Book Launch! // Abide in His Love
My New Study on St. John’s Gospel
The crowd in the parish hall was quiet yet responsive as I spoke to them about the Third Sorrow of the Blessed Mother, the Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple. The talk had been written to help the listeners enter into the experience of the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph in a meditative way. As I spoke, it seemed like it was going well, but when I noticed that the parochial vicar was sitting in the back with his eyes closed, I wondered if he was asleep. It turns out that he was not, for after the talk, he commented that he had been praying imaginatively with my words and that he had never before been to a group Ignatian-style meditation on Scripture. This style of talk is one that I have given multiple times now, and it is based on a spiritual writing technique I used in the meditative Gospel studies that I authored for Blessed is She. The third study, on St. John’s Gospel, which is titled Abide in His Love, was released this week!
Fruit that Abides
Especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus talks a lot about bearing fruit. For example, He says, “you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (15:16). When you work by doing spiritual writing and speaking, you often have to let go and trust that Jesus did indeed choose you, that He is taking care of the watering and tending, and that the fruit will abide. Most of the time you plant the seeds (from the fruit of the gifts you have been given by God) and walk away. Then one morning, you wake up and there is your fruit abiding on the internet, ready for other people to read. And then you have to dig the book out of your memory, reread what you wrote years ago, and have a few hours of theological unrest until you realize that the way you interpreted that one part of the Gospel is in the tradition and is not just made up. (Though, four years later, you might find yourself preferring Pope Benedict XVI’s reading over that of Saint Thomas Aquinas.)I have been working in book editing for almost a decade now, and I have learned that publishing books is like a woman who takes a measure of flour and some leavening and mixes it together, and then she has to wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Except it takes longer to get a book in print than it does to create a new sourdough starter.
The history of my Gospel studies for Blessed is She goes back ten years, to when I first encountered imaginative prayer with Scripture on a silent retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. I was six months pregnant with my son, with three girls under six at home, and I was entering into Scripture in a way that I had never tried before. The priests giving the retreat used Ignatius’ meditations to help us enter the scenes of the Gospels and encounter Jesus in a personal way. After that retreat, I prayed imaginatively with Scripture for four years, before I wrote my first meditative study on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Seek His Kingdom, during the year that I battled Lyme disease. After receiving an imprimatur on that study, I was asked to write on the other Gospels. I finished writing the essays and meditations for this study on the Gospel of John in 2021. It was then sent to the Diocese of Phoenix to be reviewed for an imprimatur, which was granted on my birthday in June 2022. A year ago, on April 25, Listen to Him on Gospel of St. Mark was released. Last summer, I read over and edited the proofs for this study on John. And now, three years after writing it, my third meditative study on a Gospel has been released by Blessed is She!
Praying with John
Interestingly (or, I should say, providentially), in these months leading up to the release of Abide in His Love, I have been spending a lot of time with John’s Gospel. Blessed is She has also just released a new study on the Eucharist based on John 6, which I edited in the past year. Another book I have been editing also draws a lot from John. I gave a talk about some of the Last Words of Jesus from John, and I spent a lot of prayer time in Lent reading Pope Benedict’s Holy Week volume of Jesus of Nazareth in which he devotes a long section to John 13-17.
As I was telling a student in a theology class for which I was a substitute teacher recently, the phrase “beloved disciple” is not the evangelist patting himself on the back for being a great disciple. Rather, it is an invitation for us to place ourselves in the Gospel as the beloved disciple. That is what we learn about ourselves from John: that we are all beloved. The Gospel is full of personal encounters with Jesus that we can all relate to. Jesus personally calls disciples. He sees Nathaniel. He listens to His mother’s intercessory prayer. He meets with Nicodemus. He brings healing to the woman at the well and freedom to the woman caught in adultery. He heals, He feeds, He weeps. He abides with those He loves and He invites us to abide in Him. He seeks Peter out after His Resurrection, and forgives him and commissions him despite his weakness. These parts are almost easy to enter into.
But then there are the theologically rich passages. In the beginning, there is the treatise on the Word becoming flesh (which we hear everytime we go to the Traditional Latin Mass). There is the Bread of Life discourse and the High Priestly Prayer. These are the parts that you can read again and again and still not reach the depths of their meaning. You pause with one phrase and let the rest of the text wait for another reading, another time.
A Study for All
While Blessed is She primarily produces devotional materials for women, I wrote these Gospel studies to be usable by men as well. In each of the studies, the reader is placed in the perspective of both men and women in the Gospel scenes, but also as themselves. I have been delighted to read reviews of these studies that talk about how they have helped people to pray. One father shared that they use it for the family prayer time—for himself, his wife, and his children. Another person shared how she bought the book for her 80 year old parents to use together. And many women have shared how they have been using it in small groups or for personal prayer time.
The study on John is divided into five parts, with three to four chapters from the Gospel per part. Each part has an introductory reflection laying a foundation for the reader about the chapters they will read. There is a selection of Scripture given to read each day, and one meditation per chapter of the Gospel written in the second person in imaginative style prayer.
Here is as part of a meditation from the book on John 2:1-12:
Place yourself in the scene as a servant at the marriage feast.
The laughter of the wedding guests fills the pink-and-purple-streaked evening sky
as you carry an empty carafe to the kitchen to refill with wine.
“We have run out of wine,” another servant whispers to you.
“What are we going to do?” you reply.
Two of the guests, a middle-aged woman and a young Man, also slip into the
room.
The woman gestures and speaks urgently to the Man. Then, turning from Him,
she looks at you and your fellow servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you”
( John 2:5). Giving the Man a meaningful look, she leaves. [. . .]
The concluding reflection of each part gives more prayerful guidance on that section of the Gospel. The idea with this book is to give the reader just enough assistance to comfortably pray with the Gospel on their own.
Whether you decide to use this study or not, I want to encourage you to spend time this Easter season abiding in Christ’s Word.
Jesus says to you, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home in him” (John 14:23). His Word is for you, and He invites you to meet Him in it and will enter with His love into your heart. This study will help you learn how to enter into the Gospels and meet Jesus in His ministry that was meant not just for the people of His day, but for you. He is waiting for you to encounter Him in all of His words and actions. The events of the Gospel timelessly meet us wherever we are in our own lives and, at the same time, draw us deeper into relationship with God. (From the Introduction to Abide in His Love.)
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I get much fruit from using Igantuis' method of reading and meditating on scripture by placing myself in the center of the action and placing myself in the shoes of each character in the scene.