The Mystery of Love - Softcover

Hume, Basil Osb; Hume, Cardinal Basil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0232525862 ISBN 13: 9780232525861

Publisher: Darton Longman and Todd, 2004

Synopsis

The late Cardinal Basil Hume described this book as a collection of 'starting points for prayer and meditation'. It includes a moving meditation on the Our Father that Cardinal Hume shared with his friend John Crowley a few days before his death. John Crowley writes in the foreword, 'This poignant context gives an especially luminous quality to this particular meditation, but everything in this book is likely to provide a trigger for prayer.'.

About this title

About the Author

Cardinal George Basil Hume (1923-1999) was Abbot of Ampleforth from 1963 until his appointment as Archbishop of Westminster in 1976; he remained Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster until his death from cancer in June 1999, when he was widely mourned both nationally and internationally. His books included Mystery of the Cross, Mystery of the Incarnation and Basil in Blunderland.

From Publishers Weekly

This slim volume of reflections from the Benedictine monk who led the Catholic Church in England and Wales for 23 years was first published privately in 1976. Its publication now, three years after the author's death, fulfills his wish that the book be made available in hardcover. In it, Hume's writings on such topics as mystery, humility and suffering are simply and often elegantly stated. At first blush, they might seem prosaic, but the cardinal has presented them as helps for prayer and meditation, not theological treatises. In that respect, they work well. His chapter on prayer, for example, begins with the classic Catholic catechism definition "Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God" and continues with a series of thoughts on various aspects of prayer, each of which could be pondered or prayed over separately. In the section on suffering, Hume writes of grief, observing, "Silence is the best response to another's grief, not the silence which is a pause in speech, awkward and unwanted, but one that unites heart to heart." His writing here is mercifully free of pious pontificating on the value of affliction, but nonetheless deals gently and thoughtfully with its reality. Although the cardinal's perspective is clearly Catholic, his references to his church do not obscure the universality of his message.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Darton Longman and Todd
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0232525862
• ISBN 13: 9780232525861
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108