritually appropriate. The only saint I could recall who spoke about his love of reading literature was St. Ignatius of Loyola, and even he abandoned chivalrous tales for the lives of the saints.
It was with great interest, then, that I read Pope Francis’s “Letter on the Role of Literature in Formation,” released on July 17, 2024. Francis begins the letter by stating his intention of addressing “the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity” (1). He then directly addressed the concern that I had inwardly raised: “in moments of weariness, anger, disappointment or failure, when prayer itself does not help us find inner serenity, a good book can help us weather the storm until we find peace of mind. Time spent reading may well open up new interior spaces that help us to avoid becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth” (2). Perhaps my turn to literature wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
For Pope Francis, reading literature is not just useful in times of difficulty; it’s actually an essential part of our spiritual formation. He writes that “reading prepares us to understand and thus deal with various situations that arise in life. In reading, we immerse ourselves in the thoughts, concerns, tragedies, dangers and fears of characters who in the end overcome life’s challenges. Perhaps too, in following a story to the end, we gain insights that will later prove helpful in our own lives” (17). In other words, reading expands our worldview, helps us to develop empathy, and can even inspire us to have courage and hope.
Reading also helps us to develop another skill that has come to define Pope Francis’ pontificate: listening. He notes especially writer Jorge Luis Borges’ definition of literature as “listening to another person’s voice” (20). Reading literature is a way of preparing for pastoral work, especially work that is marked by the ecclesiology of synodality. Francis explains, “We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of other people when they challenge us! We immediately fall into self-isolation; we enter into a kind of ‘spiritual deafness,’ which has a negative effect on our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with God, no matter how much theology or psychology we may have studied” (20). By reading, we can avoid becoming spiritually deaf.
Pope Francis expands on other ways in which reading literature can benefit us spiritually. He discusses the importance of reading in the development of the art of discernment. Francis writes that reading literature “sensitizes us to the relationship between forms of expression and meaning. It offers [the one who reads] a training in discernment, honing the capacity… to gain insight into his own interiority and into the world around him” (26). Through the act of reading, we can become more aware of and sensitive to the gentle movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Literature also develops our capacity to experience awe and wonder it “teaches us how to look and see, to discern and explore the reality of individuals and situations as a mystery charged with a surplus of meaning that can only be partially understood through categories, explanatory schemes, linear dynamics of causes and effects, means and ends.” (32). In other words, literature helps to form our sacramental imagination so that we can see, as Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
This surplus of meaning helps us to understand even the most difficult moments of our own lives as suffused with God’s transforming, illuminating grace. Literature “opens our human words to welcome the Word that is already present in human speech, not when it sees itself as knowledge that is already full, definitive and complete, but when it becomes a listening and expectation of the One who comes to make all things new (cf. Rev 21:5)” and “to shed light on every dimension of our human condition (42-43).”
As it turns out, reading may have been the best thing I could have done for myself as I grieved the eventual loss of my mother. As Catholics, we should have no shame about our love of a good story and great literature.
So, I will ask you boldly: what are you reading?
Amanda Alexander is currently the Director of the Department of Ministry Formation Institute for the Diocese and a parishioner of St. Adelaide in Highland. She has a Ph.D. in systematic theology and has taught at numerous Catholic universities.