Customer Reviews

Mary of Nazareth, Prophet of Peace

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This little book can be packed into a handbag or briefcase and read enroute to anywhere. BUT, it has to be read carefully and slowly because it is a call to action. It should be read and reread because its message is one of peace, global peace. It is not an easy message to take in because the violence and associated poverty, disease, and death is all around us and is overwhelming. Where and how can one begin to make a difference? Father Dear brings out illuminating examples of nonviolence achieving peace and resolution from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Gandhi and Cesar Chavez, among others. We can gain insight from these examples and gain courage from Mary, who taught Jesus everything she knew about prayer, about love. Father Dear is actually speaking in this book. It is written in a style that is like a homily, a personal plea. It is not scholarly or preachy. I myself, have to read it again and meditate on action.

This small jewel is also blessed by the prayerful and thoughtful introduction by Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, whose spiritual works are also essential reading in this time of imperial warfare.

As if this is not enough, the several beautiful and evocative icons throughout this volume draw us closer into prayerful encounter with Mary, the Mother of God and thus Prophet of Peace.

We faithful are fortunate the skilled preacher of peace and of the true meaning message and mission of the Gospel of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Reverend Father John Dear, SJ, has turned his heart, his soul and his finely developed talents and scholarly, spiritual mind to this theme, and delivers to us like a babe in swaddling clothes this volume for our consideration and our Advent edification. Please study it slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, prayerfuly, and discover how we are called into being and this life, and how we must dedicate ourselves to God's peace and God's highest commandment to love, not war. As Saint Maximilian Kolbe wrote, Love will conquer all, as hate cannot create.

Read also, please, for your further journeying within the gentle path of Catholic spirituality Father Dear's Disarming the Heart: Towards a Vow of Nonviolence, and his Jesus the REbel, as well as Living Peace, etc., etc. as well as Sister JOan, all available very inexpensively here, for those of us practicing poverty in the old sandals of Saint Francis upon the road to peace.

When the Rev. John Dear keeps the tone of Mary of Nazareth: Prophet of Peace one of an impassioned plea for peace, he succeeds quite well. All too often, however, he runs off the rails by trying to turn the Virgin Mother of God into a poster child for his own leftist political views. I've read all sorts of books on Mary for many, many years, and I have never heard her described as "blatantly political" before, nor have I ever heard her described as rejoicing over anyone's downfall, no matter how gravely oppressive the circumstances they created might have been to someone else. The author often times denegrates the Blessed Mother's image by hijacking it to further his own political agenda. I would much prefer to recommend the following image of Mary of Nazareth, from the letter Marialis Cultus / For the Right Ordering and Development of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary of His Holiness Pope Paul VI:"Mary, the New Woman, stands at the side of Christ, the New Man, within whose mystery the mystery of man alone finds true light; she is given to us as a pledge and guarantee that God's plan in Christ for the salvation of the whole man has already achieved realization in a creature: in her. Contemplated in the episodes of the Gospels and in the reality which she already possesses in the City of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary offers a calm vision and a reassuring word to modern man, torn as he often is between anguish and hope, defeated by the sense of his own limitations and assailed by limitless aspirations, troubled in his mind and divided in his heart, uncertain before the riddle of death, oppressed by lonliness while yearning for fellowship, a prey to boredom and disgust. She shows forth the victory of hope over anguish, of fellowship over solitude, of peace over anxiety, of joy and beauty over boredom and disgust, of eternal visions over earthly ones, of life over death."