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diff --git a/contents/article/1955-book_review_of_i_want_to_see_god_and_i_am_daughter_of_the_church/en.txt b/contents/article/1955-book_review_of_i_want_to_see_god_and_i_am_daughter_of_the_church/en.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..31e4ecf --- /dev/null +++ b/contents/article/1955-book_review_of_i_want_to_see_god_and_i_am_daughter_of_the_church/en.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +# Book review of "I Want to See God" and "I am Daughter of the Church" + +Book reviews of the books by Father Marie-Eugene, O.C.D., Fides Publishers + +For many souls these two volumes should prove an instrument for progress in prayer hitherto unavailable—if for no other reason than that they make the authentic experience, common sense and theology of the Carmelite tradition easily available to spiritual directors. + +The author is a Frenchman, a Carmelite, now one of the major superiors of the Order. During the last war he was called to active military duty and he held a regular commission as a naval commander. When he finally returned to monastic life a group of lay people asked him to give them a course on prayer. The lectures he prepared for them are published in these two volumes. + +His intent is to teach the art and science of prayer to those who are thirsty for God but who find it difficult to grasp the language of the Masters of the Carmelite Reform, and furthermore are frightened away from their original writings by the glorious hodgepodge in many pages of St. Theresa and St. John's theological mole. For these souls Father Eugene-Marie wishes to be a source and a guide to the originals, himself trying to be “as unobtrusive as possible in order to let the Masters themselves speak, gathering their teachings exclusively, clarifying them by parallel passages and arranging them in a synthesis which would still be theirs.” He does all this by incasing some of the most significant passages of the Masters (and he is not afraid of repeating the same text over and over again) in a text which is clear, well-organized, the fruit of sound modern theological thought, formed on the background of the spiritual experience of the last centuries which have made us understand better much of the writing of the Sixteenth Century. + +The general outline of the two volumes follows the plan of St. Theresa’s _Book of the Mansions_, but as far as possible organizes the material around practical topics: the devil, spiritual reading, spiritual direction, friendship, Our Lady as Mediatrix, etc. This attempt to tidy things up makes the book even more useful for spiritual reading and meditation on a particular topic. It also helps to a certain—although imperfect—degree to dispel the temptation to see in the succession of the “mansions” a rigid plan which would be almost binding on God. Any strict adherence to the plan outlined by St. Theresa in the _Interior Castle_ tends to neglect a bit the reality that in some souls—perhaps +particularly in souls who live in the world without the external order +of a rule and a cell—God seems inclined to anticipate some of the +intimacies and darkness which the _Castle_ assigns to later stages, thus +telescoping the journey in a strange way. + +The last chapter of the second volume, on the saint in the Whole Christ, is a treatise on the role of prayer in the apostolate and seems to point out that if the Reformers of Carmel had nothing to do with any new method of the apostolate, they nevertheless formed a method +and science of the formation of apostles. + +This work is a thorough, theological, rather complete treatise on prayer in the Carmelite (strictly speaking, Theresian) tradition without the usual polemics on predestination and infused contemplation which seem to be standard part of other works with the same purpose. This makes the book unique and enjoyable as well for the layman who would be annoyed by such theoretical polemics as for the priest who has been put off by the dryness and learned bickering in the usual handbook of ascetical and mystical theology. + +The book tends to form and to foster in the soul a spirit for prayer in the atmosphere of Carmel. It is not only an exposition but a continuous invitation, and the translation conserves very well the quality of persuasion of the spoken word. Again and again the reader cannot +help stopping and praying: “Oh let me come that close to You.” + +Peter Canon |