Praying with the Gospels is a series of four books edited by Fr Peter John Cameron OP for Magnificat Publications. They offer daily reflections on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from religious writers both clerical and lay.
The books (£9.50 each) include names such as Fr Romanus Cessario OP, the senior editor at Magnificat; Professor Anthony Esolen; Fr George William Rutler, a parish priest in Manhattan; and Michele Schumacher, a mother and teacher of Christian anthropology at the University of Fribourg. The editor suggests that the books can be used for private reading, for matching the corresponding readings in the Lectionary or even in a study group with friends.
The whole point of these attractively produced, easily handled books – indeed, the whole apostolate behind Magnificat Publications – is to bring the reader into closer communion with Christ through reading the Gospels. Whatever one’s literary leanings and preferences, Booker Prize novels or not, they are the most important books you could ever read.
It is a shame that so many Catholics limit themselves to hearing only excerpts from these sublime books in the readings on Sundays. Too many people assume that “spiritual reading” is above their pay grade. We are constantly admonished by health gurus to eat healthily, to have our five portions of fruit and vegetables daily and so on, with never a word about the health of our souls – which will surely wither without regular, attentive spiritual reading.
Reading random passages in these books, I am struck by the quality of the writing – the familiarity with and love of the authors for the texts they write about; the informality and accessibility of their style; the ease with which they are able to relate certain Gospel passages to experiences in their own lives. They are not writing theology for an academic readership, but ordinary reflections with clarity and zeal to communicate that which can be understood by everyman (or woman). I particularly like the way the reflections are a page at a time – as much as anyone will want to read and assimilate for themselves at one session.
Each reflection begins with a short Gospel passage and is concluded by a short prayer relating to it. For example, following a reflection on the blind man in St Mark’s Gospel who kept calling out to Jesus importunately, despite being rebuked by other spectators, Jack Sacco offers this prayer: “Eternal Father, please give us the grace of persistence, so that we may repeatedly ask for your mercy, even when we feel that we are not worthy.”
Reading that the blind man “threw aside his cloak, sprang up and came to Jesus” reminded me of a homily I once heard by a priest, which pointed out that to throw aside your cloak meant a huge act of trust by a blind man in those times, because all the alms given to him by others would be thrown on to the cloak so that he could gather them up easily.
In this way, a reflection by a contributor leads on to another linked remembrance by a reader – and gradually the Gospel scene and its theme is more deeply embedded in the consciousness.
………
Fr Mark Daniel Kirby OSB, reflecting on the scene when Judas went out to betray Jesus, reminds us that the Rule of St Benedict says we are “never to despair of the mercy of God”. With his characteristic spin, Graham Greene described this in Brighton Rock as “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God”. Simon Heffer, writing recently in his “Hinterland” column in the Sunday Telegraph, commented that he thought Greene’s novels would fall out of print. I think Greene, with all the dramatic moral dilemmas he loved to create, is too good a writer for that fate to befall him.
In his introduction to St John’s Gospel (always my favourite, for its lyrical passages), Fr Francis Martin quotes Origen: “No one can apprehend the meaning of it except he who has lain on Jesus’s breast and received from Jesus Mary to be his mother also.” There is poetic truth in this.
In his reflection on Jesus’s arrest in St Mathew’s Gospel, Fr Rutler makes it clear that “in the Christian drama, the audience and the players are the same … Christianity is not a spectator sport. Christians are in the arena, not in the grandstand.”
In other words, if we want to understand the Gospels we have to enter into them as participants in the transformative scenes that they evoke.
A final reference: reflecting on the passage in St Luke’s Gospel, where St Peter reminds Jesus plaintively that “We have given up our possessions and followed you” Heather King humorously recounts her own decision to give up her comfortable flat “with its emotional weight of decades of mementoes, photos, keepsakes and journals that had become a kind of psychic albatross”.
Buy these volumes as a Christmas present – for yourself.
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