For many years I have had the practice of carefully choosing reading material to bring with me on vacation. Almost always included in the books is some novel that I have not read. This past summer, I broke the pattern. I brought a book on spirituality that I thought that I might profit from re-reading: Michael Downey’s “Altogether Gift: A Trinitarian Spirituality” (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000, pp. 143, $12). This small book is a gem. It should be read and re-read because it is so filled with wonderful insights into the mystery of God and the mystery of us. In choosing to re-read the book, I was looking for some new theological knowledge. I think what I received could be described as enlightenment.
Reading Downey has helped me appreciate how far theology has come since I studied the subject back in the mid-1950s. Of course, God is still mysterious, but Downey’s reflections and insights have helped me to see in a new way that belief in the Blessed Trinity is not embracing some set of abstract truths that have little relation to human living. In fact, the opposite is true: belief in Father, Son and Holy Spirit should be at the center of a Christian’s life.
Emphasizes Personal Relationship
What I especially like about “Altogether Gift” is that Downey successfully involves the reader in personal reflections about relationship with God. In the early pages, he emphasizes that in Israel’s experience of God, the Israelites become aware that God is active in history and indeed gradually become aware that God is One who speaks, who makes an offer. The gift that God offers to the Israelites – and to us – is a love relationship. Downey writes the following:
“As the story unfolds, ‘It’ or ‘He’ is gradually recognized as One who addresses, who speaks, who makes an offer. This One calls forth, elicits a response, and makes a claim upon a people. In Israel’s story, they are addressed, we are called, I am spoken to. Something is asked of them, of us, of me. Their response, our reply, my answer in the face of this One is ‘Thou,’ ‘You.’ I find a claim is made upon me, I am called upon, addressed, named by a ‘Thou,’ a ‘You’ whose name will ever elude me. And all of us” (p. 20).
Downey is able to depict in both a challenging and beautiful way our relationship with this Thou and how the relationship is deepened through the story of God’s Son, the greatest story ever told, the story of the Son’s death and resurrection, which, of course, is very much our story. Downey writes about the mystery of God and the mystery of our relationship with God that encourages me not only to reflect on these mysteries, but also to enter more deeply into them. The pages of “Altogether Gift” are about God, but also about us. Everything in our lives is a gift from God, the experiences that we recognize as wonderful and the experiences which we might have avoided if we could have. All is grace.
While I very much like the title of the book, it might have also been called “Altogether Love” because every insight Downey offers in one way or another illuminates the love relationship between God and us. Downey writes the following:
“What is this strange and elusive thing we call love? Quite simply, it is life pouring itself forth. To say that ‘God is love’ is to say that God is not enclosed, turned in on self. God is the life that pours itself forth: constantly, abundantly, excessively, never-to-stop-coming-as-gift. Life is altogether and absolutely gift; a gift come freely, unexpectedly, undeservedly. This gift is constant, trustworthy, faithful. God who is always and everywhere pouring forth is faithful.
“Calling God ‘Father’ is a way of naming our relationship to God, a way of responding to the gift of Love expressed in the Word who is Son of the Father, breathing life and love in the Spirit. It is our way of naming and celebrating the gift received, and of entering into relationship with the Source of life giving itself forth as gift in every instant” (p. 38).
I decided that the next book I am going to suggest to a discussion group I moderate will be “Altogether Gift.”
Father Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).
