 HOME TONIGHT: Further Reflections
on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, by
Henri J. M. Nouwen. Doubleday. 131
pp. $15.95.
Reviewed by NORM LANGENBRUNNER,
a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati,
pastor of St. Bernard of Clairvaux Church,
and popular speaker and mission preacher.
HENRI NOUWEN is the “wounded
healer” personified. To his last days he
was afflicted by bouts of loneliness,
depression and an intense hunger to be
loved. His ministry, however, and his
books have provided others who are
hurting with the healing, hope and
peace for which he himself longed. His
biographer, Michael Ford, calls him the
“wounded prophet.”
Among Nouwen’s most
popular books is his meditation
on Jesus’ parable
about the prodigal son
and Rembrandt’s painting
The Return of the Prodigal
Son, which interprets that
parable.
Having spent several
years reflecting on the
Gospel story and many
hours sitting in front of
the actual painting in the
Hermitage in St. Petersburg,
Russia, Nouwen wrote a beautiful
book focusing, one by one, on the
younger son, the elder son and the
merciful father.
Home Tonight is a posthumous publication
of the spiritual conferences
for a three-day workshop Nouwen gave
to a group of caregivers from L’Arche
communities around the world. One
of the residents at L’Arche Daybreak,
the home for people with multiple
disabilities in Toronto, Canada, where
Nouwen served as chaplain, was fond
of asking him, “Are you home tonight?”
That question struck a chord in
Nouwen, who recognized that the parable
of the prodigal was a story of coming
home.
Transcribing portions of Nouwen’s
conferences based upon the parable
and the painting, the Henri Nouwen
Legacy Trust has reproduced, 13 years
after his death, an insightful, inspiring
and intimate retreat for all who are
still looking for their spiritual home.
The tragedies and suffering in Rembrandt’s
life undoubtedly sensitized the
artist to the compassion and unconditional
love of the prodigal’s father. The
clinical depression and dysfunction in
Nouwen’s life unquestionably sensitized
the priest/teacher to the comfort
and acceptance depicted by Rembrandt
and recorded by the evangelist Luke.
Now in Home Tonight, those of us
who are afraid, broken or condemned
can find the same solace
and sympathy which
Rembrandt and Nouwen
discovered in the homecoming
of the prodigal
son.
Even more than in The
Return of the Prodigal Son,
this second set of reflections
gives the reader a
sense of having Nouwen
as one’s personal retreat
director. Reflecting on his
own story, Nouwen finds
consolation in the younger son’s coming
to see that, although he had squandered
everything he owned, there remained
one possession that his father preserved—the prodigal’s place in the family.
Nouwen also puts himself in the
place of the elder son and discovers in
him a resentment which makes the
“good son” even poorer than his brother.
Fans of Nouwen will not be disappointed
in this latest offering. Small
Church communities will find it a valuable
resource for prayer and reflection.
Anyone in pain, regardless of his or her
religious affiliation, will find in Home
Tonight an encouraging, consoling, liberating
presentation on God the Father’s
unconditional love for his children.
You can order HOME TONIGHT: Further Reflections
on the Parable of the Prodigal Son from St. Francis Bookshop.
GOD’S WAR: A New History of the
Crusades, by Christopher Tyerman.
Harvard University Press. 1,024 pp.
$35, hardcover; $22.95, paperback.
Reviewed by the REV. MICHAEL P. ORSI,
Ed.D., research fellow in law and religion
at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.
CHRISTOPHER TYERMAN is a fellow in
history at Hertford College, Oxford.
His book God’s War: A New History of the
Crusades, is a tour de force that goes
well beyond the historical events
described.
Tyerman richly wraps the sporadic
episodes of the Crusades in three sets of
ideas: 1) the underlying theology of
the “Just War” that was seen as giving
the Crusades their validity; 2) the pragmatic
hopes for a unified and expanded
Christendom (augmented by the
prospects for personal gain that motivated
many of the promoters and participants);
and 3) the liturgical rituals
and personal piety that helped to keep
the vision of reclaiming Christ’s patrimony
in the Holy Land alive for
approximately 400 years.
The vision of Christ’s reign on earth
spurred the development of the
medieval just-war theory. It combined
some of the best motives for evangelizing
nonbelievers with the promise of
sanctity for those who “took the cross”
(who were known as the crucesignati)
and went on crusade.
