INFORM-ACTION
Issue
Number 45 - August
2002
Book
Review
A
Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimensions of
Christianity. Johann Baptist Metz
(Paulist
Press, New Jersey 1998)
A Passion for
God is a collection of previously unpublished essays
of the prominent German theologian Johann Baptist Metz. The
collection reflects on issues such as the crucial place of
memory in Christian faith and in society as a whole, the
role of consecrated Religious in the church, the meaning
of the mystical virtue of poverty of spirit and the relationship
between Christianity and politics in modernity.
The essay, A Passion
for God: Religious Orders Today, in particular has some
very poignant challenges and reminders to Religious. In naming
the major questions and challenges facing Religious Orders
in this day and age, Metz challenges them to put the passion
for God as their elementary critical-prophetic task for today
- witness to God in the midst of pro-religious Godlessness,
in an age without God (p.154).
Metz, in outlining
the disturbing and often times scandalous message of Jesus
and the implications of that for all who follow the Christian
path, talks about the specific role that Religious have to
take in responding to the Gospel. In describing the meaning
of Religious Life he compares Religious to the stuntman in
film and television. When the story line gets tough, the hardly-known,
inconspicuous 'stand-ins' come in and perform tasks that others
will not do. Religious step in whenever and wherever things
turn particularly dangerous! He sees Christianity not as some
sort of post-modern sideshow but as the most perilous production
of world history in which Religious have a very specific role
to play by witnessing to the existence of God.
The other essays
in this text are as energetic and challenging as the above
essay. His relationship to the person and work of Karl Rahner
sj is explored in several of the essays. If one wants some
challenging questions and concepts to chew over and reflect
upon, A Passion for God will certainly provide the opportunity.
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