Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing In Us [Hardcover]

Tomas Halik (Author), Gerald Turner (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 2009

For all the debate about belief and nonbelief in today’s world—and how everyone becomes pigeonholed by one or the other— Tomáš Halík teaches that God requires us to persevere with our doubts, carry them in our hearts, and allow them to lead us to maturity. For Halík, patience is the main difference between faith and atheism. Faith, hope, and love are three aspects of patience in the face of God’s silence, which is interpreted as “the death of God” by atheists and is not taken seriously enough by fundamentalists.

Using the gospel story of Jesus’s encounter with Zacchaeus, Halík issues an invitation to all people who stand (like Zacchaeus did) on the sideline—curious but noncommittal. The fact that Jesus gravitated to the poor and the marginalized means that he also has a special place in his heart for diligent seekers on the margins of the community of believers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“I think of Tomáš Halík as I think of C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen — a rare combination of intellect along with an uncommon commitment never to betray the gene that unites us all as children of God.”
– Doris Donnelly, professor of religious studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland and director Cardinal Suenens Center for Theology & Church Life

About the Author

TOMÁŠ HALÍK worked as a psychotherapist during the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia and at the same time was secretly ordained as a Catholic priest and active in the underground church. Since the fall of the regime, he has served as General Secretary to the Czech Conference of Bishops and was an adviser to Václav Havel. He has lectured at many universities throughout the world and is currently a professor of philosophy and sociology at Charles University. His books, which are bestsellers in his own country, have been translated into many languages and have received several literary prizes.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Religion (April 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385524498
• ISBN-13: 978-0385524490
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #459,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Peace with you"- Religion and Secularism., April 15, 2009

By 

Karel Kriz (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing In Us (Hardcover)

Professor Tomas Halik (b.1948) studied sociology and philosophy at Charles University in Prague, receiving his Ph.D. in 1972. During the years of the communist regime he studied theology secretly; in 1978 he was ordained a Catholic priest at Erfurt, East Germany. For eleven years he was active in an `underground church.' Since 1989 after the collapse of communism he has lectured at universities in Europe, the United States, Latin America, India and Taiwan; he has authored over 200 publications.In the 1990s he served as one of President Vaclav Havel's external adviser. In 1992, Pope John Paul II appointed him adviser to the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with Non-Believers and in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI granted him the title of Monsignor - Honorary Prelate of His Holiness. His books have been published in German, Polish, Italian and Spanish in addition to his native language. At present he is a Professor of sociology on the Philosophy faculty at the Charles University in Prague, and also Rector of the St. Salvatore Church, which serves university students.

