As an adolescent, I remember reading a book by an Irish Dominican, Fr. Paul O’Sullivan. That little book, An Easy Way To Become A Saint, had some remarkable advice for a young person beginning to live a spiritual life. One such piece of advice has remained with me through the years: an “easy and effective way of arriving at an eminent degree of holiness,” Fr. O’Sullivan says, “is spiritual reading.”

This Dominican friar was writing in the early 1900s, but his words are timeless. Of course, reading isn’t the whole of the spiritual life, but it should find a privileged place in our lives as Christians. Many saints—from the desert fathers to the Christians living in the modern era—show how reading can serve as a channel for God’s grace.

Saint Augustine, for example, recounts how two pagan court officials chanced upon a book of Saint Antony’s life. As one of these men was reading the book, “the flood-tide of his heart leapt on, and at last he broke off his reading with a groan as he discerned the right course and determined to take it” (Confessions, VIII. 6, 15). It wasn’t long before these two court officials gave up all they had and began to follow the Lord Jesus, as St. Augustine himself tells us in a prayer addressed to the Lord: “both of them, now enlisted in your service, began to build their tower, knowing the cost full well: they abandoned all their possessions and followed you.”

The conversion story of these two pagans even prompted a kind of crisis moment in St. Augustine’s life. Upon hearing their story, he wrestled interiorly with the personal difficulty of giving up the pleasures he was enmeshed in. Happening upon the sacred scriptures, St. Augustine read a passage from Paul’s writings. He then shared these scriptures with his friend, Saint Alypius. In reading the Word, these two men were prompted to imitate what they had just heard about in the lives of the two pagan officials. Leaving their pasts behind, St. Augustine and St. Alypius made the life changing decision to follow the Lord Jesus. (Confessions, VIII. 12, 29)

A thousand years later, God’s grace would unfold in a similar way for another great saint. While convalescing from a cannonball strike, Saint Ignatius happened to read some of the lives of the saints and the life of Christ. As the stirrings of grace worked in his heart, St. Ignatius began to ask himself, “What if I should do what St. Francis did, and what St. Dominic did?” (Autobiography, 1, 7). God’s grace worked in St. Ignatius to such an extent that a new group of missionary disciples—the Society of Jesus—arose, shedding the light of Christ to the corners of the world.

These examples aren’t just historical facts. They’re testimonies to how God’s sanctifying power shines through his saints to illuminate the hearts of other men and women. Even today, our lives can constantly be informed and reformed by the rich treasury of lives that the Church offers for our contemplation and imitation.

As a first step in joining the Church in her contemplation of these treasures, we should realize who is at work in our lives. It wasn’t simply the act of reading that converted the hearts of the two pagan officials, St. Augustine, St. Alypius, or St. Ignatius. It was primarily God’s grace at work in them. So as we ponder the lives of our older brothers and sisters in the faith, we should ask the Lord to enlighten our minds to knowledge and inflame our hearts to love. In this way, we follow the example of yet another saint, a saint who contemplated and imitated holiness incarnate. This saint is Mary, the Mother of the Word. Throughout the life of her divine child, Mary took in and learned from every aspect of the incarnate Word of God: “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). May we too contemplate and imitate holiness like she did: with faith, with love, and with the Lord Jesus.

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Image: Bartolomeo Schedoni, The Holy Family