Visions of martyrdom for Christ,
along with the promise of indulgences
(special pardons for past sins), encouraged
the devout, such as Peter the Hermit
(1095) during the First Crusade
and the pious King Louis IX (1270)
during the last great Crusade.
Significantly, Tyerman disabuses us of the notion that there is a parallel
between the Crusades and the jihad
against the West preached by the radical
Islam of today. Crusading, he notes,
was a public civic activity
carried on by the forces of
civil government (whereas
the contemporary phenomenon
of jihad, as practiced
by Al Qaeda and other
Islamic groups, is a “holy
war” being prosecuted specifically
by a religious community).
In the popular religious
mind, crusading encouraged
unity with the papacy,
the one institution that
held the dual swords of temporal and
spiritual power, and furthered cohesiveness
among Europe’s people.
The Crusades were ultimately unsuccessful
in establishing a Christian kingdom
in the East. Tyerman says that the
Crusades, however, “encouraged sensitivity
to Christendom’s place in the
wider world of the three classical continents
of Europe, Africa and Asia” and,
after 1500, “made possible the extension
of Western European culture and
power to all parts of the globe.”
A particularly fascinating aspect of
Tyerman’s book is its explanation of
how liturgical events promoted the
vision of a purified Christian world
and generated enthusiasm for crusading.
Moderns tend not to appreciate
the psychological impact of ritual. The
denuding of liturgical pageantry and
symbol in the Protestant Reformation
and, more recently, within Catholicism
itself has jeopardized a powerful tool for
strengthening the external cohesiveness
of the faith and for advancing the
Church’s mission.
Tyerman demonstrates how liturgical
theatricality, combined with preaching
and the promise of Urban II in 1095
that whoever “for devotion alone, not to
gain honor or money, goes to Jerusalem
to liberate the Church of God can substitute
this journey for all penance,” captured
the medieval imagination.
“The concentration on the figure,
passion and redemptive nature of
Christ crucified with the Mass,” he
writes, “provided the closest association
with the aims of the Crusade sermons
and rituals for wearing the cross
[becoming a crusader].”
A confluence of events and circumstances,
occurring at a particular
point in time, gave
rise to the crusader mentality,
which was a phenomenon
of history that
had its moment, exerted its
influence and then passed
from the stage of Christian
experience.
Today, religion-justified
warfare is viewed as reflecting
an antiquated cosmology
embraced only by a
marginalized fringe of radical
Muslims, premillenarian Christians,
and ultra-Orthodox Jews intent on restoring
the Temple in Jerusalem.
The Crusades, however, should not be
dismissed as an anachronism, because
they provide caveats and lessons for us
today, especially regarding the power
of religion to move world events. Pope
Benedict XVI favors a dialogue based
on reason. His undelivered speech at La
Sapienza University (January 18, 2008)
on the role of the pope, the university,
religion and primacy of truth in Christ
is an excellent road map for human
progress in avoiding any legitimizing
of a present or future “God’s War.” (This
speech is available at www.vatican.va in the section “Papal Speeches.”)
You can order GOD’S WAR: A New History of the
Crusades from St.
Francis Bookshop.
EXILES: A Novel, by Ron Hansen.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 226 pp. $23,
hardcover; $14, paperback.
Reviewed by MITCH FINLEY, author of
more than 30 books for Catholic readers,
most recently The Rosary Handbook: A
Guide for Newcomers, Old-Timers, and
Those In Between (The Word Among Us
Press).
READERS MAY WELL recognize the
name of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the
late 19th-century English convert and Jesuit priest who wrote such famous
poems as “Pied Beauty” and “God’s
Grandeur.” Some may also recognize
the title of another long poem Hopkins
wrote, “The Wreck of the Deutschland.”
It is this last poem that inspired
Santa Clara University
teacher and author Ron
Hansen’s most recent novel,
Exiles.
Hansen’s earlier novels
include a contemporary
classic spiritual novel, Mariette
in Ecstasy, Atticus (a
finalist for the National
Book Award), Hitler’s Niece,
The Assassination of Jesse
James by the Coward Robert
Ford (which led to the 2007
movie of the same name)
and a collection of theological essays,
A Stay Against Confusion. Hansen is also
a deacon of the Diocese of San Jose.
“The Wreck of the Deutschland” is
not generally thought of as one of
Hopkins’s more accessible works. In it
Hopkins pondered poetically the
December 1875 wreck of a German sailing
ship in a storm off the English
coast. In particular, Hopkins was moved
by news reports that among those who
lost their lives were five German nuns.
