By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

stack of books with flowers in the background

The Great Lent is almost here, and with it the opportunity to spend more time on growing our spiritual lives. Lent is for making room for more prayer, more Scripture reading, and more spiritual reading. Whatever our fast looks like, it’s a time meant for nourishment our under-nourished souls. This year’s extra-tall Lent book stack reflects how under-nourished I feel. It also reflects an expansion, as I think about what I read with my children this Lent as well.

Speaking of children, email newsletter subscribers to Being in Community have access to my newly updated Great Lent Children’s Picture Book Guide. This year I have added eight new children’s books, providing more books to choose from for each week’s Lenten theme. If you are a subscriber, check your email for the link – and if you are not yet, sign up here and you will get access to all my email subscriber resources.

My list, like every year, includes non-fiction and fiction. There is one specifically Lenten devotional, two books focused on the inner life, two on the Beatitudes, two collections, one book about stories, two novels and two picture books.

I have already read Become All Flame: Lent with African Saints by Fr. Deacon John Gresham (with illustrations by Steve Prince and Andrew Kinard) from Park End Books through once, but plan to read again, slowly, every day this Lent. It contains 49 saints from the African continent, almost all recognized by both Oriental and Eastern Orthodox families of Orthodoxy, and likely also by Catholicism. Not surprisingly, many of them come from Egypt. It is clear from this book that Fr. Deacon John has spent much time with each of these saints, as he has given us a beautiful collection of saint stories, each short enough to read in a few minutes but long enough to capture the essence of each saint. May we learn what each of these African saints have to teach us. I found many of my favorites in there, and learned about a few new ones. Each story is accompanied by meditations and Scripture readings to read alongside each story. Park End Books provided me with a copy of this book to review, and I plan on giving multiple copies of this book as gifts.

Become All Flame: Lent with African Saints  Park End Books | Amazon

Two significant African saints that don’t make Fr. Deacon John’s exhaustive book (Lent is only so long, after all) are St. Shenoute the Archimandrite and St. Yared of Ethiopia. St. Shenoute was the abbot of a powerful federation of monasteries in Upper Egypt that housed an extraordinary library rivaling those of Europe. He is the most prolific of Coptic language writers, and his monastery also provided shelter to Nubian refugees from the south who were fleeing a tribal attack, leading to the conversion of many Nubians to Christianity. One of his sermons, “I Have been Reading the Holy Gospels,” can be found translated from Coptic to English by my sister, Dr. Mary K. Farag, in the new collection, Eastern Christianity: A Reader, edited by J. Edward Walters, from Eerdmans. This book includes translations of theological writings in Eastern Christian languages, including Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Arabic, and Ethiopic. I won’t be reading the whole thing, but dipping in and out. In addition to the Coptic texts, from the Syriac I plan to read Narsai “On the Canaanite Woman,” and the Syriac Life of Mary of Egypt. In Armenian I plan to read, “On this Transitory World” by Anania of Narek, in Georgian I’ll read the Martyrdom of St. Shushanik, in Arabic I’ll read the Syrian Orthodox Commentary on the Pentateuch. And in Ethiopic, I will read the Synaxarion of Yared, a major Ethiopian Orthodox saint that composed many hymns and can be considered the first author of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Eastern Christianity: A Reader | Bookshop | Amazon | Christian Book

Sojourners: Monastic Letters and Spiritual Teachings from the Desert by the late Fr. Matthew the Poor (Fr. Matta Al-Maskeen) from St. Macarius Press works very well as a Lenten devotional, with 38 selections from his letters, each about 2-3 pages. Considering how many of the African saints lived in the Egyptian desert, this book by a modern desert abbot makes an excellent companion to Fr. Deacon John Gresham’s saint devotional. A reader can also dip in and out of Sojourners by scanning the table of contents and choosing a topic of interest. In the letter on “The True Meaning of Time” he writes, appropriately for Lent:

When we manage to subdue time to prayer, delving into spiritual knowledge through reading, writing, or spiritual instruction for ourselves or others, we wring out of time its power, value and meaning. However, if we fritter away time, be it an hour, a day, a year or several years, without saving anything of it in God’s account, time becomes dead, deprived of its power as well as its value and meaning; today’s sun may as well have not shown upon him.

Another excellent Lenten read by the same author is Guidelines for Prayer.

Sojourners: Monastic Letters and Spiritual Teachings from the Desert | Bookshop | Amazon

Guidelines for Prayer | Bookshop | Amazon

Beginning to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom from Paulist Press is a spiritual classic I plan to re-read this Great Lent. The title might indicate that it is for those who have never prayed before and are just beginning, it is really for all of us, for which of us has “mastered” the ability to communicate with God through prayer? In it he re-frames what fasting is: “I don’t mean the fasting and abstinence that affects only the stomach but that attitude of sobriety which allows you, or compels you, never to get enslaved by anything.” This “attitude of sobriety” allows us to be “rich and yet totally free from richness.”

Beginning to Pray | Bookshop | Amazon

Just two months ago, on January 13, 2022, Orthodox lay theologian, author, peacemaker and activist Jim Forest departed in the Lord. I sadly did not know much about him until his departure, when I read several beautiful tributes about him, like this one by Volkert Volkersz and this one by Nicholas Sooy. This led me to purchase a few books by him, including The Ladder of the Beatitudes, which I plan to read this Lent. In it he calls the Beatitudes “the whole Gospel in a grain of salt.” With war looming ahead of us this Lent, more of us should be reading anything by Jim Forest.

