An edifying and meticulous exploration of two saints.
A historical work examines the intersecting lives of two Roman Catholic saints: St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi.
St. Clare was born in Assisi in the closing years of the 12th century to a noble family distantly related on the maternal side to Constance, the wife of Henry VI, the Holy Roman emperor. From an early age, she was incorruptibly devoted to God and steadfastly prayed and fasted as expressions of her spiritual fervor. Her parents fecklessly tried to compel her to marry, but she resisted, sold off her inheritance, and used the money to rebuild the Church of Saint Damian, a project to which St. Francis was committed. In a show of remarkably painstaking research, Brady chronicles the turbulent journeys of the two saints. They were joined by their relentless religious ardor and an insistence on a life of poverty, a condition St. Francis could be “pitiless” enforcing—and a stricture that put St. Clare at loggerheads with Pope Gregory IX. In addition, the author brings to vivid life the religious and political tumult of the time—which included the Crusades—and astutely articulates the various lines of theological division. Furthermore, the book is lucidly written, a scrupulously thorough account enlivened by what Brady calls “novelistic details,” the minutiae, however imagined, that immerse readers in the drama. But the author’s tendency to interpret the miraculous elements of her subjects’ lives in narrowly scientific terms seems not only gratuitous, but also distorting. For example, she theorizes that St. Francis’ temptations by demons were likely the result of severe undernourishment: “Throughout his religious life, Francis would blame tribulations and temptations on the Devil and other evil denizens of Hell who knew how to taunt and vex him when he was most vulnerable, but his own mistreatment of himself and the ravages of semi-starvation were certainly responsible for much suffering.” This is more speculation than empirical science and doesn’t help illuminate the nature of the spiritual or existential crisis St. Francis endured; in fact, it obscures it. Nevertheless, despite the blandness of this obeisance to scientific explanations, the work as a whole is as captivating as it is rigorous.
An edifying and meticulous exploration of two saints.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73754-981-9
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Lodwin Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment—the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare—creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards—they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six—a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 2, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-70390-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
A passionate, gorgeously written fictional account of an intellectual Russian woman's journey back to God and the Orthodox Christianity of her ancestors. ``Veronica,'' a widow in her mid-40s, journeys to the ancient monastery of Dzhvari in Georgia with her beloved son Mitya. The monastery is tiny and austere, and mother and son are met by just three monks. Still, life there is a revelation. Practicing the ancient ``Jesus Prayer,'' taking Communion, and talking with the terse, insightful abbot, Father Michael, is like finding water after a lifetime of thirst to this member of the Russian intelligentsia. Although women generally are forbidden in the monastery, Veronica is given special permission to stay for a period of weeks. Realizing that her days there are numbered, she drinks in everything, talking with the abbot at every opportunity. Their conversations are anything but light: ``Father Michael had said that in order to believe in God and receive this truth you must offer your entire being—your heart, will, understanding, mode of life. What can understanding do by itself?'' When their brief stay is up, both mother and son seem to have tasted something of a truth that passes human understanding. The story then jumps ahead six years: Veronica, now 50, visits another near-abandoned monastery (this one for women) while she awaits word from her son, who has become a monk. Though lonely, she puts her life in God's hands, reflecting on all the holy and instructive encounters she has had since she became a Christian a mere decade before. Miraculously, she receives word that her son has been sent to serve as a priest in a remote parish: God is good. She'll join Mitya and will live the rest of her life plumbing the mystery of Christianity with her son. A contemporary Way of the Pilgrim, first published in Russia in 1989, that's also a profoundly moving look at the state of one brave Russian woman's soul.
Pub Date: July 2, 1993
ISBN: 0-517-59194-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
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