A Journey with Jonah: The Spirituality of Bewilderment

by Paul Murray OP, Joseph Ratzinger (Afterword)

Overview

The book of the prophet Jonah is only two pages long—and Jonah’s prophesying is limited to one short sentence. And yet, around this small book, as if it were around Jonah’s own troubled ship, high waves of controversy and mystery have swirled for centuries. 

In A Journey with Jonah: The Spirituality of Bewilderment, the Irish Dominican scholar Fr. Paul Murray strives to uncover the great lesson of this story of bewilderment. Featuring a 2003 lectio divina on Jonah by then-Cardinal Ratzinger—published here in English for the first time—A Journey with Jonah, like the book of Jonah itself, is a brief but compelling journey into the heart of the spiritual life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781943243853
Publisher:	Word on Fire
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	104
Sales rank:	1,078,101
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.32(d)

About the Author

Fr. Paul Murray, OP, an Irish Dominican friar, lives in Rome, where he teaches courses on the literature of the Western mystical tradition at the Angelicum University. He is a Fellow of the Word on Fire Institute and has published many books, including St. Catherine of Siena: Mystic of Fire, Preacher of Freedom; A Journey with Jonah: The Spirituality of Bewilderment; Scars: Essays, Poems, and Meditations on Affliction; Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism, and Poetry; and God’s Spies: Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Other Poets of Vision. 

Table of Contents

Introduction i

Chapter 1 Obedience to the Word: The Lesson of the Wild Storm 1

Chapter 2 In the Belly of Paradox: The Lesson of the Great Whale 19

Chapter 3 Compassion without Limit: The Lesson of the Wondrous Plant 41

Afterword God Took Pity Joseph Ratzinger 61

The Book of Jonah 77

Editorial Reviews

Fr. Paul Murray’s compelling meditations on the book of Jonah bring to life the depth, beauty, and humor of this extraordinary and brief sacred text. Drawing on an amazing diversity of sources, Murray opens to the reader a stunning array of theological, psychological, and spiritual insights that Jonah has provoked throughout the centuries in authors and artists from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Far more than a biblical commentary, A Journey with Jonah is a spiritually colorful and visceral exploration of the human flight from God’s severe mercy—a mercy that ultimately triumphs in Jesus Christ.

Tom Neal

Like the book of Jonah itself, Fr. Paul Murray’s A Journey with Jonah is both terse and profound. In three short chapters Murray masterfully shows his reader—with colorful commentary from Augustine, Buber, Mankowitz, Melville, Merton, and Teresa of Avila—that the conversion of Jonah precedes the conversion of the Gentiles of Nineveh to whom he was preaching, an absolutely essential reminder to anyone working on the frontlines of evangelization that you can’t give what you haven’t first received. A Journey with Jonah is the perfect book for a post-COVID Church, as Fr. Murray inspires us to get out and get moving again in the work of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Fr. Damian J. Ference

Can you write a lucid guide to bewilderment? Fr. Paul Murray has done so, explaining Jonah with a wide range of references, psychological and spiritual insight, and clarity.

Rabbi David Wolpe