Reviews for Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word : Meditations on the Gospel of St. Matthew

The average rating for Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word : Meditations on the Gospel of St. Matthew based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-26 00:00:00 VIRGIL FREELEN Yes it's 700 pages and only covers the first third of the Gospel of Matthew. And your point is ...? That I might not live long enough to finish all three books? If I don't finish the 2,100 pages or so by then, hopefully I'll be in a place where God will fill me in on what I missed. Actually I'd been circling around this book for several years. It took Will Duquette's enthusiasm to tip me over the edge. Flipping through this doorstop, I came across a paragraph that stopped me in my tracks. The Virgin Mary is called the [Greek words] (the "book of the Word of life") by the Greek Church. The book of the Gospel, the book of Christ's origins and life, can be written and proclaimed because God has first written his living Word in the living book of the Virgin's being, which she has offered to her Lord in all its purity and humility—the whiteness of a chaste, empty page. If the name of Mary does not often appear in the pages of the Gospel as evident participant in the action, it is because she is the human ground of humility and obedience upon which every letter of Christ's life is written. She is the Theotokos, too, in the sense that she is the book that bears, and is inscribed with, the Word of God. She keeps her silence that he might resonate the more plainly within her.In fact, it almost knocked me out of my seat. So I'm reading these meditations, holding myself down to one per day. I must say that the author's translations are as inspiring as his meditations. There is a vivid sense of "action" that I just don't find when I try different translations to see the equivalent. It feels ... living ... alive ... Full disclosure: I skipped the lengthy introduction, except for the parable about Aleph which rings loudly every time I see the Aleph after each meditation to remind us to leave space for God to enter in. When I am craving yet another meditation, I'll begin working through the intro. ============= UPDATE I've been trying to figure out how to describe this treasure. It makes me eager for afternoon prayer and, I'm sorry to admit, that is a rare thing ... to be eager for prayer. To think, "Woohoo! I get to read another section of Fire of Mercy!" So there's that. Will Duquette says it best. We may recall he turned me onto this book so he's further ahead. All of my hopes for Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis’ book Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word. I’ve been getting up early every day to spend time in study ever since Easter Tuesday (including Saturdays and Sundays!), and I’m regularly astonished by the blindingly obvious things he pulls out of each line of the text—blindingly obvious after you’ve seen them—that I had never noticed before. I’m keeping notes of my reflections; some of them may appear here in the future. (As some kind of indication of the depth of Erasmo’s writing…50 days after Easter, I’m not quite to the end of the third chapter of Matthew’s gospel.)I too am continually hit by the blindingly obvious that regularly surprises and simultaneously enlightens. I'm feeling dumber by the page and yet I don't mind because I'm so blown away that I have food for thought for the rest of the day.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-03 00:00:00 Mauricio Quintana I will never actually be done with this magnificent volume. I'm good with that.