As food can produce indigestion, similarly printed word can also produce intellectual indigestion

The parable from today’s gospel tells us: the sower – Christ or God – scatters His seed (the Word of God) generously on all types of ground. In today’s homily I said something about Sower and different types of soil. But I didn’t mention anything about seeds. And quality of the seeds (words) is very important.

As food can produce indigestion, similarly printed word can also produce intellectual indigestion.

I think it might be helpful to ponder a few suggestions on the subject of reading serious reading.

In French, the word to read is lire; the word for choose or select is elire. The first rule then is: the best way to lire is to elire.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen noticed, that books, magazines and papers are like the multitudes of people we meet in the subway, shops, cocktail lounges and county fairs. I think we can add: they are also like these seeds from today’s gospel which the sower was scattering everywhere. We cannot possibly make all of them our companions, so we have to make a selection. Out of the crowd of books and magazines which push and shove themselves under our eyes, we have to select and extract those few which are fit to be our companions. So, it is necessary to learn of how to find this book or magazine which is non-essential and which is incapable of nourishing our mind. But that brings up the question: But how choose?

Fulton J. Sheen advices: “Do not make it a rule only to read what is just out or the book of the week. This does not mean that these are to be excluded, but rather that it is not good for the mind to be guided by the principle that the latest is necessarily the best. What better proof is there of this than the fact that nothing seems as old to us today as the book that was on the best selling list three years ago; it seems almost as old an as antiquated as yesterday’s newspaper. Nothing is a better eliminator of the chaff from the wheat than time; in its own silent way it swings the scythe and cuts down the mediocre and the highly advertised. It is not nearly as important to read what i just off the press as it is to read something that needed to b reprinted after a lapse of time. A classic, such as the Sonnets of Shakespeare, means something that has survived time and, there fore, is worthwhile”.

I think also, that very important rule is – to avoid those books which excite emotions but never lead to action. Some books excite emotions and inspire action. These are to be cultivated for they produce an intimate communion with what we read. Such was the effect of a book of Cicero on Augustine and the treatises of Aristotle on Aquinas. Such emotions are good because they increase our understanding of life, deepen our desire to do good, enlighten our pathways and above all spur us to further action. Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book. St. Ignatius of Loyola confirmed that rule – he is an expert on reading. And he said: “But there are other emotions which are divorced entirely from action, truth and goodness, for example, a sentimental love story, a melodrama about a fiend with poison. Emotions of fear, love, justice, revenge, are provoked by what is read, but they never lead anywhere; they are passions without deeds, feelings without action. After a while, our heart becomes like the spring on a screen door with which a child plays by opening and closing it just for fun. The spring loses all its resiliency and eventually refuses to function. How many have emotions aroused without an appropriate object on which to operate; their emotion of love is aroused, but it is only to a nonexistent character; their emotion of rage against injustice is enkindled but it burns out on a page. Such minds become like stomachs that emit gastric juices at the sight of food but never are given anything to eat”.

So, the very good advice from today’s gospel is:  If the time is shorter than we think, then it behoves man to read well by choosing well.