Spiritual Formation

Review: Formed to Lead

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Cover image of "Formed to Lead" by Jason Jensen

Formed to Lead

Formed to Lead, Jason Jensen. InterVarsity Press | Formatio (ISBN:9781514009901) 2025.

Summary: Through reflection on Luke 1-4, proposes a vision of leadership rooted in formation of character and spiritual discernment.

I’ve noticed that for the most part, those who read books on spiritual formation tend not to read books on leadership. Likewise, readers of leadership books are often not big readers of spiritual formation books. Jason Jensen believes there is ample evidence for the error of compartmentalizing these two things. Sometimes, it may be spiritually deep individuals who do not know how to lead others. But more often, it is evident in the moral failures of gifted and prominent Christian leaders. Rarely does their leadership failure for lack of leadership ability or training. More often it is a failure related to pride, a defect of character, or a lack of integrity, thinking lies and deception can accomplish the work of God.

Jensen has reflected deeply on Luke 1-4, the chapters that describe the formative period of Jesus life. He begins with Luke’s vision of leadership integrity, expressed in the Magnificat and the birth narrative. It is a vision of humility and bold faith in response to the Spirit’s initiative. Out of this emerges spiritual discernment. Thus, Jensen introduces us to themes that will recur in his study. Here we see those who surrounded Jesus reflecting these qualities

Having laid this groundwork, Jensen reflects on other formative experiences. In Luke 3, he considers how the word comes in the wilderness. He explores both our wilderness experiences, and how sought solitude to listen to God may form us. Sometimes, the “wilderness” of our context, particularly when we are out of our depth reveals blind spots and self-sufficiency. Wilderness humbles us, making us more aware of those on the margins.

The wilderness is also the site of Jesus baptism. Specifically, God affirms three important things in baptism: identity as God’s son or daughter, affection as the beloved of God, and God’s pleasure upon the baptized. For Jensen, baptism is also associated strongly with rest or sabbath. In sabbath, we cease doing to allow God to remind us of our identity, and his affection and pleasure upon us. Thus, we work and lead on other days out of this rest and restoration. Finally, for Jesus wilderness is the place of testing both in the abstinence from food and in resistance to the adversary’s warfare. His reflections upon and use of scripture confirms the power of the word that came in the wilderness, and the Spirit who filled him as he entered the wilderness. So it is that he emerges in the Spirit’s power to face illness, demons, and opposition.

Thus, the Spirit’s empowering of Jesus tested character results in spiritual authority. Jensen notes that spiritual authority is integrity, not charisma; love, not authoritarianism; and holiness, not pragmatism. As Jesus spoke from Isaiah 61:1-3, he shared prophecy that shaped his sense of call. Jensen likens calling for us to pilgrimage, in which we learn to attend to the markers along the way. We discern through repentance, intimacy with God, character formation, and the everyday journey of faith. He describes discernment as a “roundabout” way, commending the labyrinth as a practice in which we experience that “roundaboutness.”

Finally, leadership is about dependence and dying. Prayer is to leadership as breathing is to life. We both encounter God in devotion and commit those we lead to God in intercession. Leadership is also a rehearsal of our death. The shadow of death was upon the ministries of both John and Jesus. We live in the realization that we have already died in baptism and are not our own and our hope and consolation is in God alone.

Jensen interleaves his reflections with formational practices and group discussion guides. Rather than either an introspective book for individuals or a how to book of leadership, he gives us a book showing the ways God forms the character of Jesus in us so that he might work the ministry and mission of Jesus through us. This is leadership both rooted in godly character and empowered by God’s Spirit. It is leadership marked by integrity, love, and holiness. May God use this book to raise up such leaders!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Common Rule Youth Edition

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Cover image of "The Common Rule Youth Edition" by Justin Whitmel Early

The Common Rule Youth Edition

The Common Rule Youth Edition, Justin Whitmel Early. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514010433) 2025.

Summary: Eight spiritual habits or practices for teens and tweens to help them grow in their faith.

I first trusted my life to Christ at age eleven and seriously began following Christ when I was just short of sixteen. I heard a lot about how to become Christian. Then I went on retreats that encouraged me in my faith in Christ. But no one for a long time shared with me about how I might grow in my faith. So, it is with great pleasure that I welcomed the publication of Justin Whitmel Early’s The Common Rule Youth Edition. In additional to seeing how helpful his earlier The Common Rule was with the young adults with whom I worked, I thought, “this is the book I wish I had as a teen follower of Jesus.”

