Extremely Articulate and Well Read

I was thoroughly surprised by this book. It is formatted as a series of questions and answers and I cannot help but to admire the level of knowledge that he has in answering each of these questions. From quoting early christian philosophers to renaissance thinkers and finally tying everything together with messages from the Bible.

There were some funny bits like for example, when asked on Whether God Exists? He ended his rather expansive explanation with a recommendation to read St. Thomas' Summa Theologica :P

In Summary, it is a message of sharing and understanding with other religions as well as schisms within the church. Hard questions such as Why God allowed suffering was covered rather briefly and I must say somewhat predictably, but alas, alot of the predictable answers are the ones hardest to follow and execute.

What you might ask his reasons were? Well, go read the book!

Crossing the threshold of Love.

The threshold we must hope to cross is the opening into a world where Love rules. Do we have the courage to trust and cross over? There are already many excellent reviews of this book at this site. Instead let me quote a few interesting observations from the book:

* We should not fear the truth about ourselves.

* In prayer then, the true protagonist is God... we must pray with "inexpressible groanings."

* Prayer is a search for God, but also a revelation of God.

* Could God go further in His stooping down, in His drawing near to man ...? In a certain sense God has gone too far .. perhaps become a stumbling block...

* Christ is absolutely original and absolutely unique ... Christ is so human! ... the entire history of humanity, finds in Him its expression before God. And not before a distant, unreachable God .. but before a God ... that is indeed He.

* ...The Enlightenment put to one side the true God - in particular, God the Redeemer ... man was supposed to live by his reason alone, as if God did not exist... It was crucial that such a God be expelled from the world.

* God so loved the world ... In this way Jesus makes us understand that the world is not the source of man's ultimate happiness.

* Convincing the world of sin means creating the conditions of its salvation.

* The history of salvation is also the history of man's continual judgment of God.

* Could God have justified Himself before human history, so full of suffering, without placing Christ's Cross at the center of that history?

and much much more

A MOVING WORK BY A GREAT SPIRITUAL LEADER

The recent death of Pope John Paul II will more than likely introduce many new readers to this modern classic. It is a collection of writings published in 1994, the same year that THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH was promulgated. While the book has a great deal of content, and can be dogmatic at times (the word dogmatic is not mean to be a criticism-it is one of the functions of a Pope to clarify and at times define dogma), it is an intriguing book. While speaking about issues such as life, faith, the existence of God, the importance of prayer, salvation, and hope, he weaves Church teaching and personal anecdotes. We get a sense of the Pope's faith in the book, but we know that his faith was something he struggled with as well as something that got him through difficult times. We see he has favorite passages of scripture, a variety of theologians who inspire him, the ways in which Jesus' words "Be Not Afraid" became the theme of just about everything he did as Pope, and most of all we see a deep love of God, a dedication to following his son Jesus, a string devotion to Mary, and a generosity in his accepting his call.

There are many ways in which we can understand and appreciate Pope John Paul II. We can have a theological and philosophical understanding of him by studying the Catechism and his many encyclicals. We can understand him in terms of human rights by examining his many trips around the world and his reasons behind many of the trips. We can understand his place in history by recalling his role in the end of Communism and we can understand his hope for peace and reconciliation by looking at the example he set by forgiving the man who tried to assassinate him. Yet looking at any one of these areas gives a person a limited understanding of this great leader and person of faith. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE helps us understand the whole of Pope John Paul II and helps us appreciate the gift he was to so many-Catholic and non-Catholic alike.