This Tremendous Lover

"For that is the whole spiritual life -- a love union with Jesus, in which each of the lovers, the Divine and the human, give themselves completely to one another.  It is not so much a question of acquisition of virtue, of performing heroic deeds, of amassing merit, of bearing fruit in the Church; these things are excellent, especially insofar as they come from love.  But nothing less than our very self in its entirety will satisfy the heart of Jesus, and all He asks is that we give Him our whole self in all poverty and nothingness.  The great way to do that is the way shown by Jesus and by Mary -- by love through humility and abandonment.

~Dom Eugene Boylan, O.C.R., in This Tremendous Lover

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God,

with thy whole heart,

and with thy whole soul,

and with thy whole mind, 

and with thy whole strength.

~Mark 12:30

Ave Maria! Thanks to my dear friends Joan Carson and Suzanne Porter, who gave me a gift certificate to our local Catholic gift store on the anniversary of my consecration as a virgin, I am currently re-reading This Tremendous Lover, which I devoured back in my 20's. It was written by Dom Eugene Boylan, O.C.R., an Irish priest, a Trappist monk and a spiritual writer. First published in 1946, this book been reprinted many times over the years. My copy is "Revised and Updated" by Tan Books (2013). This is one of those spiritual classics full of the sort of wisdom that endures the test of time -- all 352 pages! I suspect that I'll be posting excerpts from it as I read along. Meanwhile, you can read some excerpts on the Web here and here as well as a review here. Better yet, buy a copy for yourself. If you are a Kindle user, Amazon sells the Tan Books version for just $5.  I'm definitely a "bargain queen," but when it comes to books like This Tremendous Lover, I'll spend my last penny for the real thing so that I can mark it up assiduously. Happy reading, learning, applying and converting!