What good could come from a theologian living in the `most atheistic country' in the world? Readers expecting to learn "how to be saved" will be disappointed in this work. However, those who search for some meaning in the seemingly senseless world can be enriched by Halik's ideas as they journey on `the road less traveled.' The author has found his vocation in serving those on the "outside," rather than comfortable believers.
Just as Jesus Christ did not come to serve the healthy, but rather, the sick, so Father Halik aims not to increase the righteous, but to give these outsiders an understanding of genuine faith-- offering not easy certainties, but helps in living a mystery. The author is well known for promoting dialogue both between Christian denominations and between Christians and Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus.
His new book goes a step further, inviting atheists to join the family of inquirers. These new guests should not expect the familiar recitation of their sins, errors, and offenses followed by cheap arguments intended to change their beliefs or change doubt into certainty. The author tries, like the apostle Paul, to be for everybody, and joins the crowd as one of the humble explorers. In the Prologue, Halik admits agreement with the rational atheists on many points, but not their denial of God's existence. He shares their experience of God's absence from the world, but considers their explanation of that feeling as a kind of impatience. He offers another response to God's seeming absence: progressing through patience towards faith, hope, and love. Only those who fully grasp the revolutionary act of St. Paul, who broke through the walls between Judaism and the outside pagan world, can understand the need to approach today's secular world.
Luke's narrative about Zacchaeus serves as a central point in the book. Zacchaeus is an archetype of people who for some reason do not join the believers, but are eager to learn. Like Zacchaeus, they are inclined to draw their own conclusions from experience. If one attempts to pull them into the center, they either fall farther away, or let the "proselytizer' know, sometimes harshly, their preference for staying on the edge. The author maintains that these people are essential where they are. He sees St. Peter's basilica, with the square embraced by an open-armed colonnade, as an image of the Church itself. The tourists streaming through the square are already implicitly in the sanctuary, and they are not required to observe silence, or a dress code to be there.
The book offers challenging analogies, which may surprise or even shock some readers. The atheist Nietzche and the "Little Flower" St. Therese de Lisieux, held some views in common. The Virgin Mary is one symbol of the Church; Don Quixote's Dulcinea may serve the same function. On the chances of cooperation between Christians and secular humanists, Professor/Father Halik offers a meditation on the Prodigal Son. The older son represents order, the younger one, liberty. A true resolution calls for forgiveness by the older brother, and more ethical behavior by the younger; unfortunately, in the parable only the Father behaves well.
The Zacchaeuses of our time feel a greater distance from the Church and organized religion that they do from God or Christ. Unfortunately, Halik says, they are still missing something important: faith cut off from a concrete, historic community can easily slip into personal fantasy. Although the Church is prone to compromises, dirty and sinful, she is equally as authentic as our ancestral families are. Yet, only the mentally labile people renounce them.
When the reader finishes this work, his faith may shake a little; but , as Halik says in his other book "what doesn't quiver is not firm." Faith and Doubt are two sisters who race together toward the mystery, but only Faith will reach the prize in the end. Readers are likely to agree with the author's conclusion that the most important task today is to walk safely between the extremes of religious fundamentalism and fanatical secularism.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Serious need., February 14, 2010

By 

Brigita Hamvas "dramaturg" (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing In Us (Hardcover)

Dear friends...
I have read the book "Patience with God" it in its original Czech version.

As far as I am concerned the book is a unique collection of essays written by a notable and very influential catholic priest and philosopher. He examines the guiding principles of Christianity with the solutions for common everyday problems.

In our hard times the book of Tomas Halik is valuable especially for those who are searching for a constructive approach, to people of different attitude towards Christianity and especially to those who resolutely or reluctantly deny the existence of the highest power - the God. Like Zacchaeus.

Sincerely Brigita

P.S. The author, Tomas Halik has a web site...in English, too. See [...]

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Pieces in Poorly Fitting Wrapper., March 24, 2011

By 

Mark P. Brown (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing In Us (Hardcover)

The author, Tomas Halik, is a catholic priest, adviser to former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and old enough to have lived under Communism. There is seriousness, heft and humility in what he writes. The voice is of a wise counselor inviting either learning or shared commiseration of the experience of life and God. The book is a translation from his native tongue, but the translation reads fluidly and the reader is never left feeling like - "I bet something was lost in translation."

The subtitle, the first chapter and the final two chapters invite the reader to ponder Zacchaeus as a unifying story for the entire work, but the wrapper fails to contain the chapters in between. Stemming from a story shared in the introduction, Zacchaeus was the starting hook, and probably kept as a nod to the American religious marketplace, but the real book bursts through in between.

The chapters in the middle are great meditations on what a mature faith is, what it looks like and how it is formed. They are a mature answer to the shallow atheism and the shallow Christianity that seem to have overtaken the West. Foremost in Halik's meditation are that both shallows are impatient. To the God marketed by American Evangelicalism, "God is not so readily available(p19)." To the atheist, that existential feeling of nothing, was already found in God's tomb of Holy Saturday (p43). The mature faith has patience with God; patience to wait for a deeper understanding, patience to wait for Easter morning.

Being catholic, St. Therese must appear, but the author slips the trite by connecting the little way with Luther's anfechtung. Also contained are a poignant reflection on St. Paul's image of the church as a body and the longing to see that body actually care about its members. Part of that care is to embrace the catholic nature of the church. The church should speak all languages. It is constantly coming out and journeying among strangers like Abraham. The vibrancy of the faith is not in the faith of the grandfathers, but in the faith of the sons (p 51). The sons and daughters of the Kingdom should have the confidence to journey in the modern world. The mature faith of the son is one confident even in the night (p108); it is a faith crowned with patience.