Read Like a Monk with Ambrose Criste

Fr. Ambrose Criste is a graduate of Colorado College, a Rhodes Scholar, and a Norbertine Monk.

Ambrose and I spoke about lectio divina—holy reading, or what he called meditative and contemplative reading. This reading is “not about mileage,” he says, but about eating a text, embodying a text, declaiming or singing a text, resting in, returning to, delighting in, and living a text. It is an old practice and one that predates the idea of information.

We talked about re-reading, and how children read; his monastic life; the way he forms young monks in it; quieting one’s inner life; taking a passage with you into your day and its work; the power of memory; what happens when you hear or sing a text repeatedly for years; and the case for delight in reading.

Ambrose recommends The Rule of St. Augustine and William of Saint-Thierry’s 12th-century text, The Golden Epistle.