CRY OF WONDER
By Gerard W Hughes SJ, Bloomsbury; $22.95
Reviewed by Br Brian Grenier CFC
THE two unrelated Glaswegian Jesuits, Gerard W Hughes (an acclaimed spiritual writer who is best known for his popular 1985 book God of Surprises) and Gerard J Hughes (a philosopher), are sometimes referred to respectively by their confreres as Gerry the walker and Gerry the talker.
The distinction is especially appropriate in the case of the former who, having walked from London to Rome and from Scotland to Jerusalem, later published interesting accounts of these pilgrimages.
The journey theme is also present in this new work which reads like a spiritual odyssey in which the author, taking us more or less chronologically through his early life and his various assignments as a Jesuit, identifies the opportunities for personal growth they presented.
He relates and reflects upon incidents from his own experience not as an exercise in autobiography but rather in the hope that readers will follow his example and discover, to their enrichment, that God is to be sought ‘in the ordinary, in the earthiness and messiness, the chaos and strife of everyday living’.
“The only place”, he assures us, “any of us can find God at first hand is within our own experience”.
Going a step further, Fr Hughes recommends, as he himself has done throughout his text, that we communicate our inner experience with one another.
With the “big picture” ever in mind, the series of reflections in this book focus on the all-important why questions of human life and religious belief – among them, “What is the fundamental desire that makes life worth living?”
The writer’s responses are gathered under three headings which identify his own enduring and inter-related preoccupations as a God-seeker and his pastoral commitments as a Jesuit priest – Unity, Peace, and Holiness.
Not surprisingly, he considers that a Christian understanding of ecumenism must have as its reference not merely inter-church harmony but the unity of all humankind.
Cry Wonder should be read at a leisurely walking pace with frequent stops for reflection. Helpful in this connection are the exercises which conclude each chapter and Fr Hughes’s prefatory suggestions on lectio divina, on imaginative prayer based on the scriptures and on the “review of the day” (awareness examen).
Solomon, so the Bible tells us, asked God for wisdom; and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel records that he prayed for the gift of wonder.
That 90-year-old Gerard W Hughes is a man abundantly blessed with both of these attributes, is amply demonstrated in the work under review.
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