469 - Morning Light: The Spiritual Journal of Jean Sulivan

Morning Light: The Spiritual Journal of Jean Sulivan
By Jean Sulivan
Mahwah, NJ, Paulist, 1988. 180 pp. $12.95.

In a world engineered by ghost writers, literary collaborators and a new species called "spin doctors," the spiritual journal of Jean Sulivan called Morning Light is something of an anomaly.

There is nothing artificial or dishonest in this collection of jottings, brief essays, and diary entries. In fact, it may be the honesty of this book that jolts the reader and compels undivided attention. Tough, honorable and bold, this is solid fare reflecting the human condition with uncommon precision.

One of hundreds of exquisitely crafted insights goes like this: "Unless language changes-and it changes only after a spiritual revolution ecumenism will remain what it has seemed so far, an administrative enterprise, following the laws of competition in which, despite the vocabulary of good feeling, we always detect the prudent search for advantage."

Even in translation, one recognizes the superior literary talent of someone who had written over twenty-five books, almost evenly divided between fiction and non-fiction. A Roman Catholic priest with an independent streak tempered by a gentle modesty, Sulivan was attentive to the emergence of Christian personality, disdainful of phoniness and empty ritual, but capable of celebrating fullness and freedom wherever they were birthed.

His attentiveness beckons ours.

This is a treasure for preachers, ministers, pilgrims-but there is no easy mining here without being strongarmed into serious personal reflection ourselves.

Doris Donnelly
John Carroll University
Cleveland, Ohio.