This book is much like his earlier book. He offers eight habits, four daily and four weekly. Two of each focus on loving God and two on loving neighbor. Also, two of focus on embracing the good in God’s world and two of each on resisting destructive cultural influences. They are:

Daily:

  1. Kneeling Prayer morning, midday, and bedtime (Love God/embrace)
  2. One meal with others. (Love neighbor/embrace)
  3. One hour with phone off (Love neighbor/resist)
  4. Scripture before phone (Love God/resist)

Weekly:

  1. One hour of conversation with a friend (Love neighbor/embrace)
  2. Four hours of physical activity (Love neighbor/resist)
  3. Fast from something for twenty-four hours (Love God/resist)
  4. Sabbath (Love God/embrace)

The one difference from the adult version is substituting four hours of physical activity for “curate media to four hours.” This recognizes the need of teens for intense physical activity for both physical and spiritual health as well as the gift of our bodies which our screen-oriented society encourages us to neglect. Also, it does set some boundaries on social media.

A chapter is devoted to each of the eight habits. Early offers an explanation of each habit and then a practical section at the end with “The Habit at a Glance,” “Three Ways to Start,” and “Three Considerations.”

One of the ideas of a “common rule” is to pursue these practices with others and Early offers suggestions for sharing these practices in a youth ministry in church, or with friends in a school setting. He adapts the practices to the lives of middle and high schoolers. He also recognizes that meals together may need to be negotiated with parents and refraining from food should be cleared with them and never be done by someone with an eating disorder.

Early opens the book discussing the value of habit, including the pattern of destructive habits that brought him to create the Common Rule. But what I thought of even greater help is his concluding chapter on failure, something I often struggled with as a young Christian (and still do!). Early suggests that when we fall, we fall into grace. And so we get up and “keep walking toward beauty.” He observes how a life consists of the small daily decisions to get up and keep embracing these habits of faithfulness.

This is not a “silver bullet.” If there is one, I haven’t found it. But I can see how this might be so helpful in a youth ministry, particularly with supportive adults who are also using the rule. And the practices lend themselves to be fleshed out with scripture and prayer resources. Furthermore, these habits temper or replace destructive habits fostered in our culture, offering another way to live. I hope this book enjoys wide use.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Prayer Takes Us Home

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Cover image of " Prayer Takes Us Home" by Gerhard Lohfink

Prayer Takes Us Home

Prayer Takes Us Home, Gerhard Lohfink, Translated by Linda M. Maloney. Liturgical Press (ISBN: 9780814688069) 2020.

Summary: What Christians believe about prayer and the various ways Christians pray and experience God in prayer.

Last year, I had the chance to review Gerhard Lohfink’s Why I Believe in God, which I named my Best Religious Memoir of 2025. His warm “theological memoir” filled with love for God motivated me to get my hands on other works of his. This is one of those.

The subtitle of this book states it is on the theology and practice of prayer. Lest you fear a dry disquisition on prayer, let me assure you I found the same personal warm of devotion in these pages as in his memoir. Here was someone who thought deeply both about the One he addressed and who clearly had devoted his life to prayer, aided by the structures of Catholicism.

He writes about Christian prayer, and that must begin with who we address. Rather than some generic “God” we address the Father through the Son and by the help of the Holy Spirit. He reminds us that we stand together in worship before the Living God, able to come face to face. We are helped in our prayers by the deep sighs of the Spirit. We do not pray to three gods, though we may address our prayers to each of the persons of the one Godhead, He encourages us that God is active in the world and that his “saving will and our prayers work together.”

Then he turns to the many forms of prayer. He reminds us of the different forms our every day speech takes and suggests that prayer is no different. He writes about petition, including a defense of asking God for things, praise, and lament. This last is a helpful corrective for “happy-clappy” Christianity. He explores the extensive material on lament in the scriptures.

I love how he introduces the Psalms as our home for all seasons, in joy and when beset by woes. They are our shelter, indeed our home, even as we make our way to Zion. He then gives instruction on meditation. This is not emptying one’s mind, but filling it with our story in scripture, in creeds, and the church’s prayers. For Lohfink, all this prayers us for the Eucharist. While this reflects a Catholic understanding, Lohfink’s discussion of the element of thanksgiving for the gift of God in Christ, manifest in the gifts of bread and cup, lifts us out of ritual into real communion.

