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Words of Spirituality – Exploring the inner life

Reviewed by Colin Selby.

From time to time I am asked to review a book which addresses our need to understand more of the nature of God and his interaction through us with life in the world today. This is a very powerful example of such a book. It is brief, clearly writtenand very helpful in the context of quiet meditation. It is both challenging and affirming.

Enzo Bianchi is the Prior of the Bose Community, an ecumenical monastic community which he founded in 1965. He takes as his starting point the working of desert monasteries in the fourth century where young monks and visitors would ask their elder brother, “Abba, give me a word” as a start to their exploration of the inner life.

The book has 45 brief chapters full of references to scripture as well as the thoughts of theologians from the early days of the church to the present. Here is a useful resource for a daily, quiet, meditation in the midst of a busy pastoral life.

In his foreword, the Archbishop of Canterbury writes that “if we read Scripture as we must, invoking the Holy Spirit, what we encounter in Scripture is that living Word. We are made contemporary with what Scripture witnesses to; we discover the unity of Scripture, not in any theory, but in the person of Jesus Christ, on whom the whole of Scripture converges and around whom it finds its shape.”

Whatever your place in the life of the Christian community here is a book to have on your study desk.