Explore the meaning of Lent, its importance in spiritual formation, its significance in the preparation of Easter, and the holy season of Easter itself. Reflections from leading spiritual writers in North America reveal what one theologian has called the «bright sadness» of Lent – that it is not about becoming lost in feelings of brokenness, but about cleansing the palate so that we can taste life more fully. Lent and Easter reveal the God who is for us in all of life – for our liberation, for our healing, for our wholeness. Lent and Easter remind us that even in death there can be found resurrection.
The Operation of Grace collects a decade's worth of essays by Gregory Wolfe taken from the pages of Image, the literary journal he founded more than a quarter century ago. As he notes in the preface, his Image editorials, while they cover a wide range of topics, focus on the intersection of «art, faith, and mystery.» Wolfe believes that art and religion, while hardly identical, offer illuminating analogies to one another–art deepening faith through the empathetic reach of the imagination and faith anchoring art in a vision beyond the artist's ego. Several essays dwell on how aesthetic values like ambiguity, tragedy, and beauty enlarge our understanding of the spiritual life. There are also a series of reflections that extend Wolfe's campaign to renew the neglected and often misunderstood tradition of Christian humanism. Finally, there are sections that contain more personal meditations arising from Wolfe's involvement in nurturing and promoting the work of emerging writers and artists. The Operation of Grace demonstrates once again why novelist Ron Hansen has spoken of Wolfe as «one of the most incisive and persuasive voices of our generation.»