Fr. John Portavella: Spiritual Reading Gives Us Peace in a Chaotic World

What is Spiritual Reading?

It is something that could be done at home, although at times also at work, outside office hours. It consists in reading from the New Testament for a few minutes and from another spiritual book, for about fifteen minutes in all.

This practice constitutes another contact with the invisible supernatural world, for the Holy Spirit is the principal Author of the Bible. St. Josemaría gives this advice concerning the practice of reading the Gospels: “If you wish to get close to our Lord through the pages of the Gospels, I always recommend that you try to enter in on the scene taking part as just one more person there.”

It is much better to read only a few lines of the New Testament intensely — that is, trying to get some message out of it — than to read many pages without being able to tell what we have read afterward. …