The final chapter is characteristic Lohfink, in which he relates his personal history of prayer. His intent is not that we would follow his example. Nor does he want us to cram all the experiences of his life into our prayer practice. Rather, he wants to assure us in our own experience in both times of dryness and unspeakable joy. Here, as throughout, I sensed a brother walking alongside, not a superior speaking to novices.

Although I am not a Catholic Christian, I found much that spoke to my own prayer life. My heart was warmed by the greatness of God described on these pages and the awesome wonder of corporate worship and gathering at the Lord’s table. The chapter on Christian meditation is one of the best I’ve read. His encouragements that God is active and works in and through our prayers is truth I can never hear enough. He reminds me that in prayer, God takes us home.

Review: The Sacred Art of Slowing Down

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Cover image of "The Sacred Art of Slowing Down" by A. C. Seiple

The Sacred Art of Slowing Down, A. C. Seiple, foreword by Chuck De Groat. Tyndale | Refresh (ISBN: 9798400506321) 2025.

Summary: Explores ways to become aware of our inner state, to tune into our bodies, and tend our souls.

Dallas Willard often advised his mentees as follows: “Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” But how do we eliminate hurry and slow down? Especially, how do we do so when our mind is racing and our body is tense? Licensed counselor A. C. Seiple combines therapeutic practices and spiritual insights to slow down, tune in to our bodies, and tend to our souls. In fact, those three phrases form the outline of this book. She approaches us as integrated beings woven from cognitive, emotional, somatic and spiritual strands combined with the narrative strands of our life story.

First, she explores how we can slow down. Seiple describes how in her own life she had two gears–go and stop, gas pedal and brake. Mostly, she was go, go, go until she crashed. She was caring for a husband with a traumatic brain injury. She didn’t feel any margin existed for stopping. But she was weary. A counselor helped her understand how her body was geared up to go, a function of her autonomic nervous system’s response to crisis. Often our bodies are trying to tell us things through pain, tension, or weariness. She describes her own experience of learning to listen to those messages and offers exercises for readers to practice the same. She also helps us hear with compassion the embedded beliefs that may be driving or dogging us.

Then she explores how we may tune in with the body. She explains neuroception and the subconscious ways our bodies respond to different situations. We may think our brain is driving, but not always. She helps with exercises to discern who is driving and whether that part is stepping on the gas or the brake, perhaps explaining why we want to slow down but can’t. She identifies three states–safety, stress, and shutdown–and our autonomic responses to each. Then she explores how we may anchor ourselves with God in a sacred space amid each of these states. She helps us reflect on our life story, and how different parts of us have responded in different episodes–how we fight or self-protect or freeze or flee.

Thirdly, she discusses how we use all this to tend to the depths of our souls. She offers help in tending to the forgotten or neglected parts of our lives. Then she turns to the places where we’ve been wounded. Finally, Seiple helps us explore our longings and steps that might be new movements for us.

Seiple illustrates ideas from her own experiences. Each chapter has “Pause and Play” sections where we can explore the concepts she’s shared in our own experience. Throughout, one has the sense that Seiple is a caring counselor, walking alongside and extending compassion, creating the safety to look at different parts of our lives. She invites curiosity rather than judgement or shame. She helps us find rest for every part of us, the place where we both know ourselves and are unafraid to know God. And she translates the “relentless elimination of hurry” from abstract advice to lived experience.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Insane for the Light

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Cover image of "Insane for the Light" by Ronald Rolheiser

Insane for the Light, Ronald Rolheiser. Image (ISBN: 9780593736463) 2025.

Summary: The spiritual journey of our final years, learning not only how to relinquish one’s life but to give away one’s death.

On Saturday, I learned of the passing of an actor whose movies I watched as a young adult. She was eight years older than I am. This is not an uncommon experience when I read of the deaths of famous people, or the obituary page from my high school on Facebook. It reminds me that part of the business of this stage of my life is to live with intention and attention toward my death. How does God want to continue to form me in the way of Christ as my bodily and mental powers wane? And how may I live so that my life, and even my death, may be a gift to those I love?

