Books recommended and reviewed by Fr. Bellusci
for Christian growth and awareness.
for Christian growth and awareness.
This book review, written on July 23/2019, memorial of Saint Bridget of Sweden. I obtained a copy of The Most Extraordinary Woman in Rome while leaving the Bridgettine Guest House in Turku, Finland. In fact, my Finnish friend, Father Tuomas Nyyssölä, recommended and obtained the book for me; the kind Bridgettine Sister in her distinct grey habit removed the book from the bookcase and gave it to me. Marguerite Tjader writes a beautiful biography drawing from the memoirs Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad, canonised by Pope Francis in 2016. Tjader presents the intense spiritual journey of the Swedish-born Hasselblad (1870). The account of Hasselblad’s life operates at several levels: Hasselblad’s conversion from Lutheranism to Catholicism; becoming a Sister of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour (permission granted by Pope Pius X, 1906); struggles to establish a Branch of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour (OSSS); acquiring the Carmelite convent where St. Bridget had lived (1350-1373) for the Bridgettine Sisters; assuring the use of the Bridgettine Roman guest house for its original purpose, Swedish and Scandinavian Catholic pilgrims visiting Rome; finally, the transition to an ecumenical enterprise where work the Catholic convent also contains a chapel serving Lutheran Scandinavians
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Sohrab Ahmari beautifully narrates his journey from Islam to Roman Catholicism in his autobiography, From Fire by Water. Ahmari’s conversion story begins in the the Islamic Republic of Iran following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the experiences of an Islamic theocracy, “where God appears in the form of floggings and judicial amputations, scowling ayatollahs and secret police” (p. 62). Ahmari believes that his distancing himself from God also had to do with “the Islam of Khomeini and his followers…a religion that only imposes -- and that by the sword or the suicide bomber” (p. 63). Arriving in Utah with his mother, Ahmari immerses himself in “goth subculture,” identifying himself as an atheist and a nihilist, drawn to Friedrich Nietzsche, existentialists as in Jean-Paul Sartre, and eventually gravitates towards left-wing thinkers under the influence of Marxism, “Yet Marxism’s greatest attraction was its religious spirit” (p. 103). Remaining steadfast in leftist ideologies Ahmari discovers the postmodernism of Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Foucault. The chapter, “Three Feasts” vividly describes Ahmari’s state of moral degradation. Ahmari has reached rock bottom. After his third “feast” asking himself the question, “When are you going to change,” Ahmari finds himself walking past a Capuchin monastery and walks in; his first exposure to a Roman Catholic Mass. The religious experience makes a significant impact on Ahmari, “After these encounters with the Mass, I could no longer truthfully describe myself as an atheist” (p. 148). And yet, Ahmari admits, “At no point did I consider taking up the religion that the accident of my birth assigned me. The Islamic Republic had ruined Islam for me, and the argument that radical Islamism was a gross distortion of an otherwise peaceful rand reasonable faith never persuaded me…I knew the Arabs had converted the Persian Empire at the edge of the sword, not through interfaith dialogue” (p. 148). |
AuthorFr. David Bellusci, O.P. List by TitlesNo Greater Love Archives
June 2020
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