Violence Unveiled

Shows how the system of sacred violence at the heart of the conventional culture is being undermined by the bibical tradition, especially the Gospel.

Offers a new understaning of sacrifice as a response to love and an entering into the self-giving life of God

The reality and nature of religious faith raises difficult questions for the modern world; questions that re-present themselves when faith has grown under the most challenging circumstances. In East Timor widespread Christian faith emerged when suffering and violence were inflicted on the people by the state. This book seeks a deeper understanding of faith and violence, exploring how Christian faith and solidarity affected the hope and resistance of the East Timorese under Indonesian occupation in their response to state-sanctioned violence. Joel Hodge argues for an understanding of Christian faith as a relational phenomenon that provides personal and collective tools to resist violence. Grounded in the work of mimetic theorist René Girard, Hodge contends that the experience of victimisation in East Timor led to an important identification with Jesus Christ as self-giving victim and formed a distinctive communal and ecclesial solidarity. The Catholic Church opened spaces of resistance and communion that allowed the Timorese to imagine and live beyond the violence and death perpetrated by the Indonesian regime. Presenting the East Timorese stories under occupation and Girard's insights in dialogue, this book offers fresh perspectives on the Christian Church's ecclesiology and mission.

Selfhood and Sacrifice is an original exploration of the ideas of two major contemporary thinkers.

What was the core message of Jesus of Nazareth? It is there in the opening chapter of the gospel of Mark: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. That kingdom, of course, is not one of this world but one of the spirit, which Jesus stated clearly to Pontius Pilate. And just as we need food (the staple of which is bread) to live in the world, we also need spiritual food to live in the world of the spirit. The purpose of this little volume is to help provide a small ration of such food every week of the year. From Emeritus New Testament Professor of San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union, Herman Waetjen: I have found Grays poems to be soulful and profound. They express the pioneering of Jesus of Nazareth in a fresh and original way.

This book is about the practice of peace in daily life. We talk about the importance of peace but often struggle to embody it. Someone annoys us and suddenly we are embroiled in a vortex of conflict. We may ask ourselves, “How can we live with greater integrity? How can we make a positive difference in the world without diminishing others or ourselves?” The author proposes that practicing peace is not something that we do by heroic effort. Christ, by pure grace, breaks through to us when we least expect it. Christ is both received and hosted in an open space of God’s creation. This book invites readers on a journey which interweaves theology, contemplation, and action in intensely practical ways. Containing numerous anecdotes and thought-provoking questions, the book will be a useful resource for church study groups and leadership programs. As we explore this embodied spirituality, we may discover that the Christlike God’s restorative love is transforming us into a people of peace.

Don Sheehan's early life, plagued by his father's alcoholic violence, was at the same time blessed by the good stories this intelligent man read aloud to his children. In his teens, unhappy in school, Don joined a street gang and then the Army Reserves, where he found he had renounced violence. On his eighteenth birthday, happening upon his post library, he walked straight to a book of Japanese poems. It went, in turn, straight to his heart, for eight hours. He'd come home at last. The house of Don's pilgrimage encompasses a wide territory: spiritual, lyric, scholarly, usually all at once. At our best, what we can take from engaging these essays is a way of falling into the heart to embrace, suffer, and, in Christ, transfigure the world's "ruining oppositions." In doing so, we fulfill what St. Maximus the Confessor saw as our human calling: to unify the polarities embedded in God's creation and thus make, not only ourselves, but all Creation whole.