(£9.99, Gracewing, 2002 ) Reviewed by Martin Blake, June 2002

These saints could hardly be more different, on the surface. Benedict the 6th Century patriarch who founded the most prolific religious order destined to last for more than fifteen centuries; Therese the hidden Carmelite nun who died nine years after entering the convent at the age of fifteen in 1888. Benedict of whom we know practically nothing; Therese of whom we know almost everything, and the most photographed saint of modern times. Yet in this fascinating book Dwight Longenecker has not only given us a profound study of both, he has managed to link them together in a complimentarity in ten chapters with headings such as “The Little Way and The Little Rule”, “The Way of the Lamb”, “Childhood and Obedience”, “Childhood and Stability”, “Childhood and Conversion of Life”.

Dwight is already an expert on St Benedict on whose Rule he has written a delightful commentary for fathers of families called “Listen My Son” (Gracewing £12.99.) Now he has taken on board ‘the greatest saint in modern times’ (Pius XI) who in 1997 was declared a Doctor of the Church by John-Paul II.

He shows how the Rule of St Benedict - one of the classics of European literature which on first reading seems quite unremarkable - described by the author himself as “a little rule for beginners”, deals more with the minutiae of daily living in community than with highflown spirituality. It is this down-to-earth quality which links it with Therese’s ‘little way’. He also shows how in the psychology of the child-father relationship the former has to rebel against the latter and then return, like the Prodigal Son, to a more mature but still childlike relationship. In this rebellion and return lies the whole drama of God’s people in the Old Testament. Dwight examines the fallacy of feminism, where both fathers and children are despised. The idea of fatherhood is prominent in Benedict’s Rule, and we know the role played by her father in Therese’s short life.

Dwight is spot-on in his analysis of our society’s approach to family life and childhood : “Like all decadent societies we have sentimentalised and destroyed childhood at the same time…when it comes to producing new children, we hail the latest chemicals and gadgets to produce conception while dishing out more chemicals and gadgets to prevent conception…we are pro-creation in every area but procreation.”

It is said that Hamlet is a succession of quotations. Dwight is a great quoter, and seems to have read every possible source for both their lives. Each chapter is preceded by half a dozen well-chosen quotations, and many more are woven into the text. There are also many quotable quotes from Dwight himself; e.g. “What the grumpiest grown-up needs is a dose of childhood” (pg 48), “Benedict and Therese call ordinary Christians to extraordinary perfection - not by being extraordinarily perfect, but by being perfectly ordinary” (49) “The family is the monastery of the human race, for there we make lifelong vows to live together in chastity, obedience, and poverty of spirit” (65). “The shocking truth of the story (of the Fall) is that disobedience not only twists our whole nature, but the whole of Nature”. (77)

This book is full of nuggets of gold. The reviewer can only give a dim impression of what it contains. The reader will not only learn a great deal about two of the greatest saints of the Church, but will have his or her spiritual life fed and enriched.

Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk