Oy gevalt, here’s some spiritual reading

I’m tuckered out from liveblogging last night’s debate for work, so no quick takes this week. Instead, I’d like to send you over to Catherine Addington’s tumblr for an excellent reflection on the Transfiguration.  Here’s the part that really struck me. (The quoted bit is from St. Francis de Sales, the next bit is from Catherine).

Let me remark first of all that in eternal felicity we will know each other, since in this little spark of it which the Savior gave to His Apostles He willed that they recognize Moses and Elias, whom they had never seen.

I love this image of heaven: the way we look at our friends and just know them, thatrecognition we have when we see people we love, that soul-sight for lack of a better word, that’s going to be our relationship with everyone. It’s an expansive love, one that stems from loving God the creator, and seeing Him all around. I love that this is hiding in this Gospel on the Transfiguration, a glory that can seem so overwhelming and distant. God takes the time to let us know that His glory provides the light by which we can see everyone, that heaven makes us most ourselves, so that people can recognize us in all our particularity without ever having seen us before.

And just because it was a kind of draining night, if anyone else is in the mood for spiritual reading, I wanted to mention that I have been finding Armchair Mystic: Easing Into Contemplative Prayer (my lent reading) pretty fruitful.

And my two default recommendations to anyone are The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri J. M. Nouwen and The Presence of God by Fr. Anselm Moynihan, O.P.

They’re both short (so they don’t scare you off of starting) and beautifully written — the kind of thing where it’s good to read a chapter (or even part of one) and then just sit with it for a bit.  They both did a lot for me to help me approach loving God rather than just thinking about God: the intellectual proposition.

And A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken is one more you might want to add to your stack — it’s a spiritual memoir of growing into a deeper love for his wife and for God.

What have you particularly loved?