austraLasia #2438

From the Gospels - at a tangent

CHENNAI:  13th June 2009 -- 'The man taken in adultery'....er, did we read that right? 'Jesus tempts Satan'... slowly getting  the hang of it, and loving it.
    While they are more a case of stories to prise open the preacher's heart and mind than stories to preach by, Fr Maria Arokiam Kanaga's From the Gospels at a Tanget fills a niche in the vast temple of Christian storytelling.  At some point you ask yourself if these stories populate the Gospel, or if it's the Gospel that populates the stories. Probably both.  After all John did say "There were many other things Jesus did; if all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books that would have to be written". John's little licence there allows plenty of room for Arokiam's fertile and thoughtful imagination. But it never strays from the Gospels that inspire it.
    My favourite is the second last of the collection: 'Sacrifice or choice'.  It might also have been called 'Jesus gets his man'.  It suggests that when the rich young man walked away sad, someone like Jesus was unlikely to leave it at that.  The posturing and pouting on the one hand, and the divine pursuit on the other, in subsequent imagined encounters, reminds one of Francis Thomson's Hound of Heaven.
    I would recommend this book for meditation. If Don Bosco and the Body of St Joseph had "more twists and turns than a licorice factory", The Gospel at a Tangent has more spiritual aromas than a bottle of Green Chartreuse!
    (Review written at the Trappist monastery of the Tre Fontane, Rome, source of abundant imagination concerning the life of St Paul! JBF)
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For copies of this delightful book, written by the South Asian Regional who clearly does not waste his time while travelling, we suggest you don't go to www.arumbupublications.com unless you read Hindi. Try, instead dbbulletin@gmail.com where it will reach Fr Glorious Steve, the editor of the English edition of the SB in India, and director of Arumbu.  Of course, if you have the last two year's monthly editions of the Indian Salesian Bulletin, you can read the stories there - they have been serialised.

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Title: australasia 2438
Subject and key words: SDB General, S .Asia: From the Gospels at a Tangent
Date (year): 2009
ID: 2000-2099|2438