After winter always comes spring, of Marie de Jaureguiberry
Adrien is one of those high potentials and hypersensitive people that we didn’t know so much about 30 years ago. He was notably harassed in college for three years. Despite his brilliant trajectory, he continues to be gripped by anguish. While he begins taking an antidepressant known for its risk of causing suicide, he kills himself at the age of 25. How does a parent disborn can he survive his son’s suicide? “Guilt is a dead end” raises in this poignant work his mother, Marie de Jauréguiberry. She confides that she made this resolution during her lifetime: “In every torment, in every trial, I will place my whole life in the hands of God: my helplessness and Adrian’s fears”, so that the Lord pours out “his tenderness in the midst of (my) weaknesses”.
After her death, she struggles against her own darkness: escape, magical thoughts, anger, regrets… “While I was locked in this void and this silence (…), a rain of sweetness flooded my soul. » She then receives the certainty that her son is in heaven. “I didn’t know it yet, she writes, but that same day, a friend Marie-France had entrusted Adrien in his jubilee process to Notre-Dame-du-Laus so that he would be delivered from all evil and in peace. » Imperceptibly, “hope was going to rekindle a flame of love in my life”. This bereaved mother ends, addressing her son: “It is now in the heart of God that I can join you. » A story that is both modest and moving. CS
Mom, €16.90.
Father Elijah, an apocalypse, by Michael O’Brien, Thomas Oswald, Nicolas Doucet
The apocalyptic and religious thriller by Canadian Michael O’Brien has just been adapted into comics by Salvator editions. A risky bet (how to put in boxes such a novel of nearly 600 pages?) that the screenwriter Thomas Oswald and the designer Nicolas Doucet took up brilliantly. Because, in this first volume of the trilogy, the duo knew how to transcribe the dramatic, spiritual and even mystical intensity of the plot: an ex-Israeli deputy who has become a Carmelite sees himself entrusted by the pope with the secret mission of meeting “the President », a charismatic personality who looks dangerously like… the Antichrist. “The ‘battle in heaven’ with Michael and his dragon-fighting angels is also taking place in our personal lives and societies. We must be aware of the danger, of what is at stake and enter resolutely into this spiritual war between good and evil,” explained Michael O’Brien to Life in December 2018. Here is a comic that awakens us to this reality. AV
Salvador, €16.90.
To live and die with Georges Bernanos, by Sebastien Lapaque
“Who does not see that the author of joy is much more alive than most of the living? », asks Sébastien Lapaque about the tomb of Georges Bernanos, in Pellevoisin (Indre). And as if to open the eyes of the blind, the journalist at Literary Figaro takes us along the paths trodden by “the writer of faith and despair”, from Brazil to Bandol (Var). Over the course of this masterfully led journey, some of the stages of which originally appeared in Life, the Christian Bernanos then appears for what he is: a prophet, in that he ” tell the truth “. And what is this truth that bursts out in our face three quarters of a century later? “A world won for technology is lost for freedom” (in France against robots). It is therefore necessary to read the work of Bernanos, and today he is no better guide than Lapaque. AV
The Snail, €18.
Christiane Singer, a life on the edge of wonder, by Audrey Fella
Talented novelist, essayist and lecturer, expert in the spiritualities and mystics of the great traditions… Christiane Singer (1944-2007) left a vivid mark in literature and in a field that could be described as “clearing meaning”, she who put words so accurate on the thirst for interiority that lives in everyone. Audrey Fella paints an endearing portrait and unfolds a biography in which we witness the birth of her books, and “the transformation of his being”. It plunges us into the twists and turns of an evolving existence and writing. It should be noted that the writer followed the teaching of German psychotherapist Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, based on Zen Buddhism, before reconnecting with the mystical vein of Christianity, sheltered from all dogmatism. The works of this lover of life are to be (re)discovered. CF
Albin Michel, €20.90.
Get through the disease, by Marie-Helene Boucand
Marie-Hélène Boucand’s life has been marked by disability. Professionally, as a doctor, former head of the physical medicine and rehabilitation department, and personally since she has an orphan disease. In her latest book, she continues her exploration of the difficult land of chronic disease. The richness of her thinking comes from the human and spiritual light she sheds on “the communion of the shaken”. In short chapters, the evocation of psychological and spiritual suffering, the analysis of care relationships, ethical questions, evangelical meditations mingle and intersect. Served by beautiful writing, the author fills in “a duty of humanity” that touches and enriches its readers. DF
Jesuit Editions, €12.
Our selection of spiritual books for the start of the 2022 school year