Reading the Founder 6

    The French-born British poet, essayist, and historian Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was an ardent Roman Catholic. His Europe and the Faith (1920) is eloquent witness to this fact. In his Cautionary Tales (1907), we find him exhorting: "Child! do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure."
    We should apply this advice of Belloc to several spiritual classics. Let’s forget the childish leisure of "cutting pictures", but let’s do preserve some of the classics as our primary source of spiritual inspiration.
    Two telling quotes from the great seventeenth-century English poet, John Milton (1608-74), are enough to hammer in further the importance of a good book, let alone a classic: "Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye." And in his 1644 "speech to the Parliament of England", Areopagitica, Milton wrote: "A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."
    A spiritual classic should indeed be treasured since it does lead to "a life beyond life"! It should command our avid attention because a classic is not time-bound. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), a French critic and historian, and a champion of Romanticism, offers this definition of "a classic":

A true classic is an author who has enriched the human mind, who has really augmented its treasures, who has made it take one more step forward, who has discovered some unequivocal moral truth, or has once more seized hold of some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and explored; who has rendered his thought, his observation, or his discovery under no matter what form, but broad and large, refined, sensible, sane, and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in a style of his own which yet belongs to all the world, in a style which is new without neologisms, new and ancient, easily contemporaneous with every age ("What is a Classic?" in Critical Theory Since Plato, Hazard Adams, ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, 555-562; p.557).

True classics transcend time and cultures. They speak to peoples of every era. As Sainte-Beuve writes: "The idea of a classic implies in itself something which has sequence and solidity, which forms a whole and makes a tradition, something which has ‘composition,’ is handed on to posterity and lasts" (ibid., 556). That’s why a true classic is both enduring and endearing. (cf "Introduction"of The Classics of Catholic Spirituality. Peter John Cameron, op.; Alba Hse., 1996; xiii-xviii).
The classics challenge us to question our life-styles and yardsticks. Their contents have "surplus of meaning" which both questions and enlightens our modern anxieties and priorities. For a classical text "is always retrievable, … always disclosive and transformative with its truth of importance" (cf David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination. Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, Crossroad, 1981; 115).

    By this rather lengthy introduction I am not implying that the books of Blessed George Preca are time-honoured, universal "classics". What I am emphasising is their timely and constant significance, primarily for us Members of his Society of Christian Doctrine. I want to encourage Members away from the common mistake of thinking that possessing a book is a substitute for reading it!
    Ten years ago the Society issued the English translation of ‘Is-Sakrarju ta’ l-Ispirtu ta’ Kristu’ (The Sanctuary of Christ’s Spirit). The book was written in 1947 when Fr Preca was a mature and saintly priest of sixty-seven years. He had read, meditated and experienced much and intensely. His sole passion and the only object of his heart was the passing on of Jesus Christ to others: children and adults alike. The experience of Jesus had so invaded his whole life that he was able to unveil it as an inspiring example not only to his SDC Members, but to everyone.
    The Sanctuary of Christ’s Spirit is indeed the very life-blood of our Founder’s spirit. The book is in fact the most developed and the most coherent manual for the imitation of Christ as our Blessed Founder lived it himself. Through the ninety-one steps (passus in the original) of the book, Fr Preca leads the willing reader to put on Christ Jesus, and to strip off the old self in the process. This manual is a dynamic invitation that engages the trainee in a serious and challenging transformation of self through the power of the Good News and of God’s grace.
    The book progresses cleverly from the basic notions of initiation in Christian virtue to the steady acquisition of Christ’s true and vibrant spirit. Though deep and exacting, if followed seriously and steadfastly, the approach is practical and effective. It is far above the empty sentimentality of some popular devotions. The arguments draw much from the insightful treasures of the Bible, especially from the New Testament, and from the proved wisdom of the spiritual classics of the Catholic tradition.
    The style is not laboured and the deep thoughts of Fr Preca are expressed very concisely. The reader is invited to meditate slowly in order to elicit all the meaning out of the concentrated and pregnant writing of the Blessed who loved to hammer in basic truths by repeating them differently in small doses.
    The concluding chapters of the book sum up once more the tenets expounded in previous chapters till we come to the pen-portrait of Jesus: a masterly, though nuanced, analysis of Jesus’ physiognomy and attitudes. Then the Conclusion brings together again the focal line of thought.
    As in all the books of Fr Preca, some parts of the work naturally reflect the particular conditioning of the theological and spiritual milieu which formed his heart and mind. The sum effect is salutary, demanding and enriching. Blessed George Preca invites the readers to experience what St Paul went through when he wrote: "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).