There are not many guides for this journey. Many of the books about spirituality address our productive years and the transitions of midlife. But what about the years of autumn and winter? In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate the writing of Ronald Rolheiser in his books The Holy Longing and Sacred Fire. I discovered that this new book, Insane for the Light completes this trilogy. In the first, Rolheiser writes about our search for meaning. Then in the second, he speaks to how we give our lives away. Now, in an interesting turn of phrase, he writes about how we give our deaths away. Rolheiser observes:

“Giving our deaths away as a gift to our loved ones means that at some point in our lives, we need to stop focusing on our agenda and begin to focus on our obituary, on what kind of spirit we will leave behind.”

But what does that look like?

Rolheiser begins with anthropologies from aging, considering voices as diverse as Hindu mythology’s sannyasin to Germain Greer’s crone, Richard Rohr’s angry or holy old fools, and David Brooks’ call to scale the second mountain of meaning and love. Then he considers the challenge of transformation in aging. Instead of becoming the same person, only more so, he addresses seven transformations, all summarized in Jesus call to metanoia, the change of mind into creatures more like God. More like Christ. In the end, the image of Christ defenseless on the cross, submitting to death and giving his life, is our model. In our death, how we deal with helplessness, the loss of control are crucial. It is the experience of passivity. We may embrace or bitterly fight this, but if embraced, following Jesus in death is lifegiving to others.

But this journey is sometimes a journey through dark nights. Rolheiser draws upon the wisdom of St. john of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul. He offers wise counsel for how we live through such nights (pp. 80-82) that is worth the price of the book. He proposes that the purpose of the “dark night” is so that “God can flow into our lives and into this world purely, uncontaminated by human projection and self interest, because in our frustrating darkness we are helpless to control the experience.”

Then Rolheiser turns to the image of the “beggars hut.” In fact, that hut is the aging process. a kind of monastic existence with its own order of tasks. Carrying tension for the young. Offering prophecy to the world. Radiating God’s compassion. Rescuing God from narrowness. Blessing the young. Giving up on fear. Preparing for our move to a place beyond the illusion of self sufficiency. Making peace with those in our circle through the words “Please forgive me,” “I forgive you,” “Thank you,” and “I love you.” Rolheiser synthesizes Henri Nouwen’s ideas of how we give our deaths away into twelve invitations.

In his final chapters Rolheiser addresses his thoughts about the afterlife, including our communion with those who have died. Finally, he outlines St. John of the Cross’s paradigm of spiritual transformation. He includes examples of transformation through prayer and through service. His parting word comes from St. John’s advice:

“We all have made vows: to one another, to God, and to ourselves. John of the Cross simply advises that we stay within these vows and accept the times of disillusionment–and then love, others, maturity, and God will find us,”

It seems to me that the book’s central idea is that our aging is an invitation to die with Christ. What I find most attractive in this is that it suggests that old people can grow! We can be transformed by God through the aging process. We can mellow, become grateful, forgiving, hopeful, and childlike. Then we generously give away the remainder of our lives–and our deaths. And in our dying, we become “insane for the light” of God’s glory. I recall reading of my childhood pastor’s final words: “The glory, the glory!” To read these words was a gift, as is remembering them. He gave his death away to others.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Divine Milieu

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Cover image of "The Divine Milieu" by Teilhard de Chardin.

The Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin. Harper Perennial Modern Classics (ISBN: 9780060937256) 2001 (first published in 1957).

Summary: How we grow into godlikeness in our active work and our passive diminishment, toward the uniting of all things in Christ.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit Priest, geologist, and paleontologist, living between 1881 and 1955. He participated in the discovery of the remains Peking Man and wrote dozens of scientific papers, filling eleven volumes collected. He was also a theologian. His best known works were The Divine Milieu and The Phenomenon of Man. He wrote The Divine Milieu in 1926 and 1927 during a trip to China. Church authorities withheld its publication until 1957, two years after his death.

The basic idea behind The Divine Milieu is that all creation is moving toward a cosmic union with God through Christ’s redemptive work (cf. Colossians 1:15-17). This telos addresses a fundamental challenge and tension in Christian spirituality. For many, holiness involves detachment from the world, viewing secular work of no lasting value. For a scientist-priest like de Chardin, this was untenable.

Rather, he argued that both our activities and our passivities may participate in our “divinisation,” our growth in holiness and union with God in Christ, along with all creation. Part One of the book contends that all our active endeavors co-operate to complete the world in Christ. He writes:

“God, in all that is most living and incarnate in him, is not far away from us, altogether apart from the world we see, touch, hear, smell and taste about us. Rather, he awaits us every instant in our action, in the work of the moment. There is a sense in which he is at the tip of my pen, my spade, my brush, my needle – of my heart and my thought.”