The Ladder of the Beatitudes | Bookshop | Amazon

Speaking of the Beatitudes, Plough recently published a beautiful anthology called Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together. This is another book I will be dipping into. It includes selections on each section of the Sermon on the Mount by a broad array of Christian writers, including St. John Chrysostom, St. Iraneaus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Cyprian of Carthage, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Madeleine L’Engle, Thomas Merton, Peter Kreeft, Martin Luther King Jr., Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Frederica Mathews-Green, Howard Thurman, William Barclay, Philip Yancey, Mother Theresa, and many more. Each selection is also quite short, allowing for meditation and reflection on each passage in this important part of Scripture.

On the verse “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” the selection from St. John Chrysostom exhorts us to be meek so that the devil will not “be able so much as to look you in the face.” He refers to Christ being tempted after fasting for us:

Reflecting then on these things, become like Him, to the utmost of your power. No longer then will the devil be able so much as to look you in the face, when you have become such a one as this. For indeed he recognizes the image of the King, he knows the weapons of Christ, whereby he was worsted. And what are these? Gentleness and meekness. For when on the mountain Christ overthrew and laid low the devil who was assaulting him, it was not by making it known that he was Christ, but he entrapped him by these sayings, he took him by gentleness, he turned him to flight by meekness.

Subscribers to Plough Quarterly can download this book for free as an ebook.

Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together. Plough | Bookshop | Amazon

I’ve had Mitali Perkins’ new book from Broadleaf, Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh our Tired Souls on my TBR (to be read pile) since it first came out, and it moved up to Lenten reading when I saw that Sarah Mackenzie had also chosen it for the Read Aloud Revival Mama Book Club. In the spirit of books like On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books by Karen Swallow Prior and Jane Austen’s Genius Guide to Life: On Love, Friendship, and Becoming the Person God Created You to Be by Haley Stewart, Steeped in Stories is a book about books, only this one specifically about classic children’s books, like my lifelong favorite Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which I recently reread and re-appreciated with my children, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, and more. My favorite aspect of these kinds of books is how they prompt me to read books I had not read or appreciated before, sometimes introducing me to an author new to me, or to works I had read but forgotten. That is why one of my fiction reads for this Lent will be Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace, a new to me author that I can’t wait to get to know thanks to Perkins’ book, and the other, which I will re-read with my children, is The Hobbit.

My second favorite aspect is how they draw out important themes and perspectives that nourish me spiritually. I come at Perkin’s book excited to go back to these children’s books and consider them anew in light of my faith. Perkins’ begins her book describing her youth as a child of Bengali immigrants, finding safe haven in books on her fire escape in Flushing, Queens – probably not far from where I also curled up with Anne of Green Gables as a child of Egyptian immigrants in our apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, though I was not allowed to read on the fire escape, I read in my tiny hallway converted to a bedroom instead.

Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh our Tired Souls | Bookshop | Amazon

Emily of Deep Valley | Bookshop | Amazon

The Hobbit | Bookshop | Amazon

In addition to The Hobbit, which I will be re-reading with my children, among the many picture books I’ll read to them are one by Jim Forest, and a new one by Mitali Perkins that I have added to my Great Lent Picture Book Guide. Both of these descriptions contain spoilers, so scan them for the titles if you don’t want to know what happens!

Silent as a Stone: Mother Maria of Paris and the Trash Can Rescue, written by Jim Forest and illustrated by Dasha Pancheshnaya from St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press is a longer picture book about Mother Maria of Paris, a modern Eastern Orthodox saint that is well known for sheltering Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of Paris, until she herself was arrested and eventually also died in a concentration camp. This picture book tells of how Mother Maria managed to rescue many children from being taken to Auschwitz by making an agreement with the French garbage collectors to hide them in trash cans, then secretly carting them off in a baker’s truck to the south of France beyond Nazi control. Despite its heaviness, it’s a story I can’t wait to share with my children. We have read several historical fiction accounts about World War II and the Holocaust, some of them very difficult and heavy to read, and our discussions have always centered around two things: that people can be capable of doing terrible things, and people can be capable of doing extraordinarily good things, and that we want to be the people that do good things.

Silent as a Stone: Mother Maria of Paris and the Trash Can Rescue | SVS Press | Amazon

Finally, during Holy Week we’ll be reading Bare Tree and Little Wind: A Story for Holy Week written by Mitali Perkins and illustrated by Khoa Le. I have included this book in my Great Lent Picture Book Guide, and it describes a little wind that is friends with a leafless tree in Jerusalem. It begins with the other trees, full of leaves, glorifying the Lord Jesus as He enters Jerusalem. By the end of the week, Little Wind sees Him being crucified and sadly tells Bare Tree of it. Bare Tree assures Little Wind that Christ said he would come back, and sure enough, Little Wind hears of people seeing Christ three days later! This isn’t the end of the story, however. This book is unusual in that it goes a little bit further in history than Christ’s death and resurrection. Little Wind witnesses the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans that happens in 70 A.D. Fearful of what might have happened to Bare Tree, Little Wind goes back into Jerusalem to find him, and discovers that Bare Tree has borne seeds and fruits. Little Wind hopes that this means Bare Tree will now be surrounded by his seeds, but Bare Tree asks Little Wind to scatter those seeds everywhere and watch them take root and grow – just as the disciples scattered the Good News to all the corners of the earth. Purchase

Bare Tree and Little Wind: A Story for Holy Week | Bookshop | Amazon

What are you reading this Lent? What will you be reading with your kids? Will you choose something from this list? Please share in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Being in Community email list to get access to the Great Lent Picture Book Guide, a Guide to Helping Children Love Reading, AND a spiritual reading reflection guide! May God accept our fast this Lent as we look forward to the Holy Resurrection.

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