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A Method for Reading the Spiritual Classics

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A Method for Reading the Spiritual Classics The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. A Method for Reading the Spiritual Classics A Method for Reading the Spiritual Classics Spirituality is life; it is experience; it is the living relationship in one’s deepest self to Lectio Divina God, to one’s fellows, and one’s whole being. The traditional and still typical Where does reading fit into the pattern of response is to reverse the process of a book’s spiritual growth? What contribution do formation. It is Augustine’s “take and read.” spiritual classics like the works of St. Teresa So we take the texts of the gospels, reflect in of Avila or St. John of the Cross make toward faith on their significance for us, and in this spiritual progress? It is not enough just to say way allow ourselves to be led into the faith that, like Scripture, spiritual reading “is useful experience described. The gospels are not for teaching—for reproof, correction, and primarily doctrinal statements or theological training in holiness, so that the man of God propositions. They are the symbolic may be fully competent and equipped for expression of the experience of the living Lord every good work” (2 Tm 3:16-17). The Jesus as he was then and as he is now. The question is how. What is a sound symbols—language, imagery, concepts—are methodology for using a spiritual classic most intended to evoke in us the very experiences efficaciously in raising the quality of one’s they contain. This is the genius of the love, in “putting off the old man and putting Scriptures both Old Testament and New; they on the new”? present the living God, the living Christ, and Sacred writing, whether the Scriptures the community living in the Spirit. Through themselves or the writings of saints and their prayerful use we recover the original theologians, is the product of experience and experience of ancient Israel or the primitive reflection. The gospels, for example, are faith Church. By inserting ourselves into the story, documents. They are the reflection of the we allow ourselves to be touched by the Lord Christian community on its own experience of and to let our own experience resonate with the Lord Jesus Christ and the memories of his what we read. life on this earth. Three stages occurred in the The Bible is our story as much as it is formation of the gospels: there were the the history of Israel or the life of Christ, historical experiences of Jesus and his because it is the Church’s story. It is the story disciples, reflection on these events in the of our life set down in normative patterns light of subsequent happenings, especially the which represent the reliving of the life, death Resurrection, and eventually the setting down and resurrection of Jesus. In Peter, in the in writing of this story. woman at the well, in the mysteries of Jesus’ Teresa of Avila refers to her own earthly life we locate ourselves, for we, too, writings as the product of a similar process: are called to this same death to self and life in “It is one grace to receive the Lord’s favor; God as disciples of Jesus. Reading and another, to understand which favor and grace reflection initiate the process but the goal is to it is; and a third, to know how to describe and open ourselves to what we see and to explain it” (Life 17:5). Notice Teresa experience it ourselves. By a dialectic considers each element of this process a movement back and forth between our own as charism or grace. The question is, how can yet unobjectified experience and the we best employ the final product for our own objectified experience in the text, we find sanctification? Page 198 The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. A Method for Reading the Spiritual Classics correlations and antinomies, and thereby come in touch with themselves easily mistake pious to identify the Paschal Mystery in our own reflection for authentic prayer. Reflection lives and to welcome the experience of Christ does not remove bad habits, she says, whereas in the prayer. These are the steps of the lectio real prayer does (Way of Perfection 12:5). divina catalogued by Guigo II, a medieval The dichotomy which many have lamented Carthusian, as reading, reflection, prayer, and between theology and piety, i.e., spirituality, contemplation. A contemporary translation of can only be healed by rooting our thought in these overlapping and interlocking life-realities. The Gospel is not academic components of prayer is listening, waiting, theory; it is Jesus Christ who is alive, and who experiencing. touches us in human experiences. Our This is the obvious order to follow in concern is, not where Jesus has been, but spiritual reading. You pick up the book and where he is at this moment in our own history. read it reflectively. This stirs up holy thoughts To approach him by abstract theory is and desires under the impulse of God’s grace, hazardous, because it may lead to a make- which hopefully lead to a deeper experience of believe spiritual life in a fantasy world or else the presence of God. It is very clear and cause one to assume a controlling, do-it- simple. yourself stance, when our task is always to respond to the divine initiative, New Method We give priority to the Scriptures I propose, however, to change this because renewal is a return to sources, resourcement, as the French say. The order. I suggest that we begin with our own Christian fact has passed through many “unilluminated,” largely unobjectified experience, line this up with the Scriptures, cultures and taken on the hues and shadows of many different philosophies. It is only in its and only then go to the classical expressions of our tradition which are the great spiritual primitive and purest expression, the divinely inspired and safeguarded Scriptures, that we books. Instead of simply reading, reflecting drink of the clear water of Christian revelation and experiencing, the order would be: our own life first, the Scripture second, and the other in its simplest terms (though Scripture itself needs to be studied in the context of its own writings third. In popular jargon today this means to tell our own story first, and then world-view and culture). So we propose to root our search for God, not in a Teresa or listen to the story which is that of the John of the Cross as such, but in the sacred community exemplified in Jesus and his followers. We seek to image our own story Word of God. Only when we have held up our experience to this divine mirror of God’s first, before relating our experience to the great symbols of the faith. Our own Word, and allowed the penetrating light of the Holy Spirit to reflect off that mirror into the uniqueness and existential reality take caverns of our own consciousness are we able precedence in this sense over the models we are to emulate. to submit to a further enlightening from the giants of our tradition. The reasons for this suggestion are manifold. We begin with experience, i.e., our This is not to lessen the importance of the spiritual classics. It is to put them in real condition and attitudinal state inside and focus. St. John of the Cross proceeded no outside the present prayerful exercise, because otherwise there is a danger of headiness, of differently. The primary source of his doctrine is Scripture, not his experience or intellectualizing, of trading thinking or fantasizing for living. Teresa saw this theology. “In discussing this dark night,” he writes, “I shall not rely on experience or difference clearly, whereas people who are not Page 199 The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. A Method for Reading the Spiritual Classics knowledge, for these can fail and deceive us. This life is manifested by the fruits of Although I shall not neglect whatever possible the Spirit (Ga 5:16-25). It is a delicate task, use I can make of them, my help ... will be however, to identify this life in every Sacred Scripture, at least in the most situation. The discernment presupposes self- important matters... “ (Ascent of Mt. Carmel, knowledge, being in touch with one’s feelings, Prologue, 2). Teresa speaks no differently. which are the best index of one’s heart or She writes that “if a locution should deviate spirit and reveal one’s real motivation over from Scripture just a little, I would have against fantasy and wishful thinking. A incomparably great assurance that it comes knowledge of the ways of God is necessary from the devil than I now have that it comes for advancing Christians if they are to achieve from God, however greater the latter a sense of the presence of God and the right assurance may be” (Life 25:13). understanding of his absence. Thus, for In other words the heart of Teresa’s example, the experience of the dark night of and John’s message is Scripture, and their John of the Cross could easily be missed as a writings are commentaries on the text, “spiritual experience, “ because it looks like homilies over the proclamation. Spiritual depression or burnout, or at least the loss of a writing thus clarifies, spells out, concretizes, loving relationship with God. Similarly, and especially gives personal witness to the contemplation in its incipient stages may seem Gospel experience. It is one way of helping to be little more than sitting there or doing us be wise scribes who draw from the treasury nothing, which, of course, are adequate new things and old (Mt 13:32).
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