Summer Reading Rec

Just in time for the beach - or road trip, long flight, lunch break, or downtime at GC - it's Jonathan's book rec for the summer of 2015: Be Friends of God: Spiritual Reading from Gregory the Great.

With short chapters arranged for daily reading, this collection of writings represents an impossible combination of accessibility and depth, infused with Gregory's characteristic scriptural insight and profound acquaintance with humanity's whole and varied landscape, toward which he is both unfailingly charitable and appropriately challenging.

Last night, the following passage especially caught me in its desire for God and love of the neighbor:

Let us enkindle our hearts, my friends, let our faith again grow warm in what it believes, let our desire for heavenly things take fire. So to love is to be already on the way. We should not let any adversity call us back from the joy of this inner festivity. No difficulty of their journey alters the desire of the people wanting to reach some particular place. You must not let any seductive good fortune lead you astray: they are foolish travelers who see a pleasant meadow and forget where they are going. We must let our hearts yearn for our heavenly home with all our desire; let them seek nothing in this world which they must leave quickly. If we are truly sheep of the heavenly Shepherd, and are not arrested by any delight along the way, we shall be satisfied with the eternal pastures on our arrival there. (30)