by Phoebe Farag Mikhail

At this point, Lent has begun for every Christian tradition, and spiritual reading is underway! Last week I shared my children’s picture book guide to the Great Lent; this week I’m excited to share my reading stack, which is full of books new and old that I cannot wait to dive into. Perhaps you’ll find something on this list to add to your Lenten reading this year.

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And now for the list! The first three books are by saintly people and or in conversation with them. I love how the saints seem to drop into our lives at the times we need them.

All That I Have is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI by Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim is a new book from ACTS Press. It follows the structure of the Agpeya, the Coptic prayer book of the Hours, with a story about St. Pope Kyrillos VI and a meditation by Fr. Kyrillos. Each meditation is about two pages, taking no longer than a few minutes a day to read, but full of depth and inspiration. I love this selection on Psalm 25 (26), “I have placed my trust in the Lord…Your mercy is before my eyes.” Fr. Kyrillos starts with a story describing a miracle that exhibited St. Pope Kyrillos’ divinely inspired discernment, and then follows with a meditation on the gifts of wisdom and understanding:

“The gift of Wisdom reveals to us how the goodness of God underlies everything. It grants us the ability to see the whole, and how everything fits together. It is likened to the perspective of an architect who sees a complete picture, as opposed to a subcontractor who only sees a part … We begin to look at the world as God sees it, with His perspective, and how everything fits together.”

All That I Have is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI by Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim: ACTS Press | Bookshop | Amazon

I’ve had Dorothy Day’s The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus from Plough Books on my bookshelf for some time. When the Fountains of Carrots podcast decided to do a book club reading this book with its Patreon members, I used that as a good opportunity to take this off my bookshelf and start it, although I’m woefully behind on book club! Dorothy Day was the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. She converted to Catholicism after a checkered life, and devoted herself thereafter to social justice and serving the poor. I’m drawn to understanding how she nurtured her inner life during her tireless work for the poor. Here is what she writes about faith and doubt in the first chapter:

“Life would be utterly unbearable if we thought we were going nowhere, that we had nothing to look forward to. The greatest gift life can offer would be a faith in God and the hereafter. Why don’t we have it? Perhaps like all gifts it must be struggled for.”

The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus by Dorothy Day. Plough | Bookshop | Amazon

Sophfronia Scott’s new book, The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton from Broadleaf Books just released this week. Broadleaf sent me a copy of the book as part of Sophfronia’s launch team, and having read Sophfronia’s other spiritual writing, I was eager to read this one. Intrigued by the idea of a conversation across time and space between a Black Episcopalian woman with a Baptist background and a white Catholic contemplative monk, the book drew me in right away. The topics Sophfronia converses with Merton about include covetousness, ambition, faith, prayer, love – and each one is not just an overview about what Merton says about these things, but an interaction, and, in many cases, direction along the spiritual path. Here is a selection from the first chapter that is so appropriate for the Great Lent:

“The one thing becomes like an idol. When that idol replaces God, that’s where the real trouble lies. One bit of comfort is that we aren’t totally at fault in this. We don’t realize our desire is ongoing because we are reacting to stimuli that continually bombard us with messages and images of all the beautiful things we can buy and the beautiful lives we can have as a result. Merton saw this manipulation, much to his ire. He recognized the problem of advertising, of having images and the promise of products constantly dangled before us.”

The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton by Sophfornia Scott Bookshop | Amazon

The next four books I’m reading are about the spiritual journey—the pilgrimage. It seems this Lent I’ve been drawn to this theme.

To start, I’m reading The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation of the Itinerarium Egeriae with Introduction and Commentary by Anne McGowan and Paul Bradshaw from Liturgical Press Academic. This is a newer translation of the Egeria’s travel journals of her fourth century journey from Mount Sinai to Constantinople, with many stops in between. Egeria seemed to have been a nun of Spanish origin, and the manuscript of her extensive travels provides a witness to the worship and practices of the Christian churches in the fourth century. Along with Perpetua of Carthage, Egeria is among the earliest female Christian writers whose words we still read today.  In Jerusalem, Egeria witnesses the celebration of Holy Week that reminds me of the Holy Week services we pray in the Coptic Orthodox Church:

“So from the sixth hour to the ninth hour readings are read and hymns recited continually, to show all the people that whatever the prophets foretold concerning the Lord’s passion is shown to have been done both from the gospels and also from the writings of the Apostles. And so during those three hours all the people are taught that nothing had been done that ha d not been foretold, and nothing had been told that had not been completely fulfilled. Prayers that are appropriate to the day are always interspersed.”

