Cardinal Bernardin's Stations of the Cross
Transforming Our Grief and Loss into a New Life
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago, had long been considered the leader of American Catholicism and was so widely respected throughout the world that he was thought to be the only American who might become Pope. His life took another path, however, after he was falsely accused of sexual abuse in 1993. Vindicated and about to embark on a broad program of renewal, he was stricken with pancreatic cancer in 1995. His destiny, as those close to him soon sensed, was not to become a Pope but a saint instead.
Between his first diagnosis in June 1995 until the recurrence of his cancer in August, 1996, a period of fourteen months elapsed. There are fourteen stations in the traditional Catholic devotion of the Stations of the Cross that commemorate the events from Christ's judgment through his carrying of his cross to his crucifixion and death. In the last months of his life, Joseph Bernardin lived out those stations in his own life, from being judged unjustly by the high priest brother Cardinals who wanted to eliminate his influence in American Catholicism, to his bearing in his own cross, and from his last meeting with his mother to his public death, Cardinal Bernardin reproduced the passion and death of Jesus in his own. This book is a series of meditations on the traditional stations, based on scriptural scholarship, and the stations Bernardin lived, revealed by the author, Bernardin's close friend for thirty years.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two Catholic devotional mainstays the slightly gauzy hagiography of a devout individual, and the practice of following the "Stations of the Cross" are brought together here. Kennedy (The Unhealed Wound), a psychologist, syndicated columnist and former priest, was also good friend to Chicago's Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. He watched closely as the last 14 months of the Cardinal's life "reprised the stations of the cross" from being judged unjustly (of sexual abuse) to a last meeting with his mother to a very public death (of pancreatic cancer). With a substantial vocabulary, a lyrical style and a liberal outlook, Kennedy describes each station of the cross in two parts, Then and Now. "Then" is Kennedy's poetic description of a Jerusalem Friday 2,000 years ago. A few pages at a time, he retells Jesus' story, highlighting certain themes and filling in many details absent from the terse biblical narratives. In the "Now" sections, Kennedy tells a spiritually parallel chapter from the story of Bernardin's life, drawing our attention to the Cardinal's entrance into the "Mystery of Life as It Is." That life, Kennedy writes, is marked by suffering and sorrow and through God's participation in it, by salvation, too. Despite a summer release, this book would be an excellent companion to the erudite Catholic or the curious Protestant's Lenten devotional journey.
