Reading Comprehension

Our children and young people’s reading comprehension has reached its worst score ever in the PISA report. I won’t give in to the temptation to say that they’re worse off than we were because, let’s face it, this is no longer just a problem for young people—it affects us all.

Digital culture has brought about a new way of engaging with text. It’s not that we no longer read—perhaps we even spend many more hours reading amid chats, news alerts on our phones, social media comments, and so on—but rather that we do so superficially, preventing the information from sinking in. For reading to be meaningful, it needs time, space, and a relevant context. 

Now, as we ride the subway trying to read a self-help book on our cell phones—one that offers techniques for reducing stress— we’re interrupted by a notification with the latest news from our favorite daily newspaper about an attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz—among whose paragraphs ads are inserted touting the benefits of that new sandwich bread—while, in the school’s parent chat group, someone asks if a classmate has accidentally taken their child’s history book. So, at night, as we try in vain to fall asleep using the Strait of Hormuz technique, we remember that we haven’t checked our son’s backpack to see if he accidentally took his classmate’s sandwich—and at the same time, that beautiful illustration of naval battles from our high school history book pops into our minds. A total mental mess, really.

Hasty, compulsive reading—driven solely by curiosity and the desire for impact, and aimed at not missing a single thing that’s happening, whether in our immediate circle or in the wider world—leaves us unable to grasp anything. Hours of reading that go in one ear and out the other (if you’ll pardon the expression), without benefiting us in the least. Our brain, our spirit, are like parched, withered soil, devoid of water. A digital torrent of data comes along, washes over it, but it dries up again almost immediately. To become fertile ground and bear fruit, those ideas need to fall like dew, like a light rain on the grass, like a gentle mist on the lawn. 

And now that I’m quoting the Psalms, how will this pandemic of poor reading comprehension affect the way God’s Word touches the hearts of men and women today? We must remember that many saints encountered the Lord and experienced conversion thanks to spiritual readings that they, of course, understood and allowed to truly touch their lives. 

Among the most famous was St. Ignatius of Loyola, who, during a long convalescence from a war wound, asked that they bring him chivalric novels—which he was fond of—to pass the time. It turned out that there was only «one The Life of Christ »and a book on the lives of the saints written in Romance,« as he himself recounts. He developed a passion for these readings, and «little by little, God began to take root in my soul, and from being a valiant knight of an earthly lord, I became ”a heroic knight of the Eternal King, Jesus Christ.»”.

And what about St. Augustine, who, after hearing a mysterious childlike voice telling him, «Take and read,” opened the Scriptures at random and found—specifically in a letter from St. Paul—what he had been searching for his entire life without realizing it, which was none other than Christ? This is how he recounted it in his book, *The* Confessions, a work that centuries later would fall into the hands of Saint Teresa of Ávila and whose reading was key to her conversion and her new way of life; a life that, in turn, was recorded in an autobiography which, after being read by the Jewish philosophy professor Edith Stein, led her to exclaim: “This is the truth!” She thus converted to Christianity and was later canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. The chain of conversions that the (properly understood) reading of the Word of God and the lives of the saints has brought about—and continues to bring about—is endless.

I’m not one to demonize apps for praying the Psalms or reading the Gospel on a cell phone—since I use them every day and they can be a very useful tool—but it would be good for us to consider whether this is the best way to engage with these texts and in what context we do so. We need to make time and create space so that the Word of God—which «is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword,» and our spiritual readings don’t just slip by us as if they were yet another birthday greeting in a WhatsApp group, but rather truly take root in our hearts because our very lives depend on it. Do you understand?