Customer Reviews

Kenosis: Emptying Self and the Path of Christian Service

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Kenosis comes from the heart! This book will allow you to view an individual who has chosen religious service as his life. It allows you to see this individual as a human with needs and concerns and conflicts that are not always in sync with the expected behavior of his traditions. The key element to this story is that this person is human and is often times called upon to be more than that just by the mere choosing of his vocation. We all look at people who have chosen religious life and expect that it is so easy for them to give of themselves whenever WE need it or think it should be given freely. Do we ever allow for this person to be mortal? Could you choose a life where every day you witness human pain, grief, dispair, poverty, loneliness, and sadness? The desire to want to make a difference in these things has to come from Kenosis. This book should be mandatory reading for anyone thinking of choosing religious life. This book will expel any fanasy that one might have of a religious life being an easy path. The dedication to ones God, ones self, and humankind is enormous. The reality is that it can be accomplished. The proof is Fr. Kevin Cronin!

A prime measure of greatness in any work of the mind, heart, or hand is its exhibition of a single sovereign integrating principle that illumines and interprets a wide range of elements. Fr. Cronin's little masterpiece is such a work. Fr. Cronin's book is an achievement worthy of the great tradition of Francis of Assisi, with its magisterial simplicity, humble practicality, passionate concern for all God's creatures, and joyous embracing of the Cross of Christ. Its catholic and cosmic vision qualify it as a classic expression of and guide to Christian spirituality for our age.

Kenosis is the two month odyssey in New York City of a twenty-five year old man who directs his talents and youthful strength at doing what God wants. Kenosis is a book written on the edge of a precipice. It reads like a Robinson Crusoe adventure of the spirit!

Warm, personal, honest, and very Franciscan, Kenosis presents a model and mentor for Christian ministry today. The gospel becomes credible in writings like these. It makes me proud to be a Franciscan!

What a wonderful gift you have given to the world! Unlike so much of contemporary spiritual literature, Kenosis not only informed my mind but profoundly touched my heart. Most importantly it offered me something I have been personally searching for over the past years, a spiritual focus. I started reading and critically examining it as a book for the general public but ended up savoring it as a book that seemed to be speaking directly to me.

I found little to do with the very valuable topic of "kenosis." Instead I felt I was reading an extended graduate school paper in pastoral ministry that was expected to meet certain requirements unknowable to the reader. As a result, while reading it, one has no idea what the main theme is or in what direction it is going next.