I recently received five books from the Editorial Fonte Group, which was born from the merger of the publishing houses of the Discalced Carmelites of the Iberian Province Santa Teresa de Jesús Monte Carmelo and Editorial de Espiritualidad.
I want to recommend each one of them, because they constitute a good selection of their editorial collection.
The first, more voluminous (540 pages) and that requires more attention. This is the fabulousFundamental manual of spirituality”, of Jesuit Cardinal Tomas Spidlik (1919-2010) since we recently celebrated the 12th anniversary of his death. It is a summary work of his teachings in patristic and oriental spiritual theology at the Pontifical Oriental Institute and at the Pontifical Gregorian University, in addition to his experience for thirty-eight years as a spiritual father at the Pontifical Nepomucene College in Rome. This book contains his exhortations throughout those years. The source of his theology is the experience of the Churches. He encouraged Saint John Paul II to write the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint on ecumenism. If the spiritual life does not create the unity of people that is the true ecclesial body, then it is a falsehood, a substitute that from time to time, from age to age, creates a hierarchy of values of Christian perfection to demonstrate that it has reached her.
Recommended for those who seek to deepen and clarify concepts of Spiritual Theology in an ecumenical key.
The second, “Emily’s Diary”, is the work of the psychiatrist Mercedes Nasarre Ramón, trained in Psychoanalysis and Post-Rationalism, Gestalt therapist, who presides over a psychotherapy and psychiatry center where she works. For more than fifteen years she has been dedicated to the investigation of the spiritual dimension, she teaches courses, conferences and workshops on interiority. She runs a free School of Spirituality in Huesca. In this title, with continuous links to biblical texts and saints, given that it is a Christian, religious book, it reflects the real character of Emilia, a woman of faith, who has lived through situations of great poverty but in the midst of a Latin American community, which contrasts sharply with individualism, narcissism and nihilism in the West. Phrases and thoughts of great spiritual value are contained, where you can experience how authentic love, dignity and beauty overcome pain, rejection and loneliness. From a deep experience of faith, Emilia searches for the source of love that is inside her. The author raises the possibility of faith for all, as long as interiority is recovered, where the Spirit, Love, dwells.
Recommended for those who seek in the depths of their hearts the spirituality that can restore the peace, serenity and calm that we so much need.
The third book,And it rained angels”, whose author is the Primary teacher Paloma San Román Gómez, who has worked internally, from resilience through writing, reading and painting mainly, in the company of her family and people who have been carrying angels for her of hope. She reflects how fear and suffering can be transformed and lived by taking the positive out of the experience together with others. It is a living testimony of the author, despite still having the trace of some twenty-odd symptoms of a persistent covid (which is often silenced and goes unnoticed, invisible), and from which little by little she is coming out based on a lot of shared humanity, meditation, prayer and the awareness of always being grateful.
Recommended for those who want to have good help, in the form of a testimony, in the work of overcoming adversity and regenerating or recovering their hope.
The fourth title is that of a historical novel by the priest Pedro Villarejo, “The broken ladder. Unpublished diary of the last days of Saint John of the Cross”, which deals with a series of last Sanjoanist writings written by the saint of Fontiveros, found on a staircase that went up to his cell in the Carmelite convent of Úbeda, where he died in 1591, which was reformed by order of the Carmelite prior of that community P. Antonio Molina García, ocd. In that diary he expresses himself with more freedom than usual, in the form of poetry and prose, both the recognition and the rejection suffered by him with respect to those who did not treat him well, or did so with envy.
Recommended for anyone who wants to meet a great teacher of spirituality in an unprecedented, freer and more human facet.
Finally, the fifth book that they have sent me is “where life hurts Stories of my life through the towns of Tucumán”, of the Discalced Carmelite Pedro Luis Rodríguez Aliste, ocd whose missionary vocation had been with him since he was a child, and in 1995 he took him to the Carmelite Mission, in the jungles of the Ecuadorian Amazon in Sucumbíos, Ecuador. There he was accompanying the peasant communities for sixteen years. Fate took him to Argentina in 2011, and to learn about and live closely the reality of La Bombilla, a town in Tucumán. Touched by this experience, he asked to accompany these villages: La Bombilla, El Sifón and El Chivero, which served the Carmelite parish. He visited many protagonists in their homes who – not always – survive in the extreme peripheries, in an environment that is often violent and dramatic. It could be “a book from which blood falls if shaken” (warns the author with the humor that abounds in stories), but its purpose is different. Here are the voices of adults, young people, the elderly and, above all, children. They are the recipients of the CHILDREN’S HOUSES project, also taken to Tucumán (Argentina) by the author, who wants to spread it with this book as a new committed and encouraging contribution. The spontaneous, vivid and jovial narration opens the gaze to the “shantytowns”, “that did not reach shanty towns, that were left only in misery”.
Recommended for those who are not satisfied with the biased information that the Media communicates to us about the poverty that surrounds us, and want to find real life scenarios in its most immense proportions of pain, but also of humor, amazement, teachings, tenderness, hope, generosity and dreams.