Yet, though we value the material world, we may experience detachment from it because it has no value to us in itself but only in God.

The second part of the book explores how we grow toward holy union with God through our passivities–the things we experience in our lives that are not done by us. Examples of these include both the passivities of growth and diminishment. Not only do we grow bodily but in our experiences. Likewise, we diminish through aging, illness, and finally death. As we offer all of these to God, including our death, we grow in our communion with God. De Chardin prays, “Teach me to treat my death as an act of communion..”

The final part of the book addresses the attributes of what de Chardin calls “the divine milieu” He addresses how it arises and how we progress individually and collectively within this. Finally, though, it is Christ who accomplishes all of this:

“In a real sense only one man will be saved: Christ, the head and living summary of humanity. Each one of the elect is called to see God face to face. But his act of vision will be vitally inseparable from the elevating and illuminating action of Christ. In heaven we ourselves shall contemplate God, but, as it were, through the eyes of Christ.”

There are questions about the orthodoxy of his ideas. To some, the idea of cosmic union with God sounded like pantheistic monism, a denial of distinction between God and creation. Yet there is never a sense that I could find of dissolving the Creator-created distinction in this union. One of the most common expressions used by Paul is “in Christ.” In Part Three, he differentiates his own ideas from pantheistic monism.

De Chardin has also been challenged on the evolutionary element in the world’s progress toward God, both by Christians and evolutionary scientists. These ideas are developed more in The Phenomenon of Man where he develops the idea of orthogenesis. This is the progress of the cosmos to union with God, also referred to as the Omega Point. Evolutionary scientists deny a purpose driving evolution. Christians may object both to the idea of evolution and a force working within the world apart from Christ toward the consummation of all things. However, these ideas are not explicit in this book.

Positively, de Chardin articulates a spirituality of all of life. He encompasses our active work in every field of human endeavor. And he recognizes the passive dimension of life. There is no divorce of sacred and secular. Likewise there is no divorce of individual and corporate. Finally, for de Chardin, science and faith are not at war.

Thanks for visiting Bob on Books.  I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]

Review: Passions of the Soul

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Cover image of "Passions of the Soul" by Rowan Williams.

Passions of the Soul, Rowan Williams. Bloomsbury Continuum (ISBN: 9781399415682) 2024.

Summary: An exploration of Eastern Christian writing on the passions that may be distorted into sin, paired with the Beatitudes.

One of the consequences of interest in the Enneagram is a renewed interest in Evagrius, a fourth century Eastern Christian monastic who wrote about the deadly sins, the passions of the soul that may be twisted in temptation to lead us into sin. In this slim booklet, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Willliams, acquaints us with Evagrius and other Eastern Christians as well.

What identifying the passions does is give us a vocabulary to name the propensities within us that turn our hearts away from the love of God and neighbor. Williams counsel as we discern these things is simple. Face it. Give it to God. And get on with our work. Rather than obsessing about self-denial, the real question is “What has God asked me to just get on with?”

With that, Williams briefly maps out eight passions. Then in the next four chapters, he takes them in pairs setting them over and against a contrasting virtue found in the Beatitudes. He begins with pride and contrasts it with the dependence that knows one’s need of God. Likewise, the boredom of listlessness is offset by the invitation to mourn, to truly feel, and find comfort in God. Anger is offset by the blessing of meekness, the knowledge of who we really are that needs no defense. Gluttony, the craving for more than we need, is countered by hungering and thirsting for justice in the world.

Avarice, a longing for control, comes in the absence of a sense of God’s mercy and is offset in the yielding of control to showing mercy to others, in which we know the mercy of God. The inordinate desire of lust is met in the longing for purity of heart. Envy is the zero sum world in which another’s gain means loss. To embrace peacemaking is to embrace the mutual flourishing of shalom. Finally, despair or dejection centers on one’s self assessment that one has failed and there is no hope, remedied by the promise that faithfulness, even in the worst of persecution and seeming failure eventuates in seeing God.

Williams appends two chapters to these meditations. The first, “To Stand Where Christ Stands” explores what we mean when we talk about the “spiritual.” This chapter, I found was not easy to follow. Williams says it is “about what it is for a whole human life to be lived in the ‘place’ defined by Jesus.” He traces how this has been developed by saints as diverse as Gregory of Nyssa and the Spanish Carmelites, John and Teresa. The last chapter, on “Early Christian Writings” reminds readers of the real dangers early Christians faced, even in gathering for the Eucharist. Prayer, doctrine, and ethics all posed a challenge to the state, and formed the early Christians into both a disciplined and inherently political community.