Virtually nothing is known today
about the five nuns. Considerably more
of a biographical nature is available
about Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.
Ron Hansen recognized that the
nuns, on their way to missionary work
in the United States, could certainly
be thought of as exiles. But Hopkins,
too, was an exile. Spiritually, by virtue
of his conversion to Catholicism, he
was an exile from his family—who
didn’t even attend his priestly ordination—and from the dominant English
culture.
He was an exile, too, among many of
his Jesuit confreres, who failed to
understand him as a person and his
genius as a poet.
Finally, he was an exile
in the community of English
poets who failed to
comprehend his spirituality
and poetic inspiration.
Together with fictionalized
biographical discussions
of each of the five
German nuns, Ron Hansen
weaves narratives of various
episodes in the life of
Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The crew and other passengers
on the Deutschland also become
real, intriguing, three-dimensional
characters who take their rightful place
in the narrative.
Hansen draws the reader into the
story in ways that deeply touch heart
and mind, holding him or her
enthralled from first page to last.
Exiles is one of the best contemporary
short novels this reviewer has ever
read. It’s a masterpiece both as fiction
and as what earlier generations called
“spiritual reading.” Don’t miss it, whatever
you do.
You can order EXILES: A Novel from St.
Francis Bookshop.
GOD AT THE RITZ: Attraction to
Infinity, by Lorenzo Albacete. Crossroad
Publishing Company. 208 pp.
$14.95.
Reviewed by PATRICIA M. BERLINER,
C.S.J., Ph.D., a Sister of St. Joseph of Brentwood,
New York, and a licensed psychologist
in private practice in New York City.
She is the author of Touching Your
Lifethread and Revaluing the Feminine:
A Process of Psychospiritual Change.
THE “ACCLAIM” PAGE, which prefaces
Msgr. Albacete’s work, would
suggest that this is an entertaining
book, “filled with edgy humor,” according
to Publishers Weekly. This was
not my experience. I view the book
as an autobiographical treatise on
science and God, and perhaps the
interaction of each to the other.
Presented as a sort of “Chicken Soup
for the Intelligentsia,” the chapters
range from deeply scientific to bordering
on the wondrous.
Several of Albacete’s essays/conversations
adeptly and compassionately
address the great mysteries of life—including the painful recognition of
evil in the concentration camps of the
Nazis, as well as in our own individual
hearts. I was deeply moved by the chapter
“Cursing the Infinite?,” which
recounts a conversation between Holocaust
survivor Elie Wiesel and Francois
Mauriac, whose wife was aghast at the
sight of Jewish children being torn from
their mothers’ arms at the Austerlitz
train station. Then Wiesel told his own
story, a painful recognition of evil, not
only in the concentration camps, but
also in our own hearts and lives.
Msgr. Albacete’s media career was
launched when PBS-TV invited him to
be a consultant on their Frontline series.
By his account, one of the most difficult
segments was the one dedicated to
faith, a conversation centered on
whether it was possible to reconcile
fidelity to faith with the culture of the
Third Millennium. This question—and
the challenge it presented—thrust
Albacete and his media colleagues more
deeply into the search for truth, justice,
solidarity and personal development, a
search that leads into mystery.
Albacete maintains that “the first
way in which a truly human society
promotes human creative work is by
protecting those structures of companionship
through which we enjoy
the help necessary to work creatively.”
But he almost alienates one from the
other by his assessment that science is
unable to grasp spiritual realities, while
using spirituality to undervalue the
contribution of modern science, social
sciences and psychology.
As a practicing psychologist, as well
as a disciple of the spiritual life, I found
his analysis of psychology and its relationship
to the life and work of the
spirit to be somewhat simplistic. The
hunger for God, “the good,” is universal
and multidimensional. I would have
preferred a more holistic framework,
in which the complex interaction among body, mind and spirit is
affirmed.
In truth, the more “together” each of
us becomes within our own persons,
the more freely will individuals, societies
and civilizations approach the
throne of God, in whom we live and
move and have our being.
You can order GOD AT THE RITZ: Attraction to
Infinity from St. Francis Bookshop.
ENCOUNTERING THE MYSTERY:
Understanding Orthodox Christianity
Today, by Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew. Doubleday. 302 pp.
$22.95.
Reviewed by MICHAEL J. DALEY, a religion
teacher at St. Xavier High School in
Cincinnati, Ohio.
