Libreria Editrice Vaticana (LEV), more commonly referred to as the Vatican Press, recently published a book co-authored by Star Herald columnist Michael Canaris and his colleague Donna Orsuto entitled “Living Christian Joy Daily: Everyone’s Call – Essays from Rome.”
The volume is the product of a series of lectures at the Lay Centre in Rome given by some of the city’s most respected intellectual and pastoral Catholic leaders. The text was intentionally written as a popular guide to exploring themes of mercy, joy and encounter that are in the authors’ opinion desperately needed today in a world ravaged by polemics and division.
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, offered to pen a Foreword, threading the distinct essays together in an architectonic overview. In it, the erudite theologian and papal advisor asserts: “The seven reflections [in the book] serve as a constellation lighting up the sad darkness that often grips contemporary society.”
Other contributors include Father Felix Koerner, SJ., of the Gregorian University, Father Martin Coffey, CP, of the Curia of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ (the Passionists), Father Joseph Farrell, OSA, Vicar General of the Order of Saint Augustine, and Abbot Edmund Power, OSB, Benedictine Abbot of the Papal Basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls.
The editors “foresee [the book’s] eventual use in parish, youth ministry, or academic classroom settings at the undergraduate level, as well as by private individuals. As we who live or spend time physically close to the beating ‘heart’ of the universal church, and revere the Holy Father’s unique role in our shared Christian heritage, we also hope that it can appeal to those interested in deepening their understanding of the vision and theological concerns which serve as lodestars for Pope Francis’s pontificate.”
The cover of the book, designed by one of Professor Canaris’s former students in Chicago, is taken from a detail of the famed mosaic in the Basilica of San Clemente, in the shadow of the Colosseum. The peacock, long an unofficial logo of the Lay Centre, is often interpreted as a symbol of joy and Resurrection in Christian art, as the bird’s flesh was thought by the ancient world not to putrefy.
It’s important to comment on the book’s title, and to be clear that the vocation implied in “everyone’s call” be read in continuity with the Second Vatican Council and especially Unitatis Redintegratio and Nostra Aetate, not in terms of proselytization or a “prodigal son” approach to diversity.
While reaffirming that dialogue and proclamation both have their roles in the missionary discipleship inherent to the Christian life, the authors are convinced that everyone is in fact called to live in contact with the true Source of joy, even if in an unthematic way or finding the transcendent in and through, and not despite, the varied traditions, prayer and cultures that are found in a pluralistic world. The church never rejects that which is authentically good and holy to be found in every element of human experience, and the universal call to drink freely from the wellspring of joy and wonder that bubbles up in every human heart must be understood in this light.
The book is available on Amazon or by contacting the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago (www.luc.edu/ips) or the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas in Rome (www.laycentre.org). A second related volume focusing on the “full, active, and conscious” participation of the laity in living out Christian witness today is currently on its way to publication.
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