Hesselblad’s affiliation with the Order founded by St. Bridget with the Swedish monastery at Vadstena was problematic from the start. St. Bridget’s Order whose spirituality reflected the Roman Catholic monastic tradition given its own particular charism by St. Bridget herself. Roman Catholic spirituality builds on God’s grace so that men and women can live celibate lives dedicated to God, life of study, prayer, silence and penance. Nuns and monks, and the Bridgettine had double communities, these cloistered individuals, kept relics, and prayed for the souls of their benefactors because in Catholicism one can pray with relics and can pray for the deceased. Catholics celebrating Saints’ feasts, the highly valued Marian devotions, the sacrifices of individuals for their Church, monasteries and convents, lands donated, all reflected a spirituality of faith and works and that is Roman Catholic and the medieval world of St. Bridget of Sweden. The insignia of her Order, Amor Meus Crucifixus Est, “My Love is the Crucified,” reflects precisely the image of five wounds of the Bridgettine habit. This visual expression of Christ’s passion with its rich medieval origins, reflects a Catholic spirituality that is lived by God’s grace. Hesselblad understood this and her mission was to pray for the conversion of Lutherans to the Roman Catholic Church.

The sixteenth century Lutheran Reformers rejected Roman Catholicism and certainly the monastic life as a powerful expression of Catholic spirituality. The Roman Catholic monasteries in Lutheran lands were confiscated, reduced to bare rocks, and their Churches replaced with Lutheran ecclesial communities.

So, what did Hasselblad have in mind? As a convert to Catholicism and identifying with her Swedish origins, she found her place in religious life, and the Order founded by St. Bridget. She strongly felt the Order should be present in Rome -- in the house where St. Bridget had lived. Hasselblad resolved to have an apostolic branch of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour with a contemplative life established in Rome. Docile to the Holy Spirit and the experiences she had in the different Bridgettine monasteries across Europe, Hasselblad patiently discerned where God was leading her and her Sisters. She remained committed to acquiring the original house of St. Bridget, the house used by Scandinavian Roman Catholic pilgrims.

Years of struggle and obstacles to surmount, Hesselblad acquired the Bridgetine House at Piazza Farnese in 1931; the Bridgettine branch she envisioned as part of the Bridgettine Order finally received papal approval in 1940.

Hesselblad clearly had evangelising efforts as an objective in her early years as a Bridgettine Sister reaching out to her fellow Swedes and Scandinavians ultimately with the aim bringing Lutherans back to their Roman Catholic faith. Her interaction with the secular Societas St. Birgittae in Sweden, a cultural society preserving a national figure, distances us from Catholic spirituality leaving us with nothing more than with a Swedish heroine and costumes of medieval Bridgettines. One of the drawbacks of the Reformation is the ongoing attempts to nationalise and politicise religion whether it’s King Henry the VIII as Head of the Church in England or King Gustav Vasa I of Sweden in control of the Lutheran Church. The Saints who are meant to be universal “catholic” figures, become national property for a museum, archives, or department of antiquities.

The Roman Catholic faith transcends culture. The beauty of Catholicism is we can honour any saint as our own beloved patron or patroness breaking through cultural, regional and national barriers. The beautiful work of Hesselblad with evangelising objectives as she had known from her own personal experience as a former Lutheran, the final chapters in Tjader’s book seems to obscure Hesselblad’s vision: Is Hasselblad’s goal an apostolic branch of Bridgettines? Establishing a pilgrim house in Rome for Scandinavians? Or obtaining a Bridgettine convent to include a Lutheran chapel?

The work published in 1972 with a second edition in 1987 is available at the Bridgettine Guest Houses with its inhouse publication, Sisters of Saint Bridget, at the Generate House in Rome.

Reading Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953), Ahmari acknowledges the “critique of modern relativism” (p. 153) which he extends to divinity: either the divinity of religions are all false, or one is true and the others false “(or half-true)” (p. 155). The Five Books of Moses have a profound spiritual impact on Ahmari, followed by Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth. Ahmari now understands, after the Fall, God brought reconciliation to man through His Son.

Although Ahmari first considers joining an evangelical Anglican community, Ahmari asserts, “I couldn’t help but detect the problem of authority in the Protestant orbit, which, I came to suspect, lay behind Protestantism’s theological shortcomings” (p. 193). One Sunday Ahmari walks into the Brompton Oratory where he stays for Mass; he conveys his experience of the Mass with deep emotions and spiritual thirst, and affirms: “I had found God in his Church” (p. 198). Receiving instructions on becoming a Roman Catholic by an Oratorian priest, Ahmari is instructed in Monseigneur A. N. Gilbey’s, We Believe, treating topics as, “authority of the Catholic Church,” “development of doctrine,” “centrality of the Blessed Virgin.” Regarding the Virgin Mary, Ahmari states, “On this point, and on love of Mary more generally, I required very little persuasion” (p. 202). Ahmari’s expresses a powerful testimony and ultimate reason for becoming a Roman Catholic, “In the end, then, I became Catholic because I concluded that Catholicism was Christianity in full, while other forms of Christianity were digressions from this fullness.

This book is highly recommended: to acknowledge the challenges confronting Muslims converting to Christianity; and to have a deeper appreciation of Roman Catholicism as a response to relativism.

Sohrab Ahmari, From Fire by Water, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2019.