An Easter Anthology
Arthur Howells
Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99, 288 pages
When thinking of anthologies, two types come immediately to mind: those that gather material from the one author, and those that gather material from multiple authors. Of these, the latter is the more fraught with peril, as the editor’s preference and taste has far more impact. The multi-author anthology faces the real prospect of being a hit-or-miss affair.
With that caveat in mind, let us address Arthur Howells’ paschal anthology. The term “paschal” is rather more accurate, even by Canon Howells’ own reasoning, as he begins his chronological arrangement on Palm Sunday and ends it on Pentecost. Quite rightly, he observes in his introduction that “we can’t have Easter without Holy Week”. Thus, the anthology is, in fact, intended to be a companion for the season of the Lord’s passion and death, resurrection and ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit. This contextualisation of Easter is to be welcomed.
Structurally, the book covers each day from Palm Sunday to Pentecost, and presents a passage of scripture, followed by a reflection relevant to (though not always explicitly related to) the scripture, followed by a “prayer” piece. Most of these “prayers” are freely composed and un-ascribed, some are hymns or liturgical texts, and on one day the prayer and reflection are combined. The structure is what we might call basic lectio divina: scripture-reflection-prayerful response. The scripture, however, is not tied to the liturgical lectionary.
Canon Howells is an Anglican, and this is very much an Anglican book. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that this is an Anglican book with an ecumenical flavour. Of the 46 writers from whom he has sourced material for the anthology, 31 are Anglican, 12 are Catholic, and the remaining three are Methodist, Russian Orthodox and “evangelical”. There is one additional source, the anonymous author(s) of “Holy Week Worship for the Methodist Church 2021”. The potted biographies at the end of the book are welcome. There are some big names among them: Rowan Williams (of course), Tom Wright, Desmond Tutu, Alister McGrath and CS Lewis. Among the Catholics are several Benedictines (male and female), Pope Francis, Carlo Carretto, Timothy Radcliffe, Charles de Foucauld, Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr and Gerald Hughes. Some of the writers have been what we might today call denominationally fluid.
With such a spread of writers it is inevitable that for every reader there will surely be hits and misses. For this reader, the hits tended to come from the lesser names – indeed often unknown names. Maggi Dawn’s contribution for Holy Saturday was sensible and insightful. The Methodist Holy Week Worship serves up a fine reflection for Palm Sunday, with its linking of the donkey to Zechariah 9:9, and its series of pregnant questions as to what attitude Jesus was adopting as he entered on ass-back into Jerusalem.
On Easter Friday, Tom Smail’s positive presentation of repentance as the means by which to address the institutional decline of Christianity was a pleasure to read, and on Monday of the third week of Easter, Robert Llewelyn’s treatment of the reciprocity of Christ-bearing is a helpful encouragement to healthy Christian attitude. Tom Smail does it again on Friday of the fourth week of Easter with his effective presentation of Easter joy as ever-mindful of the cross, offering a source of hope in those moments of our lives “when God appears to have turned away his face”.
From the pages of history, Father Andrew SDC presents our Lord’s “Come unto Me” as the pre-condition for His “go out to the whole world in a clear and commonsense way”, noting that “[i]n proportion as we really come to Him, in that proportion shall we go forth with fruitfulness.” Paula Gooder, Margaret Guenther, Brian McLaren and Michael Mayne also offered high points; among the bigger names, Alister McGrath and Sister Maria Boulding OSB were particularly helpful.
There are some misses, too. More than one Catholic contributor struck this reader as rather underwhelming, and a couple of the bigger Catholic names offered banalities or even, in one instance, utter tosh. One senior Anglican cleric’s woke taint undermined what was otherwise an acceptable piece. More than once it seemed the writer – or rather the editor, in his choice of a writer’s excerpt – missed the essential challenge of the scripture in question.
The book in general tends to prefer consolation to challenge, and many will find this book a happy companion through Easter. There are a few bursts of something approaching challenge, but not nearly enough. This is not to criticise Canon Howells. One assumes his choices reflect his priorities, and those of a publisher keen to sell books. Nevertheless, too much of the published spirituality in our day seeks to soothe Christians who are already overdosed with consolation. The relative absence of personal challenge in the contemporary spirituality industry is surely not coincidental to the malaise Christianity is enduring, in the west at least. An anthology such as Canon Howells’ presents an excellent opportunity to prick the self-indulgent spiritual bubble in which too many well-intentioned Christians live.
For all that, this weakness may also be a strength. As long as one reads this book with critical faculties engaged, then its discordant notes allow one to nourish insight. The thinking provoked by a point that was missed or fudged, for example, is an opportunity for the engaged reader to clarify a personal position on an issue. For this reason, the book can be helpful to almost all readers, as long as one does not soak in every text indiscriminately like a sponge.
The scriptural translation is largely from the NIV – not a Catholic favourite – with a few intrusions from a translation called The Message, which interprets the scripture too much for comfort. As one would expect from Hodder & Stoughton, the book is handsomely produced, and would make an attractive gift. There is only one typo this reader spotted, in the scripture reference for Easter Tuesday, which is apparently from St John’s Gospel, but actually from his First Letter. That’s a pretty good effort, all told.
Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman is a monk of Douai Abbey
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