Deep and Strong
David Scott is the former Editor of Our Sunday Visitor and currently works as a writer and researcher at Scott Hahn's St. Paul Center for Biblical Study. He’s also the author of A Revolution of Love: The Meaning of Mother Teresa.
I can’t honestly say I enjoyed this book as much as A Revolution of Love, but that’s hardly an insult, since I think A Revolution of Love has the potential to be a modern-day masterpiece: short, pithy, deep, and strong.
The Catholic Passion (Loyola Press, 2005) is deep and strong, but not particularly short and not pithy. Which isn’t surprising since its main purpose is to describe major aspects of Catholic faith, and that’s not a topic that lends itself to bullet passages.
But even though many of the subjects are fundamental (Jesus’ life, the mission of the Church, the Our Father, the Bible, the sacraments), Scott consistently hits the subjects from different angles by drawing on the words and lives of the Church’s great men and women.
Gems of Stories
There is, for instance, the example of Julian Green, the fine Catholic novelist, who taught himself Hebrew in order to read and pray the Old Testament in its original tongue, saying, “Every time I open the Bible, I find an allusion to my life, to my problems.”
And the life of Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century worker in a Carmelite kitchen, who anticipated St. Therese’s Little Way, saying, “it is not necessary to have important things to do. I flip my little omelet in the frying pan for the love of God…. When I can do nothing else, it is enough for me to pick up a straw from the ground for the love of God.”
And a barrage of quotes from saints and lay people: the Catholic “believes that in that dim corner, and in that brief ritual, God has really remade him in his own image…. The accumulations of time can no longer terrify. He may be great and gouty, but he is only five minutes old” (G.K. Chesterton). “Without prayer, without contact of heart and soul with God, one never rises beyond mediocrity” (Blessed Columba Marmion). “Ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (St. Jerome).
In these stories and quotes, the gems in the book are found. I wish there were even more, but that’s not meant as a criticism of Scott. His prose dominates the book and that’s a good thing: he writes beautifully and in a way that might motivate a Catholic, especially a lackadaisical one, to delve into the faith.
A Lot of Beauty Besides
And that, of course, is Scott’s intent. The book, after all, is called The Catholic Passion. It’s not The Catholic Believe-What-You-Want Because No One Gives a Rip or Theological Boredom. The book is about passion — passion for one’s faith, passion for God.
If you know of a Catholic who is just going through the motions, buy him this book. It would make an especially good gift for someone to open on Christmas morning — the cover and binding are almost as beautiful as the message inside.
And that’s a lot of beauty for one package.
Of course, it isn’t really surprising. There’s an amazing amount of beauty in our Catholic faith.
[Editor’s Note: Help support Catholic Exchange by getting your copies of The Catholic Passion from our online store.]
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
