The Book of the Passion
by José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois
Translated by David M. Billikopf and Karin Jürgensen E.
Imprint: Resource Publications
138 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 x 0.28 in
- Paperback
- 9781725298200
- Published: July 2021
$18.00 / £15.00 / AU$28.00
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The Book of the Passion follows the whole via crucis, step by step, from the agony in the garden to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the language of contemporaneous poetry. By means of poetic intuition, these poems look into the deep mysteries of our salvation, with vigorous emphasis in the immeasurable love and pain of the Lord on the cross. The overflowing of the imagination and the strength of the narrative and dramatic verse aim to arouse contemplative prayer and to encourage a higher love for Christ the Lord.
This book is intended for readers who are both able to read poetry and willing to contemplate the passion of the Lord Jesus. The language of poetry may give to these readers a better understanding of the problem of pain, or at least a glimpse of the sense of human suffering, which is not always available for them in flat prose.
José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois is a well-known writer in Latin America. He has published ten books of poetry, twenty books on literature and theology, and about 1,500 articles of literary criticism. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Pontificia Università del Laterano, Rome, and a PhD in literature from Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and is a past member of the Theological International Commission. Professor Ibáñez has taught poetic theory and moral theology at several universities.
“From the lips and the life of St. Josemaría, Ibáñez Langlois learned not only to consider the passion of Christ but to participate in it, to live in its heart-wrenching scenes. His poetry is a cry of the soul transfixed by our Lord’s suffering and the sorrows of his Immaculate Mother. The translators and the publisher have done a great artistic job in translating these mystical texts. Thank you for publishing this book. May it help many readers seek, find, and love Christ!"
—Martin Schlag, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota
“The Book of the Passion is a renowned literary work that expresses a deep religious spirit with the style of vanguard poetry. Not often can we find such a fine melting of different genres—that is to say, narrative language, dramatic speech, and lyric verse. This long poem has a symphonic structure with its different voices like a well-harmonized orchestra. It will help believers with a new approach of the mystery of the Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection.”
—María Teresa Cárdenas, Book Editor, El Mercurio
“The musicality, fantasy, and powerful feeling of Ibáñez Langlois’s poetry brings into life the
centrality of Jesus’s paschal mystery in our life: ‘The passion and death and resurrection of
Christ is the only event that ever happened in the history of mankind / the unique event in the history of creation.” Like Simon the Cyrenian, who ‘was seeking no one and he found God,’ seek, find, and love Jesus while reading this book.”
—Pablo Elton, General Manager, Spring Publications, Hong Kong