This slim book challenges our modern ways of being Christian, both in reviving the language of sin, calling us to grow in holiness, and defining our life in the world as the place where spirituality is lived. Rowan Williams introduces us to Eastern Christians with a compelling message for our times.

Review: Finding God Along the Way

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Cover image of "Finding God Along the Way" by Christine Marie Eberle

Finding God Along the Way, Christine Marie Eberle. Paraclete Press (ISBN: 9781640609891) 2025.

Summary: An account of hiking with a group whose average age was 67 on the 300 mile Ignatian Camino.

Christine Marie Eberle was at a juncture in her life. Finishing a career in campus ministry, a friend asked her to help organize a pilgrimage. Most people hear “pilgrimage’ and think of the Camino de Santiago. Instead, Christine helped plan a pilgrimage on what is known as the Ignatian Camino. She had always admired Ignatius and this pilgrimage followed the steps of Ignatius from the Basque region of Spain to Montserrat and Manresa in Catalunya. But what made this unusual was that she was part of a group from the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, whose average age was 67 (she was in her late fifties).

The narrative begins with her headaches over organizing travel and the pilgrimage leader’s simple question: Why did you not tell these people to meet you in Loyola? For her, the pilgrimage had begun with this lesson in relinquishing control.

In a series of short chapters, chronicling the stages of the journey, organized into the four weeks of the pilgrimage, Eberle unfolds how she learned the wisdom of pilgrimage. She recounts the important places of Ignatius journey from the “cannonball moment” as Ignatius recovered in Loyola from a near death experience after a cannonball shattered one leg. Then there are all the daily practices of the Camino, from a gathering song, walking two hours in silent reflection, staying together, gathering for delicious meals and bedding down each night in guest facilities.

In addition to all that, there were the blisters that plagued her most of the journey. She learned to get help from other hikers, including veterans. A key turning point came when the director, Father Jose, decided her blisters were so bad, she needed to rest and take the train on the next leg. She felt she had failed, not getting good enough shoes and training. Her spiritual director emailed back, “You cannot fail the Camino if you truly see it as a spiritual quest.” She invited her to let go of her dreams of Camino and accept the reality and what was being offered her. Another time, an offered short cut led to lessons on simplifying one’s life.

The book comes to a close with arriving in Montserrat and Manresa. At Montserrat, they describe how pilgrimage has affected them. At the close, Father Jose blessed them with the words, “May God teach you to be pilgrims forever.” Then at Manresa, they leave the prayer requests others had given them at the altar. They took turns interceding for them each day of the journey. It was a tangible expression of the larger body of which they were part.

She describes three ways she felt changed through the Camino: silence, spontaneity, and serenity. She also recounts how they learned to:

  • Travel lightly.
  • Stay in the present moment.
  • Open yourself to the wonder of each encounter.
  • Ground your day in prayer, and your prayer in gratitude.
  • Rely on (and be reliable to) those who share the journey with you (p. 181).

The lessons she shares speak to far more than an extended pilgrimage like the Ignatian Camino. As the reflection questions concluding each chapter emphasize, we are all pilgrims. Therefore, her five traveling rules apply to us all. Although I may never walk the Ignatian Camino, Eberle’s account encouraged me in my own walk with Jesus.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Easter

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Cover image of "Easter" by Wesley Hill

Easter (Fullness of Time Series), Wesley Hill. IVP Formatio (ISBN: 9781514000366) 2025.

Summary: Explores the history and significance of Easter, not only as a day but as a season of celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

“He is risen!” “He is risen indeed”

This call and response captures the incredible news of Easter, that the crucified One lives, that death is defeated, and in Him, we live. Yet, amid our flurry of Easter finery and family gatherings, the words lose their import. There is even a danger that they will become “ho-hum.”

That’s why the reading of Wesley Hill’s Easter was so good for me. Hill explores the history, traditions and significance of our Eastertide celebrations. And did you notice I said “Eastertide”? Easter isn’t one day of celebration after the forty days of Lent. It is a season of fifty days, filled with the appearances of the risen Lord, his restorative and commissioning work with the apostles, his ascension, culminating in Pentecost. In sum, it is a season of celebration and in this slim volume, Wesley Hill walks us through that season.

