“Come on, Dad and Mom!” our 7^th-grade daughter goaded us the other day, “You’re falling behind!”

With a big smile, she announced that she was beginning her 6^th book of 2022—a 250-page mystery by a Norwegian writer. (Mom and Dad are each still on their first book, a fact we are reminded of frequently. We haven’t thrown in the towel, but we’ll need to get serious before she leaves us in the dust.)    

In the waning days of 2020, she had floated the idea of an annual family reading contest. After a brief discussion in which we agreed that the contest would track total page count (she’s at 1,185), we agreed. She easily defeated us in 2021. This year, her brothers remain noncommittal, although they do each read before bed, and her college-student sister is in second place after a light few weeks of reading over winter break.  

In the 4^th week of each month, we turn our focus to Family Culture, Level 4 of your Trinity House. Reading can be a prized jewel of family culture. There’s something special about families who read a lot, who read aloud, and who talk about books. They seem to be better at the increasingly scarce commodity of delayed gratification. While they may not agree with Cicero—“A room without books is like a body without a soul”—they glimpse the deep link between books and the soul, between the written word and the Word of God. They tend to be more comfortable with silence, solitude, and going offline.  

You don’t need us to tell you that it’s far more likely for parents today to find their child watching TikTok than curled up in an armchair, buried in a novel by Jane Austen or Mark Twain. To have a home steeped in a culture of reading is no easy accomplishment, especially when we can effortlessly consume a stream of (addictive and even predatorial) online entertainment.  

The family reading contest was the impetus we needed to get reading back into the rhythm of our family life. Whether it’s overwork, distraction, or just plain lazy media consumption, many of us have lost some ground in the past few years when it comes to the caliber of our family’s reading culture.

Send us what’s working for your family (contact@trinityhousecommunity.org)—but here are five ingredients we see to a healthy family reading culture: 

• It starts with us, dear fellow parents. If we’re not modeling this with our own reading, we’re unlikely to see a home full of readers.  
• Consider a family reading contest. It might fire up some competitive juices that can help to counteract the all-powerful screens.
• Have lots of books around for your kids to stumble upon. We’ve picked up armloads of classics for next to nothing at the local thrift shop. In addition to family trips to the library, buy a few boxes of used classics and put some more soul into the rooms of your home.
• Over family meals, share what you’re reading and ask what your kids are reading.
• Invest in time reading aloud to your kids. You won’t regret a single minute of it. (Check out our post on “The Wonders of Reading Aloud” with your kids here.) And don’t forget audio books in the car!

If you have any doubt about the power of reading, consider two giants of the faith, Doctors of the Church, even: St. Augustine and St. Ambrose. In the fall of 384, a very secular 34-year-old Augustine moved to Milan and happened to glimpse the local bishop, Ambrose, then 45 years-old, deeply focused on reading Scripture.

“When he read,” St. Augustine recalled, “his eyes travelled over the page and his heart sought out the sense, but voice and tongue were silent…when we came to him we often saw him reading, and always to himself; and after we had sat long in silence, unwilling to interrupt a work on which he was so intent, we would depart again.”

To summarize: Augustine’s friendship with and admiration of Ambrose would become a key factor in his embracing of the faith. Ambrose’s ability to thoughtfully focus on the written word, allowing it to form mind and heart, set the scene for fruitful encounters with the Word of God. Ambrose’s wisdom and immersion in Scripture evangelized Augustine. And the rest is history.

Our homes may seem far removed from Milan in 384, but what if our children—future saints, we pray—could one day look back and recall similar memories of parents who loved to read, who loved the Word, and who introduced the Word in unforgettable ways?