Should we pray for the departed, or venerate the saints? Does the opaque veil of death not cut them off completely? In this bold and wide‐ranging work, Leonard DeLorenzo answers with a clear affirmation of the ‘communion of saints’, not by denying the seriousness of death, but by seeing that death, however tragic, cannot have the last word over God. Even Jesus Christ the ‘Word of life’ entered the isolation of death, but by rising he ‘re‐members’ a communion out of the dismembered human race. Then, in the saints, ‘the love of Christ…becomes their own way of loving’, transcending the grave.
Modern society, however, tends towards increasing isolation of individuals and embarrassment about death. So DeLorenzo takes up Rahner's twofold challenge: to overcome a Kantian epistemology that puts the dead beyond reasonable knowledge, and theologically to reassert belief in a non‐pantheistic, personal God whose love is stronger than death. Rilke's secular poetic vision valiantly holds out hope beyond death, but only in a non‐personal dissolving of the self. By contrast, Heidegger overstates death's domination over mortal life, taking the Kantian epistemology to extremes.
More constructively, the third chapter expounds death in Christian terms, focusing especially on the silence of Holy Saturday and Christ's descent into Sheol. The central thesis here, building on Ratzinger among others, is that communion depends on communication: this occurs among the dead and among the living, but also between those realms. One could fruitfully compare St Thomas Aquinas on charity as God's friendship, whereby communion with God is based on God's communication to us of the Holy Spirit. Pleasingly, DeLorenzo does quote Romans 5:5 several times, albeit without noting it is a favourite text of Aquinas. A more Thomistic approach could also avert the implication (p. 91) that the human soul of Christ is annihilated at death. DeLorenzo plausibly claims ‘the greatest scandal’ of the Incarnation is that ‘God is separated from God’ (p. 81), but the section on ‘Balthasar's speculative theologizing’ is a weak point, potentially undervaluing the divine simplicity and unbroken communion of the divine Persons.
In chapter four, the Resurrection appearances are analysed as a ‘shock’ to the disciples, challenging their presuppositions about death and eliciting a transformed desire. A careful and informative reading of St Augustine's Confessions, book X, on the human quest for our deepest truth, leads into a presentation of de Lubac's ‘Augustinian’ idea of a natural desire for a supernatural goal. DeLorenzo acknowledges the controversial character of this debate but perhaps does not allow full space for de Lubac's critics to put the contrary case: the distinction of nature/supernature does not necessarily entail an ‘extrinsicist’ dual telos for man, but rather clarifies the unmerited fittingness of a graced elevation of human nature; secondly, the anthropocentric turn of the Nouvelle Théologie may not succeed in transcending questionable Kantian presuppositions; and thirdly, the author perhaps makes an implicit Scotist assumption of a necessary Incarnation (p. 130). This debate will surely continue, and DeLorenzo has helpfully cast it in this eschatological context of openness to communion.
DeLorenzo defines the saint as one whose desire is conformed to God's way of loving in Christ. Indeed, the blessed in heaven desire salvation also for others after them. As St Thérèse of Lisieux said, ‘I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth’ (p. 140). In chapter five, this is linked to Dante's Divine Comedy, where the heavenly hierarchy of holiness/charity does not increase the ‘distance’ between saints, pace John Thiel, but draws them closer together in love, so that ‘power is translated into service, authority into care, and holiness into sacrifice’ (p. 153). This section was persuasively argued, but could have been grounded more explicitly in the somatic ecclesiology of 1 Corinthians 12. Also, the direct identification of the Holy Spirit with charity (p. 175) may need tempering by Aquinas's critique of Peter Lombard on the virtue of charity (ST II‐II q.23 a.2).
I particularly relished the sections on the sacraments and liturgy. DeLorenzo shows that memory is fundamental to the liturgical action – ‘Do this is memory of me’ – and hence to the ‘re‐membering’ of the saints in Christ's Body. ‘The Church “makes” the Eucharist’ (p. 179), as de Lubac said, but the converse is also true: ‘In the drama of the liturgy, the Eucharistic community is being conformed to the gift it receives’ (p. 183). In other words, ‘the Eucharist makes the Church’, to take de Lubac's other phrase. I take it that the statements, ‘Purgatory forms generous hearts’ (p. 222) and ‘The liturgy…forms generous hearts’ (p. 224) are not to be conflated to imply that the liturgy is like purgatory(!); at least, the triple repetition of ‘this day’ in the section on Easter (p. 105) is a delightful and surely deliberate echo of the liturgical Haec Dies.
Finally, in chapter six, the dominant theme is beauty: in God's philanthropic condescension, in the liturgy, and in the saints. Just as Moses prefigured Christ, so the Christian saints ‘post‐figure’ him beautifully, as seen in four vignettes of Saints Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Teresa of Calcutta, and Dorothy Day (whose canonisation process is open). DeLorenzo justifies liturgical prayer and popular devotions, including veneration of the saints and prayers for the dead. In seeing the saints aright, and relating to them in prayer, God's work of love grows in us, and we are drawn deeper into the communion of saints by God's merciful love.
This book navigates complex themes with a deft touch and a wide array of theological and literary voices. One occasionally finds references to secondary works where a more direct appeal to earlier authors, especially the Church Fathers, early Councils or St Thomas would have been apposite. For instance, it is a commonplace in the Fathers, not a novelty in Rahner, to identify death with sin (pp. 72–3). As a converted doctoral dissertation, this book provides rich argumentation and solid critical apparatus, opening many further avenues for exploration, but on the other hand, the readership may be limited to academic theologians.
