Word Without End: The Mass – Splendor of the Incarnation by Francis J Pierson, £10 (from catholicstore.com)
Pierson, an educated Catholic layman but not a professional theologian, has written the best book on the Mass that I have read for a long time. Subtitled How the Power of Love Conquers Man’s Love of Power, the book describes the three great “miracles” of the Christian faith: the Incarnation, the Resurrection and the Eucharist, and shows how the Eucharist “lifts both the Incarnation and the Resurrection from the static pages of history and makes them present, vital and relevant to every succeeding generation”.
Considering the broad sweep of the development of historical Christianity, Pierson asks why it was that this small sect ended up inheriting the entire Roman world, “considering that the founder and genius behind the whole movement was a man cut down in his prime”. The chapter on Darwin demonstrates how the naturalist’s “deconstruction of man” is at odds with the Christian sense of humanity, not because faith is opposed to science but because science on its own is destructive.
Perhaps because he is not writing as a theologian, the author manages to make the tenets of the faith exciting, fresh and moving as if one were discovering them for the first time. Eloquent and erudite, this book is to be heartily recommended.
Poverty – Simplicity – Joy: Stories of St Francis and his Companions for Everyone by Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, New City, £9.99
This book is part of a series written and illustrated by Elizabeth Ruth Obbard OCD, with the purpose of introducing great saints and classic texts to a modern readership. The author has abridged the texts in order to make them more “reader-friendly” for those who might be put off by the formal or archaic features of the originals. The series includes introductions to Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, St Francis de Sales, St Thérèse, Hildegard of Bingen and Jean-Pierre de Caussade. Obbard’s illustrations are in her characteristic “naïve” style – but are not thereby exclusively addressed to young people.
As she writes in her introduction to this slim volume (each in the series is approximately 100 pages): “Occasionally in the Church some saint is raised up who proves to have a universal significance that endures through the ages. Such a one was Francis of Assisi, whose life continues to inspire countless thousands of Christians, and even people of other faiths and none.”
Among the saint’s admirers is Pope Francis, who took his papal name from the saint most closely identified with “Lady Poverty”.
This attractive book includes the story of St Francis’s life, some miracles associated with him, selections from his preaching, an account of the growth of the Franciscan order and a select bibliography.
Life Lessons by Patrick Madrid, Ignatius Press, £13
Well-known American Catholic apologist and author Patrick Madrid subtitles his book Fifty Things I Learned in My First Fifty Years. With humour and humility he selects 50 occasions when he behaved with a lack of charity, or was judgmental or selfish, or where his public persona as a good, upstanding Catholic collided with the personal temptation to be angry or dismissive.
Each chapter concludes with the appropriate verse from Scripture which underlines the “lesson” he has (often ruefully) learned. There are many incidents that readers will recognise from their own lives, not least the times when God seemed not to answer prayer which, in retrospect, was for a better outcome than could have been imagined.
The author, who comes from a devout Catholic family of eight children and had a conversion experience in his 20s, learns to marvel “at the mysterious power of God’s grace” which brought a greater good out of a wish which had been thwarted.
Madrid, the father of 11 children himself, believes that the most important lesson you can teach your children is that “God loves you and He wants you to love Him back”. As an 11-year-old, he once found himself stuck in a car with an “atheist lady” who was giving him a lift to a sports match. She scoffed at his mention of God and gave him the usual scientific rebuttal of God’s existence which he found he could not answer. Later he reflects: “If the Atheist Lady hadn’t hammered me with all those questions about God all those years ago, maybe I wouldn’t have felt compelled to find the answers.”
He describes one occasion when he thought he had led a Southern Baptist towards conversion and invited him to visit his own parish church. The door was locked so they had to enter through the parish hall. The Southern Baptist, who didn’t smoke, drink or gamble, found himself amid an uproarious gathering of Catholics, all smoking heavily, surrounded by crates of beer and playing bingo with gusto. Madrid ruefully comments that this was one potential convert who got away.
I would recommend this book particularly as a present for teenage boys or young men who are querying their faith and need an enthusiastic adult male exemplar.
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