Hadewijch: The Complete Works

By Mother Columbo Hart

Book Overview

Revised

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809122979
• ISBN13: 9780809122974
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Paulist Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

GOD IS LOVE, and our souls yearn painfully to reunite with their Creator in Love

As we await eagerly the soon publication of a new biography of Reverend Mother Benedict Duss, Founder of the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut, let us revisit other publications which have flown from that wonderful profound and pure source of life. The cover and chapter headings of this present volume are beautifully and meaningfully illuminated by the great artist and Benedictine nun of that Abbey, Mother Placid Dempsey, OSB. Please view the inside illustrations iconically as reflecting the visions of mystical love reported so well by the Belgium 13th century Catholic nun Hadewijch, of whom so little remains but her profound mystical writings. We know so much of Saint Teresa of Avila, whose report of similar esctatic visions of mystical Love are even famously depicted in sculture in Rome. Yet of Hadewijch we know so little biographically, and have her only major work, her complete writings, including poetry, letters and prose, preserved for us now, translated and edited by the very able hand of Mother Columba (nee Elizabeth) Hart of the Abbey of Regina Laudis, as intelligent, spiritual, solidly theological and scholarly as an American Dorothy L. Sayers. Hadewijch passes a much more painful vision of mystical Love, as she opens herself to experiencing the pain of a profound Love in exile, awaiting the earnestly longed for Divine Beloved. Hadewijch sees that as we grow in generous Love, as described in the sixth chapter of Saint Luke, loving generously those we most have reason to hate, so do we grow ever loser to the Divine Beloved, God, and capable of receiving God's infinite and pure love. For example, in this comprehensive and excellent volume's page 103, we read: I will tell you without beating around the bush: Be satisfied with nothing less than Love. (. . .) Never must any difficulty hinder you from serving people, be they insignificant or important, sick or healthy. And the sicker they are, and the fewer friends they have, the more readily must you serve them. And always bear with aliens willingly. As for all who slander you, contradict them not. And be desirous to associate with all who scorn you, for they make the way of Love broader for you. As you can see from this citation, Mother Columba`s able translation makes this 13th century Belgian mystic`s words, exhortations and spirituality immediately comprehensible and applicable for us now in the new millenium. Hadewijch was a contemplative nun of the Beguine women`s movement which focussed on the mystery of Love mysticism, as Mother Columba fully and understandably explains in this excellent book of the Catholic Paulist Press`s Classics of Western Spirituality series, which also includes major works on, for example, Julian of Norwich, Saint Bonaventure, Origen, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Catherine of Siena, etc., whose names are so familiar but writings, teachings and spirituality less so. I highly recommend this now quarter century old work by Mother Columba presenti