Leiva-Merikakis invites the Hasidim to explain the songs of David. He listens to New Testament koin' with ears attuned to Aeschylus and Homer. For him, the little words of the saints, of a Francis or a Th r se, are as light-filled as the lofty works of an Origen. He does not banish the poets from his republic, but invites Dante, Hopkins, and P guy, among many others, to lay the gold of their words by the manger of the Logos. Even Gregorian chant can be heard in this symphony of a thousand.
References abound to the altar books of both Christian East and West, with illuminating profit.
If you are disheartened by the terrorism of the modernist critics who point out the fine detail of the cathedral of the Gospels by placing dynamite at its foundations, then read this enlightening and warming book. Fire of Mercy will be young and still ardent when the commentaries of the pitiless pedants are a handful of cold dust. The nova et vetera that he displays are not two separate kinds of things, but two sides of one and the same thing, two facets of a single jewel. The familiar things of the Kingdom are always fresh, for the King of the Kingdom has a beauty that, however ancient, remains always new. The eternal Son is as old as the Father, and the Father is as young as he.