Becoming God's Beloved in the Company of Friends: A Spirituality of the Fourth Gospel

Becoming Gods Beloved in the Company of Friends offers a fresh perspective and invites persons to develop a personal and communal Christian spirituality. It offers a way to deepen commitment to live as a disciple of Jesus personally and with others. It bridges the gap between a first-century biblical text and twenty-first-century readers who hunger for genuine spirituality today. Each chapter focuses on a few stories and a few teachings to illustrate a particular characteristic of becoming a disciple. Here is a beautifully evocative spiritual reading of the Gospel of John. While resting on sound scholarship this is kept in the background inviting the reader to engage directly with the Gospel text sensitively and intelligently. Modeling the spirituality of the Gospel the author writes self-consciously and in dialogue with a reader offering the challenge to enter into the text then to allow the text to transform the readers life. Here is scholarship at its best as it communicates its depth in a manner accessible to all. Pazdans book is a valuable resource for ones reflective spiritual reading or for a small group gathering to discuss and pray with the Fourth Gospel. As the Gospel it is based upon this book invites one into life in the household of God. --Mary L. Coloe. Australian Catholic University. [This is] a treatment of Johannine theology that reflects a genuine pastoral sensitivity. Mary Pazdan articulates well the communal dimension of a gospel that all too often seen as only concerned with the believers attitude toward Jesus the Father and the Spirit. This book will be a valuable resource for individuals wanting to use the gospel of John in a way to genuinely deepen their relationship with both God and their neighbor. Pazdan has the ability to explain Johannine theology in a way that is faithful to the text and yet eminently intelligible to the general reader. --Urban C. von Wahlde Loyola University Chicago This book invites us to journey as friends into the heart of Johns Gospel. We travel with both classical and contemporary companions like Thomas Aquinas Catherine of Siena and Henri Nouwen. Mary Margarets scholarship provides information and the insightful questions are informative. I look forward to using this with Stillpoints Scripture Seminars. --Kathleen R. Flood OP Stillpoint Mary Margaret Pazdan OP is Professor of Biblical Studies at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. She is coauthor of Wind Earth and Fire: Biblical and Theological Perspectives in Creation (2004).