As Lent approaches, seven books offer inspiration, biblical insight and practical guidance
In The Way of Benedict: Eight Blessings for Lent (SPCK, £9.99; Tablet price £9), Sr Laurentia Johns OSB provides a well-informed guide to St Benedict’s way. She identifies this as “very much a spirituality of the heart”, understanding the heart in the biblical sense of the deep core of a person where decisions are taken. To follow it is to grow in the capacity to love through the gift of the Holy Spirit “poured into our hearts”. Because monks and nuns are schooled in letting go of ownership, they are able to receive each moment, each event and each person as “a gift to be received”. This book’s author has herself learned this way and here opens it up to all folk, monastics or not. She presents Lent as a time of special blessing since it turns us towards the loving countenance of God, yet what it has to say is apt for any time of the year. The blessed and blessing practices it describes, such as being attentive “to the loving melody of God’s providence in the events of life”, and welcoming “the unexpected and even the impossible”, are always in season. Each chapter has imaginative practical suggestions, such as reading the gospel of St Mark aloud in a group. We are taken into the heart of Benedictine life.
