Pope Francis’ ode to literature

1960 words, 10 minute read.

Two days ago Pope Francis wrote a letter about the value of literature for Christians, which he started writing with the formation of priests in mind, but which he realised applies to everyone. As I read it, I had the impression that the text in front of me is a true ode to books, writing and reading and that it is a text that anyone who is already a reader would enjoy, regardless of their religious convictions. What particularly struck me was the apparent love that Pope Francis has both for reading and writing and how his perspective is all-inclusive and expansing and one of pointing to and building bridges rather than attempting to put up fences or walls. In fact, he underlines the mind-opening and other-understanding benefits of reading, of taking a step back, of slowing down and of seeing the world through the eyes of others, facilitated by the talent of writers. The text is relatively short at only 5000 words and I would, as always, recommend reading it in full. If, instead, you would just like the passages that spoke most to me, they are set out here below:

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7. There is nothing more counterproductive than reading something out of a sense of duty, making considerable effort simply because others have said it is essential.

10. The Church, in her missionary experience, has learned how to display all her beauty, freshness and novelty in her encounter – often through literature – with the different cultures in which her faith has taken root, without hesitating to engage with and draw upon the best of what she has found in each culture.This approach has freed her from the temptation to a blinkered, fundamentalist self-referentiality that would consider a particular cultural-historical “grammar” as capable of expressing the entire richness and depth of the Gospel.[5] Many of the doomsday prophecies that presently seek to sow despair are rooted precisely in such a belief.Contact with different literary and grammatical styles will always allow us to explore more deeply the polyphony of divine revelation without impoverishing it or reducing it to our own needs or ways of thinking.

11. It was thus no coincidence that Christian antiquity, for example, clearly realized the need for a serious engagement with the classical culture of the time. Basil of Caesarea, one of the Eastern Church Fathers, in his Discourse to the Young, composed between 370 and 375, and most likely addressed to his nieces and nephews, extolled the richness of classical literature produced by hoiéxothen (“those outside”), as he called the pagan authors. He saw this both in terms of its argumentation, that is, its lógoi (discourses), useful for theology and exegesis, and its ethical content, namely the práxeis (acts, conduct) helpful for the ascetic and moral life. Basil concluded this work by urging young Christians to consider the classics as an ephódion (“viaticum”) for their education and training, a means of “profit for the soul” (IV, 8-9). It was precisely from that encounter between Christianity and the culture of the time that a fresh presentation of the Gospel message emerged.

12. Thanks to an evangelical discernment of culture, we can recognize the presence of the Spirit in the variety of human experiences, seeing the seeds of the Spirit’s presence already planted in the events, sensibilities, desires and profound yearnings present within hearts and in social, cultural and spiritual settings. We can see this, for example, in the approach taken by Paul before the Areopagus, as related in theActs of the Apostles (17:16-34). In his address, Paul says of God: “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; and as some of your own poets have said, ‘We too are his offspring’.”(Acts17:28).This verse contains two quotations: one indirect, from the poet Epimenides (sixth century B.C.E.), and the other direct, from the Phaenomena of the poet Aratus of Soli (third century B.C.E.), who wrote of the constellations and the signs of good and bad weather. Here, “Paul reveals that he is a ‘reader’ while also demonstrating his method of approaching the literary text, which is an evangelical discernment of culture. The Athenians dismiss him as a spermologos, a ‘babbler’, but literally ‘a gatherer of seeds’. What was surely meant to be an insult proved, ironically, to be profoundly true. Paul gathered the seeds of pagan poetry and, overcoming his first impressions (cf.Acts17:16), acknowledges the Athenians to be ‘extremely religious’ and sees in the pages of their classical literature a veritable praeparatio evangelica” [6].

[6] A. SPADARO, Svolta di respiro. Spiritualità della vita contemporanea, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 101.

14. We must always take care never to lose sight of the “flesh” of Jesus Christ: that flesh made of passions, emotions and feelings, words that challenge and console, hands that touch and heal, looks that liberate and encourage, flesh made of hospitality, forgiveness, indignation, courage, fearlessness; in a word, love.

15. It is precisely at this level that familiarity with literature can make future priests and all pastoral workers all the more sensitive to the full humanity of the Lord Jesus, in which his divinity is wholly present.In this way, they can proclaim the Gospel in a way that enables everyone to experience the truth of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching that, “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear”.[10] This is not the mystery of some abstract humanity, but that of all men and women, with their hurts, desires, memories and hopes that are a concrete part of their lives.

18. “In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do”.[12]

[12]C.S. LEWIS, An Experiment in Criticism, 89.

20. This is a definition of literature that I like very much:listening to another person’s voice. We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of other people when they challenge us! We immediately fall into self-isolation; we enter into a kind of “spiritual deafness”, which has a negative effect on our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with God, no matter how much theology or psychology we may have studied.

24. For Christians, the Word is God, and all our human words bear traces of an intrinsic longing for God, a tending towards that Word. It can be said that the truly poetic word participates analogically in the Word of God, as theLetter to the Hebrews clearly states (cf. Heb 4:12-13).

29. It is clear, then, that the reader is not simply the recipient of an edifying message, but a person challenged to press forward on a shifting terrain where the boundaries between salvation and perdition are nota prioriobvious and distinct. Reading, as an act of “discernment”, directly involves the reader as both the “subject” who reads and as the “object” of what is being read. In reading a novel or a work of poetry, the reader actually experiences “being read” by the words that he or she is reading.[24] Readers can thus be compared to players on a field: they play the game, but the game is also played through them, in the sense that they are totally caught up in the action.[25]

31. There is always the risk that an excessive concern for efficiency will dull discernment, weaken sensitivity and ignore complexity. We desperately need to counterbalance this inevitable temptation to a frenetic and uncritical lifestyle by stepping back, slowing down, taking time to look and listen.This can happen when a person simply stops to read a book.

32. We need to rediscover ways of relating to reality that are more welcoming, not merely strategic and aimed purely at results, ways that allow us to experience the infinite grandeur of being. A sense of perspective, leisure and freedom are the marks of an approach to reality that finds in literature a privileged, albeit not exclusive, form of expression. Literature thus teaches us how to look and see, to discern and explore the reality of individuals and situations as a mystery charged with a surplus of meaning that can only be partially understood through categories, explanatory schemes, linear dynamics of causes and effects, means and ends.

34. In terms of the use of language, reading a literary text places us in the position of “seeing through the eyes of others”,[30] thus gaining a breadth of perspective that broadens our humanity. We develop an imaginative empathy that enables us to identify with how others see, experience and respond to reality. Without such empathy, there can be no solidarity, sharing, compassion, mercy. In reading we discover that our feelings are not simply our own, they are universal, and so even the most destitute person does not feel alone.

36. When we read a story, thanks to the descriptive powers of the author, each of us can see before our eyes the weeping of an abandoned girl, an elderly woman pulling the covers over her sleeping grandson, the struggles of a shopkeeper trying to eke out a living, the shame of one who bears the brunt of constant criticism, the boy who takes refuge in dreams as his only escape from a wretched and violent life. As these stories awaken faint echoes of our own inner experiences, we become more sensitive to the experiences of others. We step out of ourselves to enter into their lives, we sympathize with their struggles and desires, we see things through their eyes and eventually we become companions on their journey. We are caught up in the lives of the fruit seller, the prostitute, the orphaned child, the bricklayer’s wife, the old crone who still believes she will someday find her prince charming. We can do this with empathy and at times with tenderness and understanding.

37. [F]or us as Christians, nothing that is human is indifferent to us.

39. In reading about violence, narrowness or frailty on the part of others, we have an opportunity to reflect on our own experiences of these realities. By opening up to the reader a broader view of the grandeur and misery of human experience, literature teaches us patience in trying to understanding others, humility in approaching complex situations, meekness in our judgement of individuals and sensitivity to our human condition.Judgement is certainly needed, but we must never forget its limited scope. Judgement must never issue in a death sentence, eliminating persons or suppressing our humanity for the sake of a soulless absolutizing of the law.

40. By acknowledging the futility and perhaps even the impossibility of reducing the mystery of the world and humanity to a dualistic polarity of true vs false or right vs wrong, the reader accepts the responsibility of passing judgement, not as a means of domination, but rather as an impetus towards greater listening. And at the same time, a readiness to partake in the extraordinary richness of a history which is due to the presence of the Spirit, but is also given as a grace, an unpredictable and incomprehensible event that does not depend on human activity, but redefines our humanity in terms of hope for salvation.

42. Literature helps readers to topple the idols of a self-referential, falsely self-sufficient and statically conventional language that at times also risks polluting our ecclesial discourse, imprisoning the freedom of the Word. The literary word is a word that sets language in motion, liberates and purifies it.Ultimately, it opens that word to even greater expressive and expansive vistas. It opens our human words to welcome the Word that is already present in human speech, not when it sees itself as knowledge that is already full, definitive and complete, but when it becomes a listening and expectation of the One who comes to make all things new (cf. Rev 21:5).