Breathed into Wholeness: Catholicity and Life in the Spirit

⭐ Advance Praise & Reviews ⭐

“How do we develop a consciousness of wholeness in a breathless world of anxiety and competition? How can we overcome narrow individualism by expanding personhood to include all creaturely life? . . . To live in a spirit of catholicity is to live with deep awareness of God’s life everywhere present and filling all things, the life of the whole.”—From the Foreword by Ilia Delio

"A masterpiece of systematic theological thinking and spiritual reflection and practice, a rich theology of the Spirit that can ground our search for intercultural living and intercultural mission. Breathed into Wholeness is the culmination of a lifetime of reflection on human interiority, on the vast possibilities of science for spiritual integrity and growth, and on the implications for spirituality in ecology's recognition of the interrelationship of everything in the universe. What draws everything and everyone into wholeness--the deepest meaning of catholicity-- is God's creating and redeeming Spirit ...that breathes everything into the mysterious heart of God and breathes outward into participation in God's mission in union with God's Word made flesh." --Stephen Bevans, SVD, Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of Mission and Culture, Emeritus Catholic Theological Union, Chicago

"I recommend this book to all those wanting to explore their spirituality and seeking to deepen their awareness of the unfolding creation. It would be an excellent resource for a group embracing the new potential of creating a better world." - Regina Daly, Tui motu Interislands Magazine

“Mary Frohlich’s Breathed into Wholeness is a well-thought-out, rich commentary on the meaning of catholicity in relationship to the flourishing of the human person and the whole of the cosmos.” —Kathleen Borres, Catholic Book Review

“She attempts, successfully in my opinion, to trace and articulate the ‘trajectory’ of the inter-relationship of the theology of the Spirit of God and the human spirit as it has been understood in the Christian tradition.” - John J.Markey, Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality

“Frohlich’s book reminds readers of how, in the Christian tradition, justice matters because it is critical to a greater purpose: to participate in God’s mission to make all peoples and all creation more whole.” — Henry Kuo, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics, Reading Religion

“This book fills our lives with the hope that each life makes a difference and that together we form the beauty of communion as the Body of Christ.” - Eileen Quinn Knight, Profiles in Catholicism

"This book will be easy to use to introduce students to a wide range of topics having to do with the relationship between liturgy and power. It offers fundamental liturgical theological reflection, insights from ritual studies and sociology, and clear and valuable liturgical practical examples." — Samuel Goyvaerts, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Cambridge University Press

“Catholicity” is a concept that encompasses the entire dynamic of whole-making and diversifying. In this book, Mary Frohlich explores its application to our spiritual lives, that is, how each of us strives to construct a life that bears both the integrity of ultimate wholeness and the dynamism of real-life change, pluralism, and differentiation.

She offers compelling arguments that “spirit” is the self-transcending, whole-making impetus that is built into human persons, and that awareness of it is most intense in spiritual events that electrify a person’s sense of joyous interconnection with other people, the natural world, the cosmos, and/or God.

Mary Frohlich, RSCJ, is associate professor of spirituality and chair of the department of spirituality at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago. A past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, she is the editor of the collection, St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Essential Writings (Orbis).