|
Bookshelf
By WILLIAM C. GRAHAM
Fall has fallen, winter is here and all good readers are back to
the books in earnest: One more proof that God is good in every season!
To a friend who has lost her husband, I sent The Death of a
Husband: Reflections of a Grieving Wife, by Helen Reichert Lambin (ACTA,
125 pages, $8.95 paperback), hoping that these 40 reflections of another wife
in mourning might offer healing insights and hopeful direction.
Eyes on Jesus: A Guide for Contemplation (Crossroad, 271
pages, $14.95, paperback), by Jesuit Fr. Michael Kennedy, is a series of poetic
reflections that invite the reader to connect the gospel story of Jesus with
one’s own story. In the Ignatian tradition, Kennedy’s convictions
issue forth as reflections in which he imagines and pictures Jesus in specific
Bible passages, “placing our inner eye on Jesus,” sharing conscious
companionship with Jesus. The reader is invited to relate more intensely to
Jesus in a deepening intimacy.
Blessings All Around Us: Savoring God’s Gifts
(Resurrection Press, 125 pages, $8.95 paperback), by Dolores R. Leckey, calls
the reader to “a deeper awareness of God’s blessed largesse.”
The goal of this well-known and much respected lecturer and writer is to assist
the reader in becoming more attentive to personal experience where signs of God
abound.
The Sound of Listening: A Retreat Journal from Thomas
Merton’s Hermitage (Continuum, 126 pages, $13.95 paperback) is an
account of Jesuit Fr. John Dear’s nine November days in 1996 on retreat in
Thomas Merton’s secluded hermitage at Kentucky’s Abbey of
Gethsemani.
Dear reports that, tired and despairing, he went to seek relief,
but found much more. His hope is that the pages of his little journal will
encourage others to pursue inner recovery: “the holy journey into the
peace of God.” Chances are good that readers and seekers will not be
disappointed, but, rather, will be cheered to discover (and perhaps imitate)
the contemplative side of an activist.
John Shea’s many fans will be happy to see Elijah at the
Wedding Feast and Other Tales: Stories of the Human Spirit (ACTA
Publications, 153 pages, $12.95 paperback). This book is a collection of some
20 tales from diverse religious traditions and elsewhere, each accompanied by
an explanation. The man does have a way with tales, and those who love to tell
and read stories can expect to be glad with this find. I sent a copy off to a
preacher who is sure to be inspired and inspiring with Shea’s masterful
help.
And Fr. William J. Bausch’s many fans will be glad to see
that retirement for the popular pastor from the diocese of Trenton, N.J., did
not include retirement as a writer. His new book is The Yellow Brick Road: A
Storyteller’s Approach to the Spiritual Journey (Twenty-Third
Publications, 311 pages, $14.95 paperback). Characters from Kansas and Oz
become guides for a journey, providing not just entertainment, but invitation
and provocation to new perspectives on spiritual life.
I was happy to send a copy off to the Episcopal pastor of the
church in which Judy Garland, Dorothy of the yellow brick road, was baptized as
a child in Grand Rapids, Minn.
Women Saints: Lives of Faith and Courage, by Kathleen Jones
(Orbis, 310 pages, $20 paperback), considers 40 female saints who challenge the
traditional view of female sanctity as restricted to the virtues of passivity,
submission and obedience. Including Catherine of Siena, Agnes, Clare, Monica,
Elizabeth Ann Seton and Frances Xavier Cabrini and other heroic figures and
recently canonized saints, this assembly is pulled together by a translator of
The Poems of John of the Cross who has also revised two editions of
Butler’s Lives of the Saints, which is to say she knows her way
around the saints and has done here a fine job of highlighting what the title
promises. The lives of these women should exhort all Christian people to lives
of faith and courage.
I gave a copy of Hope Against Hope: Johann Baptist Metz and
Elie Wiesel Speak Out on the Holocaust, by Ekkehard Schuster and Reinhold
Boschert-Kimmig, translated by J. Matthew Ashley (A Stimulus Book, Paulist, 106
pages, $8.95 paperback), to Steve Ostovich who teaches philosophy and theology
at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn. Ostovich was a Fulbright
Scholar who studied with Metz in Germany.
According to Ostovich, this book is a translation of separate
interviews with Metz and Wiesel by two German youth ministers and graduate
students. The interview format allows both for an overview of the thought of
Metz and Wiesel and for making clearer the connections between their lives and
their thoughts. The interviewers bring together a Christian theologian and a
Jewish writer around their common concern with Auschwitz.
Schuster and Boschert-Kimmig are aware of the danger in doing
this, especially as Germans, and they work hard to keep clear the difference
between the positions of victim and perpetrator (in a way Paulist Press does
not in its jacket blurb, which describes Metz as much as Wiesel as “broken
by the horrors they witnessed during the war”).
For the most part, Metz and Wiesel are content to let common
themes arise from the statements of each man: the grounding of hope in memory,
the distrust of aestheticizing ethics and politics, the unique quality of
Auschwitz and questions related to the goodness and justice of God. Differences
appear, for example, in Wiesel’s suspicion of attempts to engage Auschwitz
through Christology. The result is Metz’s theology becomes more familiar,
and the interrelationship of Wiesel’s works, which has always been felt by
his readers, can be seen as well.
Joseph Malanga is a permanent deacon on the staff of St. Valentine
Parish in Bloomfield, N.J., and a graduate student in pastoral ministry at
Caldwell College. He already holds an M.A. in scripture from Drew University. I
asked him to look at Nourished By the Word: Reading the Bible
Contemplatively, by Carmelite Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen (Liguori, 118 pages,
$11.95 paperback).
According to Malanga, Stinissen’s book is informative and
helpful. In six chapters, he invites readers to a better understanding of the
significance of daily Bible readings, encouraging readers to see the Bible as a
bridge to a personal encounter with the Living Word of God.
Hillaire Gallagher works in perfumery, and her avocation is work
for her parish, St. Pius X in Montville, N.J. She is a graduate student in
pastoral ministry at Caldwell College. She took a look at The Music of
Creation: Fundamentals of the Christian Faith, by John Michael Talbot, a
secular Franciscan (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 228 pages, $22.95 paperback).
Gallagher found the book a fruitful account of a faith journey. Talbot’s
hope is to introduce the reader to the many rooms in God’s mansion. By
considering Jesus’ use of parables, he comments on sacrament, creation and
the incarnation. Spirituality is the focus: “It is about the rediscovery
of spirit so that the soul and body can find their proper and most harmonious
relationship.” Gallagher found the book “a pleasant and sweet
tour.”
I gave a copy of I Was Sick and You Visited Me: A Spiritual
Guide for Catholics in Hospital Ministry, by Fernando Poyatos (Paulist, 141
pages, $11.95 paperback), to Crosier Fr. Roger Vaughn, director of pastoral
care for the Sisters of Charity Health Care System on Staten Island, N.Y., and
asked for his comment. He reported that as he began to read, one of the
chaplains came in with the same book to report how very helpful it is to
pastoral care volunteers in hospital ministry.
According to Vaughn, the book offers pastoral caregivers the
challenge to embrace the healing ministry of Jesus, recognizing that all too
often patients, not yet receptive to a pastoral relationship, are still
comforted in a simple touch and a sometimes even silent prayer. The author
assists the novice pastoral minister in various ways to be spontaneous and
creative in offering prayer.
Fr. William C. Graham’s Sacred Adventure:
Beginning Theological Study (213 pages, $24.95 paperback) has been
published by University Press of America. He receives e-mail at
NCRBkshelf@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, December 3,
1999
|
|
