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COME, HAVE BREAKFAST - MEDITATIONS ON GOD AND THE EARTH

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Book Review Archive

COME, HAVE BREAKFAST

MEDITATIONS ON GOD AND THE EARTH

By Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ - Orbis Press, 2024  - a review by R. B. Williams, O.P.


     I have been invited to provide a review of Elizabeth Johnson’s wonderful little book of meditations, COME HAVE BREAKFAST - MEDITATIONS ON GOD AND THE EARTH for a website dedicated to the ministry of preaching!  I do so with fear and trembling both because the author is a preeminent theologian, and the subject is immense!!  Why would such a book be useful to preachers?  The title should be familiar from the Gospel According to John, where Jesus appears after his resurrection to a tired bunch of disciples who are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives after his death and resurrection.  They try to go back to fishing and wind up with Jesus’ help with a big catch after which he says to them, “Come, have breakfast.” [John 21:12]   Johnson is upfront about her goal in writing: “In the story itself, the inviting words ‘Come, have breakfast’ is obviously an expression of Jesus’s care for the bodily well-being of the fishers.  Reading this gospel in our time of ecological crisis, the invitation opens onto a wider perspective.  ‘Come, have breakfast’ is a bugle call of divine hospitality toward all people and all living creatures, revealing a passionate divine desire that all should be fed…..The aim is to open up an angle of vision so that when anyone says the word ‘God,’ a picture of the changing Earth enfolded with divine affection reflexively comes into view, along with whatever else one is thinking, teaching, preaching, arguing, or praying about.  No God without Earth!  No Creator without creation! No Singer without her song.” (from the Introduction).  Well…in this work, we are handed a hymnbook of thought for preaching about God and creation.

     Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato si’, serves as a major inspiration for the meditations, but what one notices immediately is the abundance of scripture, especially from the psalms.  Psalm 104 gets some special attention, but nearly 30 of the psalms make an appearance.  Another nice surprise, at least to this Dominican, is the frequent reference to our brother Thomas Aquinas!  Each meditation is short and eloquent, making this book a great homiletic and spiritual resource.

     Johnson invites human readers to see themselves as “part of” creation and not “a-part from” creation (my words).  She tackles the traditional idea of the “hierarchy of being” and places the human person in the middle of and not on top of creation.  The interdependence of humanity with all of creation and through it with God shines forth.  

     For one whose ministry may be oral or written preaching, this book offers a tremendous resource for dealing with the daily concerns that we live within our relationship with nature.  Forest fires, earthquakes, winds, hurricanes, smog, water contamination, extreme temperatures - all of these point not to domination as a response but a recognition of our dependence in the face of nature’s power.  If we haven’t read Pope Francis’ two works, LAUDATO SI’ and LAUDATE DEUM, this book could inspire us to do so, but if not, Elizabeth Johnson gives us the opportunity to be inspired to preach about, and be ourselves far more aware of, God everywhere in creation.

—by R. B. Williams, OP


Book Review Archive

Just click on a book title below to read the review.
(The latest submissions are listed first.)

 

COME, HAVE BREAKFAST - MEDITATIONS ON GOD AND THE EARTH
SPEAKING WITH AUTHORITY
Mark's Passion Narrative
THE CRISIS OF BAD PREACHING
A HISTORY OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL ETHICS
Jesus: A Gospel Portrait
How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row
Christ and the Spirit: Catholic Perspectives Through the Ages
MAKING SENSE OF MYSTERY - A PRIMER ON THEOLOGICAL THINKING
PREACHING IN THE BLACK CHURCH
The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church
LONGING TO SEE YOUR FACE – PREACHING IN A SECULAR AGE
A Joint Review
St. Dominic: A Story of a Preaching Friar
JESUS and the PRODICAL SON
PREACHING MATTERS: A PRAXIS FOR PREACHERS
Moses in Pharaoh's House
...and the Mountains Echoed
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Preaching the Mystery of Faith: The Sunday Homily
The Rhythm of Being...
Remi De Roo - Chronicles of a Vatican II Bishop
Redeeming the Past
Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings
This Is Our Exile
Compassion: Loving Our Neighbor in and Age of Globalization
True and False Reform In the Church
Adult Faith
The Mystical Way In Everyday Life
Racial Justice and the Catholic Church
Let the Great World Spin
The Priesthood Of the Faithful
Living With Wisdom
Where the Pure Water Flows
LITURGY WITH STYLE AND GRACE
Best Advice For Preaching
We Speak the Word Of the Lord
KINGDOM, GRACE, JUDGEMENT...
Great World Religions: Islam
FULFILLED IN OUR HEARING: HISTORY AND METHOD OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING.
PARABLES FOR PREACHERS - YEAR C
Of Books and Preparation
After Sunday: A Theology of Work
A Captive Voice: The Liberation of Preaching
GOSPEL LIGHT: JESUS STORIES FOR SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Written Text Becomes Living Word...
Voicing the Vision: Imagination & Prophetic Preaching
The Death of Innocents

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