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This is a beautiful book that deals with the faith and beliefs of Catholics through the lens of the author's visits to several culturally and religiously important places in the Christian world.He wants the young who are growing up in a world of skepticism and lack of commitment to understand the beauty and magnificence of their Catholic faith.
Through the lives of great saints and writers like Chesterton,Newman,Edith Stein, John Paul 11 and through great Cathedrals like Chartres and educational centers like the University of Cambridge , he explains the meaning, relevance and the beauty of the Catholic faith.
In the first chapter, he explains the basis of his approach: "Catholicism is an optic, a way of seeing things, a distinctive perception of reality."According to him, the real Catholic difference consists in a way of seeing the world.He explains the the meaning of this approach by using the novels and short stories of Flannery O'Connor, the great American novelist and short story writer. O'Connor, he says has the "habit of being" , "a spiritual sensibility which allows us to experience the world not as one damn thing after another , but as the dramatic arena of creation, sins, redemption and sanctification."
Speaking of Mary's role in our life, he wants us to adopt the heroism of the Bl.Virgin Mary which was shown in her fiat to God's will. He adds : " Don't look for an exit strategy .Live in trust, not in calculation.Stake everything on Christ."
In the chapter on Newman, he speaks of Newman's fight against the liberalism of the 19th c and compares his work with that of St.Edith Stein, the Carmelite nun who was martyred for her faith by the Nazis. He decries the emptiness of liberals and underlines the need for strong convictions and beliefs. He points out that traditional religious congregations are thriving while those who have followed the modern liberal thinking are dwindling in membership. The chapter on Chartres Cathedral offers him an opportunity to discus the relationship between payer and beauty.According to him,"Chartres is stone and glass into which have been poured the obedience of faith and passionate , transforming love for Christ, for Mary, for the world, and for the beauty of the human. The result is what its builders imagined it to be --an antechamber to heaven." He waxes eloquent on the Gothic style of architecture : "The Gothic creates a sense of suspension, of floating in space...the Gothic manages to combine the majestic and the personal in ways that other styles don't quite match." " You can't really understand the fantastic burst of creativity that resulted in the great Gothic cathedrals without wrestling with that fact; people were quite convinced that they were preparing a guest room,so to speak, for Christ himself. That was a powerful spur to energy,creativity,and generosity."
Speaking of the importance of beauty in our religious life, he notes that " beautiful things and beautiful music draw us out of our senses into an encounter with a truth that is beyond us,yet accessible to our senses.
"Beauty is an invitation to pray.God asks us to drink at the wellsprings of beauty here and now in order to drink ,finally, of his own ineffable and inexpressible and inexhaustible beauty in the new Jerusalem."
Vising the King's chapel at Cambridge University and listening to its choir he felt the absence of the presence of God there since the University has become highly secular , having lost its original Christian inspiration.He calls such churches which has become de-Christianized as "basilicas of the real absence."