He begins with the Easter Vigils some churches hold where believers gather in the darkness of waiting. New believers are baptized, and then with the rising of the sun, the proclamation “He is risen!” rings forth to the accompaniment of noisemakers. Let the celebrations begin!

Hill takes us back to the first Easter and to the resurrection appearances, first to Mary and the other women, to most of the gathered disciple, then to Thomas, and finally the lakeside restoration of Peter, the repentant betrayer. He then explores the implication of the resurrection, that “we shall also live with Him.” He reminds us of our baptism, the picture of cleansing, dying, and resurrection as an ongoing reality into which we live. Hill delves into the history of how Easter became one of the “moveable feasts” of the church and all the ways saints have celebrated it. Hill then recounts how the proclamation of the resurrection has turned the world upside down throughout history.

Finally, the concluding chapters reflect on the significance of the Ascension and Pentecost. He notes how we’ve neglected the meaning of the Ascension. In ascending, the risen Lord takes up his rule over all things. Not only that, but as the Incarnate lord, he presents our humanity to the Father, going before us. Then, in Pentecost, we celebrate that Jesus has kept his promise to always be with us. He sends his Holy Spirit to indwell and empower us.

This slim volume makes for perfect devotional reading for Eastertide. Hill combines story with historical and theological reflection. And he invites us into a celebration lasting not one day but fifty. Most of all, he reminds us of how the awesome event of the resurrection turns the world upside down.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Hunger for Righteousness

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Cover image for "Hunger for Righteousness" by Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Hunger for Righteousness, Phoebe Faraq Mikhail. Paraclete Press (ISBN: 9781640609341) 2025.

Summary: Drawing upon Coptic and other church tradition, explores how Lent may be personally and communally transforming.

I grew up in a Protestant tradition that did not observe Lent. But I lived in a Catholic neighborhood where the conversation before Ash Wednesday was a discussion of “what are you giving up for Lent?” For most, it was something like candy, or perhaps more narrowly, chocolate. I was never quite clear why God needed people to give up chocolate, or other things during this time. For many of us as adults, that is the extent of our knowledge of Lent. Phoebe Farag Mikhail, who has been shaped by the Coptic Orthodox tradition, fasting, and what one fasted from wasn’t a choice. But what her community abstained from reflected a deeper longing, a corporate hunger for righteousness. She writes of this in her introduction.

If we pay closer attention to the earliest Christian Lenten traditions, we’ll discover how Lent was a period during which individuals who wanted to become Christian prepared themselves not for personal transformation, but to join the body of believers, the communion of saints, through baptism. By examining our liturgical prayers and Scripture readings developed over centuries, we’ll discover the ways Lent has always been a time for individual repentance, yes, but first for giving and forgiving, for mending relationships and building new ones, for fighting injustice, and for growing in intimacy with God communally, not just individually (pp. 13-14).

This book is designed to be read and meditated upon and applied during the weeks before and during Lent. One chapter covers each week, as well as a final chapter on Easter. The first week “trains us for the climb” in preparation for Lent by considering Jonah and the Ninevites through practice of the three day Jonah fast. Subsequent chapters consider:

  • Abraham, reckoned righteous by God, who negotiated with God for Sodom.
  • St. Abraam of Fayoom, a nineteenth century ascetic who gave generously to the poor.
  • The faith that moves mountains, including the mountain of forgiveness.
  • Abba Serapion and the challenge to grow as repentant readers of Scripture.
  • St. Paesia, a trafficked woman, her turning from despair, and the ways we wrongly judge others.
  • The righteousness of Tamar, more determined to perpetuate her husband’s family than Judah.
  • The righteous faith of Abraham again, in the sacrifice of Isaac.

We conclude on the note of Resurrection. Mikhail considers the pilgrimage accounts of Egeria enroute to Jerusalem during Roman times. Egeria walks the way of Jesus passion, and we read of her joy in God and rest in the risen Christ.

Each chapter offers questions for reflection and application. Two appendices offer further resources including the Great Lent Lectionary of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.

Mikhail helps us see the fast of Lent as a hunger for righteousness, glimpsed in the lives of biblical figures and saints we may not have heard of before. Whether we adopt the practices of Coptic Christians or not, her reflections help us deepen our own practice of Lent. She helps us move beyond the “give up” to the promise for those who hunger for righteousness. They shall be filled.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.