The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation of the Itinerarium Egeriae with Introduction and Commentary by Anne McGowan and Paul Bradshaw Liturgical Press Academic | Bookshop | Amazon

Letters for Pilgrimage: Lenten Meditations for Teenage Girls by Sarah Lenora Gingrich and A.N. Tallentfrom Park End Books picks up with Egeria and travels through Lent in its own pilgrimage, using the Eastern Orthodox Lenten calendar. Each letter can be read as a daily devotion, beginning with a passage from the Psalms and then a letter addressed to the reader. “Dear One,” it begins, “There is danger in pilgrimage, that in our planning and our striving we forget why we’re making the journey, and to Whom.” The letters touch on many struggles girls experience at this age, from self-image to eating disorders to despair, sexual temptation, and passive sins. The letters draw on the wisdom of the Church fathers and mothers, as well as other contemporary Christian writers like Mother Alexandra. I will be glad to have this book on my shelf when my own daughter becomes a teenager. This is a beautiful passage:

“God sends each of us the helpers unique to our lives and needs; for you it may not be an eagle in Alaska, but it may be the way your dog puts his head on your lap when you’re sad. It may not be glowing plankton, but it could be a wildflower thriving defiantly in a sidewalk crack. Look about you while you journey, and let the beauty and wonder of His good creation draw you to the One who made it.”

Letters for Pilgrimage: Lenten Meditations for Teenage Girls by Sarah Lenora Gingrich and A.N. Tallent Park End Books | Bookshop | Amazon

Lisa Deam recently published a book on pilgrimage with Broadleaf: 3000 Miles to Jesus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life for Spiritual Seekers. In it she describes the pilgrims and pilgrimages of the Middle Ages and applies their paths and their insights to our modern spiritual journeys. Specifically, we learn about Magergy Kempe, a 1413 Englishwoman; Felix Fabri, a 1480 Dominican friar, and Pietro Casola, a 1494 Italian canon who did his pilgrimage at age sixty-seven. Through their stories we learn not just of their physical journeys but their spiritual ones. And we also learn what they did to reach their destinations. In a culture that seems to focus solely on the road and never the destination, the Medieval travelers were quite clear: their feet walked towards Jerusalem, as ours should be pointing towards the New Jerusalem.

“Lessons do, of course, happen along our slow journey home. Our pilgrimage path is where life is lived; it is where we love, grow, make mistakes, and learn. Sometimes the lesson and mistakes knock us down rather more than we’d like. But for the one who pilgrims to Jerusalem for the love of God, there is good news: we know where the path leads. So much in life remains uncertain, but our destination does not. All our steps, and even our missteps, lead to our forever home with Jesus.”

3000 Miles to Jesus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life for Spiritual Seekers by Lisa Deam. Bookshop | Amazon

The Wild Land Within: Cultivating Wholeness through Spiritual Practice by Lisa Colon Delay from Broadleaf has not yet been released, but I got to read a sneak peak because I’m also on her book launch team. I first got to know Lisa when I appeared on her podcast, Spark my Muse. Her new book is another pilgrimage, but one that travels within the human soul, using as its guide the spiritual practices. Lisa draws on spiritual guides that I’m familiar with – the Desert Fathers St. Anthony and St. Evagrius Pontus – as well as writers and theologians I am unfamiliar with and would love to learn more about. Uniquely, this book addresses one of the difficulties many of us face when we embark on the spiritual practices that are meant to bring us closer to God: they also reveal wounds, some that we’ve been unaware of. The “three core wounds” Lisa describes relate to safety and security, esteem and affection, and power and control”:

“The interior world of each person has three ravines—core wounds—with which to contend … The chasms form in our lives and remain within us. We reside in those dim and hidden areas and lose sight of the wider terrain … we never know too much about those darkened places until the Divine and healing light shines into each gulf, crevice and cranny. Wisdom of the ages has crafted winding paths that help us trek through these ravines and find our way out again.”

The Wild Land Within: Cultivating Wholeness through Spiritual Practice by Lisa Colon Delay Bookshop | Amazon

Which one of these books has piqued your interest? Tell me what you’re reading this Lent in the comments below!

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