I’m pleased to announce that my recent written interview with Francis Etheredge has now been published online at Profiles in Catholicism. It was a joy to speak of my fifty-four years as an Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK) and my love of liturgy and the Eucharist, the sacramental life that feeds us with God’s word and Christ’s Real Presence.
My reviews of Francis Etheredge’s books, A Prayerful Kiss and Honest Rust and Gold, collections of prose and poetry published by En Route Books and Media, can be found also on this site. I hope to review more of his titles in the weeks to come.
Francis Etheredge’s reviews of Angel Mountain and The Fire Trail have also been published on Profiles in Catholicism.
Thank you, Profiles in Catholicism. In browsing the site I came across a wealth of interesting reviews and interviews and news, even poems and intercessory prayers for the world, but a particular video caught my attention, one celebrating the Paulist Fathers 100 year anniversary in Rome this year, 2022. This coincided nicely with the recent contract with En Route Publishing to reissue my fifth novel, The Magdalene Mystery, originally published by OakTara, which features a Paulist church in Rome.
Santa Susanna, Rome
The Magdalene Mystery, a search for the real Mary Magdalene of history through the churches of Rome, begins at the Church of Santa Susanna, Rome, one of the Paulist parishes for Americans with English-language Masses. It is a stunning church and a perfect start of the quest that my characters, Kelly and Daniel, embark upon. So I was thrilled to see the video, with some lovely clips of Santa Susanna. The Paulists were most gracious when we have visited on numerous occasions (Fr. Greg and Fr. Tom, as I recall) and their parish library next-door is home to a number of my novels.
And so, this Fourth Sunday in Lent, as I scrutinize The Magdalene Mystery manuscript, I am thinking of the pilgrimage we are making through this Lenten season of preparation for Easter. We are walking a path through the mists of Lent, a time of not only fasting but of reflection and prayer, a time preparing us for the great promise of Christ, our own resurrections.
In our pilgrimage to God with God, we rejoice in each step through time, each minute, hour, day, and year that pulls us toward our own moment of seeing God face to face. This pilgrimage is ours to own as Christians, as witnesses to the daily revelations that unfold before us, as witnesses to the revelations that unfolded over two thousand years ago on a hill outside Jerusalem and in the empty tomb discovered by Mary Magdalene in the early dawn of the first Easter. We are, as Christians, witnesses to life itself, the source, the Creator himself.
We reach to touch him just as the Magdalene did in the garden. Today, he reaches to touch us if we so desire. It is in that touch that we are made whole, reborn, resurrected. It is in that touch that we live and breathe and have our being.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 