Traditional Lent Preparation: Spiritual Reading
Septuagesima is the perfect time to get your spiritual reading in order!
What is Septuagesima?
Septuagesima is the short penitential season (a mere three weeks or so) leading up to Lent. It begins on Septuagesima Sunday. Septuagesima is the Latin word for seventy, meaning from that Sunday there are approximately 70 days until Easter (really, it’s 63–the Church has a history of rounding up).
Holy Mother Church gives us this short season as an opportunity to ease into Lent. The vestments are already purple, the victorious Alleluia is suppressed, as is that sweet Gloria which we have been singing at the foot of the manger. Now we turn our sights to the foot of the cross.
It’s not quite Lent yet though. The Church in her wisdom offers us this transition time, a time of preparation. Now is a good time to pinpoint exactly what you will be doing for Lent and to even try some of it out to make sure it’s feasible. Among your Lenten plans should be some sort of spiritual reading. We need not reinvent the wheel here. It could be as simple as following along with scripture daily in the Missal or revisiting a work by a saint that you already have on your bookshelf.
Still, I’ll offer some recommendations…
Book Recommendations for Lent
The Basics
The basics are always at the the top of my list—Stations of the Cross, the Divine Office, and the Missal.
The method of St. Alphonsus de Liguori is standard for traditional stations.
We have a booklet for every person in the family. It helps keep everyone involved when we pray it. Even the littlest.
Sometimes we make it to church and other times we do it at home as a family. Sometimes I’ll meet other moms at a park and we’ll pray stations together with the kiddos.
The best way to live liturgically? Go straight to the liturgy. Lent is a good time to spend more time with scripture through your Missal.
Many of the days are marked with their own ferial readings and you can follow along at home even if you cannot make it to Mass everyday.
The Liturgy consists not only of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass but also the Divine Office–which we too often forget.
The Little Office of Baltimore is a great option for laity. This little office makes praying the Divine Office more manageable by offering a simpler rotation and structure while still resembling the full Divine Office.
I offer a quick start guide to praying it here.
This is not quite a spiritual read, but these illustrated liturgical calendars make the liturgy come alive for children as well as adults.
They are an incredibly useful tool for visualizing the 40 days of Lent.
Spiritual Reading with a Saint
There are a lot of modern devotionals or meditations out there. There is nothing wrong with this, but the way I see it, life is so short and there are already so many great classics by canonized saints. I feel my efforts are best spent here.
This book of Lenten sermons from St. Francis de Sales is the perfect complement to delving deeper into the liturgy.
He offers practical advice for approaching Lent as well as explanations for the Sunday readings.
I’ll be using this for my fourth year in a row!
Pick a Classic!
…So you don’t have to pick my favorite here (I just love St. Francis de Sales), but if you’re looking for a solid spiritual read, I would browse TAN’s spiritual classics section and sink into one of those this Lent.
Again, there’s a lot to read out there, but why not first exhaust works from great spiritual masters?
Examples include Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila, and the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena!
Maybe you would still like a meditation from a more recent voice. The Cries of Jesus from the Cross is an anthology that puts together the works of Ven. Fulton Sheen to form a comprehensive reflection on the seven last words.
It addresses a wide variety of virtues and vices under these categories and I like it because it need not be read cover to cover. Instead you can pick a specific topic, such as hope, pain, faith, or gluttony, and briefly reflect on that in light of the Cross.
Or, also handy, there is a lenten reading schedule for it, which you can find through the ordering page.
Replacing Screen Time
I don’t know about you, but I do not feel spiritually refreshed or mentally focused when I spend too much time on a screen–no matter how edifying the content might be. Lent is a good time to step back from the noise of the world. God speaks to us in the silence, and slow old-fashioned page turning is much more conducive to silence.
Some recommendation if you like scrolling places like Instagram for homemaking or motherhood content:
Lent is traditionally associated with spring cleaning and refreshing the home after the long winter. As we prepare our hearts for the Easter season, we can also prepare our homes!
Enter The Summa Domestica! The stated goal of this three volume work is to help you instill order and wonder in your household. This includes everything from laundry and meal plans to homeschooling and liturgical living.
These are polished pieces from Leila Lawler’s blog, which means that they can be read in a short sitting and you can flip through to the topics that are most relevant to you.
Mother to Mother is a unique opportunity for mothers to find the advice and thoughts of contemplative nuns that they can then apply to their own lives.
Both mothers and religious sisters mirror Our Lady in special ways and both are sorely misunderstood by today’s world. They have more in common than we usually think!
This is another good replacement for mindless scrolling. It’s not necessarily meant to be read cover to cover. There’s a myriad of topics from strengthening your prayer life to the very practical issue of having too many toys. You can flip to a small section and sneak it in in the corners of your day.
Some recommendations if you fret about church politics and spend too much time on X:
Peter Kwasniewski is a well-known commentator on church politics and defender of the traditional understanding of the Roman Rite.
Turned Around is a good place to start if you are new to the Traditional Latin Mass or even just curious about it.
The Once and Future Roman Rite is more of a deep dive into the differences between the Traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo.
I Hope you found this helpful and that one of these books can bless you and your family on your spiritual growth this Lent. Please share in the comments below what you plan on reading for Lent!
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