With an Everlasting Love

Barry is well known for his work in and about spiritual direction, and he could have drawn on many people whom he has directed for this book, but he draws instead on his own personal experience and on the scriptures to establish the mutual desire of the soul and God for an intimate relationship with each other, and to look at the fear, anger, shame, sorrow, sin and sexuality that sometimes blocks that relationship, and at how these blocks may be overcome. Barry is particularly masterful in this section. For the Christian this relationship is focused in a relationship with the incarnate Christ, and section three of the book gives a useful synopsis of the life, ministry, teaching and passion of Jesus with special emphasis on the theme of our relationship with God. The text is loosely but not blatantly based on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola so that the last chapter on God in the world and an invitation to "dance" with this God becomes an interpretation, a wonderful one, of the concluding meditation of the Exercises, the Contemplation to Attain Love of God. The book has obviously been written prayerfully and deserves to read in the same attitude.