No, not Enzo Bianchi the Emmerdale character nor even Enzo Bianchi the wine merchant. Father Enzo Bianchi is the Prior of a monastic community of men and women at Bose in Italy and this book is a collection of his reflections on 45 key elements of the spiritual journey. These elements include practices such as ascetism and prayer, temptations such as akedia or spiritual listlessness, virtues such as patience and faithfulness and disciplines such as fasting and poverty. The book concludes with four superb chapters reflecting on illness, old age, death and (as an epilogue) joy.
Due to the profundity of the wisdom it contains, this is definitely not a book to be read at one sitting. It is a book to be read slowly and savoured, with frequent pauses for prayer and meditation. For example, Bianchi's definition of patience- "patience is the art of living within the incompleteness and the fragmentary nature of the present moment without giving in to despair" - has proved so helpful to me that not only have I memorised it, but by dint of constant repetition, my entire family now knows it too ... Similarly, when struggling with trying to articulate which evangelistic techniques I found unacceptable, I was helped by Bianchi's reflection on conversion: "only men and women changed by the gospel, who demonstrate their conversion to others through the way they live, are also able to request conversion of others." As a novice on the path of contemplative prayer, I appreciated his definition of a contemplative as "an expert in the art of discerning God's presence." Thus Bianchi sees even prayers of request as being in essence contemplative, because in requesting something from God "we place a certain distance between ourselves and our situation, establish a period of waiting between our need and its satisfaction, and try to make space for an Other within the enigmatic situation in which we are living."
Bianchi's wisdom is not restricted to helping individuals on their personal journey, for he often reflects on issues which affect the whole church. Thus in his thoughts about hope he challenges the church to open up vistas of meaning for the world, "to give hope and the possibility of a future to concrete, personal lives, and show that it is worth living and dying for Christ." For Bianchi, Christians communicate their hope "by living according to the logic of the Paschal event" which is the logic that allows Christians to live in community with people they did not choose, and even makes it possible for them to love those who hate them. Bianchi then goes on to discuss the nature of forgiveness, which he defines as "the mysterious maturity of faith and love that allows us, when we have been offended, to choose freely to renounce our own rights in a relationship with someone who has already trampled on our rights ... an enemy is our greatest teacher, because he or she unveils what is in our heart but does not emerge when we are on good terms with others." This leads Bianchi on to consider humility, which, he concludes, is above all humiliation - the place where we are led to discover who we are through the actions of others, of life and of God. Bianchi has a Trinitarian understanding of the Christian communion which demands both that the church cannot reject responsibility for others, but also that "a horizontal principle of attentiveness to the other" is insufficient as it runs the risk of exclusivity or rivalry. 'The other' is not enough - the transcendent 'Third' is also needed, and thus Bianchi concurs fully with Barth's statement that "the Church is the continually renewed communion of men and women who listen to and give witness to the Word of God."
Finally, Bianchi also addresses issues of importance to humanity as a whole. In his trilogy of chapters on illness, aging and death, Bianchi offers some perspectives which were quite new to me. For instance, he suggests that illness "is a new point of view from which to look at reality", one which strips us of our illusions about life. Illness shatters some of the meanings which we have carefully constructed and calls us to accept responsibility for assigning a meaning to our suffering. Thus he offers the important pastoral perspective that ill people should be the teachers of those who sit at their bedsides. When considering aging, he once again quotes Barth: "old age offers itself to men and women as an extraordinary possibility to see life not as duty, but as grace." Old age is another time of meaning-making, of looking back at one's life and attempting to discern the hidden narrative, the golden thread, and this is why it is so important for older people to tell and re-tell their stories. Finally life must be handed over in death, but Bianchi has an unusual perspective on death also. For him, prayer is a preparation for death, for in setting aside time to pray, we give our time over to God, and time is life. Death, and particularly the fear of death, remain the enemy whom we battle in Christ "because so many of the strategies we use in an attempt to escape the anxiety of death follow the logic of idolatry and sin." Bianchi concludes by considering joy - "joy reveals itself in our discovery that we are satisfied."
This is a wonderful book, ideally suited for using in daily devotions as the chapters are short but very profound. You can buy it from Amazon here or order it from the Pontypridd Harvest Christian Bookshop here.
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