Paradise: Reflections on Chiara Lubich’s Mystical Journey
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
Paradise: Chiara Lubich’s Mystical Journey is the first book to be published with Chiara’s only two talks about Paradise ’49, along with essays about that mystical journey and it implications for today’s world. This book presents both Chiara’s mystic journey in Paradise and her mystical journey in creation seeing humanity, nature and the Church in the light of Paradise. The latter journey gave Chiara mystical insights about the Church, humanity, and nature as well as God’s will for all three in the future. The mystical genius of Chiara created a lay spirituality that seeks to realize Jesus’s prayers: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt. 6:10), and “May they all be one” (Jn. 17:21).
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- Presents both Chiara’s mystic journey in Paradise and her mystical journey in creation seeing humanity, nature and the Church in the light of Paradise
- Sheds light on the profound contemplative experiences and subsequent writings about those experiences
This fascinating book contains two major components: first, Chiara Lubich’s “Paradise” reflections of 1949 manifesting the earlier years of her agapic, kenotic, mystical journey; second, several fine essays by thinkers from diverse disciplines on the implications of Lubich’s mysticism, especially for a christology of Jesus as the abandoned one and for Trinitarian theology of mutual love. Particularly valuable are the essays on the possible contribution of Chiara Lubich’s form of mysticism--indeed of all genuine mysticism in all religious traditions--as a great enrichment of all inter-religious dialogue. In sum: a complex, erudite, thoughtful collection.
—David Tracy | University of Chicago
This remarkable collection centered upon the memorial of Chiara Lubich’s mystical experience, “Paradise ’49,” is like the setting of a gem: not only does it secure for this little text its rightful place in modern Catholic mystical theology, drawing our attention to its heavenly splendor; it also serves to refract from various angles its significance to such varied subjects as theology, biblical studies, ecclesiology, society and culture, and even interreligious dialogue. In his foreword Peter Casarella describes Lubich’s paradisal experience of the Trinity in 1949 as “The Mount Tabor of the Dolomites.” It may be hoped that this commemorative volume will further the reflection of its light.
—John Betz | Department of Theology | University of Notre Dame