FOLLOWING THE EXAMPLE of his
“ecclesiastical colleagues”—Popes John
Paul II and Benedict XVI—Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew has communicated
his extensive understanding of
the Christian tradition in book form—not from a Catholic perspective, mind
you, but an Orthodox one.
Yet, in so many ways, Encountering the
Mystery rang “catholic,” or “universal,”
to me. I was surprised to read that Patriarch
Bartholomew had done some of
his advanced theological studies in
Rome at the Pontifical Oriental Institute
during the Second Vatican Council
(1962-1965). Here he was introduced
to the thought of the great 20th-century
Catholic theologians Yves Congar and
Henri de Lubac. The book reveals Patriarch
Bartholomew’s deep knowledge of
his own tradition and other Christian
and non-Christian ones as well.
The book begins with an informative
Foreword by Orthodox Bishop Kallistos
Ware (Oxford, U.K.). Bishop Ware provides
the reader an interpretive lens
through which to understand the person
and writings of Patriarch
Bartholomew, the 270th archbishop of
Constantinople and spiritual head of
Orthodox Christianity. It is a lens
focused on the value of the human
person and the connecting themes of
mystery, freedom, relationship and
wholeness. This is followed by a biographical
note by Professor John Chryssavgis.
What emerges is a person whose
worldview has been permeated by the
Orthodox faith.
In regard to his own role, Patriarch
Bartholomew is the shepherd of some
300 million faithful. Lacking the centralized
authority of the Catholic
Church, Patriarch Bartholomew serves
as a point, or center, of unity for Orthodox
Christianity. As “first among
equals,” he seeks to coordinate and foster
consensus among the independent
and equal national Churches.
According to Patriarch Bartholomew,
Orthodoxy sees itself “as a seamless
continuation and spiritual succession of
the early Church of the apostles, martyrs,
confessors, monastics, great teachers
and saints.” Though strongly rooted
in the past, Orthodox Christianity also
looks toward the future. Patriarch
Bartholomew’s own initiatives in the
area of interreligious dialogue and concern
for the environment (for which he
has been called the “Green Patriarch”)
only serve to highlight how Orthodoxy
balances tradition with present-day
concerns.
For a Western, Catholic Christian like myself, Patriarch Bartholomew
offers a powerful reminder of the lasting
significance of Orthodox Christianity,
calling it “the hidden treasure
of the West.” One need only mention
the first several Church councils (Nicea,
325 A.D.; Constantinople, 381 A.D.;
Ephesus, 431 A.D.; and Chalcedon, 451
A.D.), Apostolic Fathers like
Ignatius of Antioch and
Polycarp, and other Church
fathers like the Cappadocians—Basil the Great,
Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory
Nazianzus—and John
Chrysostom to see the foundational
role that Orthodoxy
played and continues
to have in the formation of
the Christian tradition.
One thing that has always
drawn me to Orthodoxy
has been its art, particularly icons.
Patriarch Bartholomew emphasizes that
the role of icons (sacred images) is to
make the invisible visible. It is a very
incarnational form of artistic expression.
Whether through art, architecture
or liturgical worship, the goal of
Orthodoxy is to bring heaven to earth.
In this sense, it is a sacramental, or
“Catholic,” view of the world.
Orthodoxy also has a rich theological
tradition. For Patriarch Bartholomew,
theology is not chiefly
about the intellect but rather about
relationship. According
to him, theology “derives
from, is produced by and
is interpreted within the
experience of the total community.”
Recognizing the transcendence
of God, the Orthodox
tradition states that
sometimes the best we can
say of God is what God is
not, or remain silent. It is
called apophatic theology. It
makes clear that God is
with us, yet also beyond us.
A strong feature of the book is Patriarch
Bartholomew’s engagement of
Orthodox Christianity with the modern
world. Necessarily, he addresses
issues of ecology, conscience and human
rights, poverty and globalization,
racism and fundamentalism, and war
and peace.
Patriarch Bartholomew writes, “Concern,
then, for ecological issues is
directly related to concern for issues of
social justice and particularly world
hunger.” All are interrelated. In this
vein he calls for a new worldview, one
that recognizes the earth as a “gift
inherited from above” which must be
joined with a “eucharistic spirit” and
“ascetic ethos.”
The book serves as a valuable introduction
to not only the Orthodox tradition
but also the whole Christian
tradition in general.
You can order ENCOUNTERING THE MYSTERY:
Understanding Orthodox Christianity
Today from St.
Francis Bookshop.
| 
