Shaped by the Cross

Ken Gire, IVP

This book is slight (only 119 pages) but the content is rich and plentiful. Gire offers seven meditations on what it means to be a disciple by reflecting on Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Gire, who has not seen the sculpture, uses photographs from Robert Hupka’s book: Michelangelo: Pietà, a collection of 150 photographs. At the beginning of each chapter, a photograph is included which reflects the meditation to follow. One could sit and pray with the photographs alone.

Gire is a wordsmith, a superb story teller, yet always with Christ at the centre.

This is a book I will use next Holy Week. A prayer concludes each meditation, as well as a list of questions for reflection/conversation, so it could easily be used as a Lenten study.

Finally, Gire’s book makes me think about faith, of “the unseen”: if Gire could write a gem of a book without having seeing the moving Pietà, what does that say about our faith in one whom we cannot see?

The Rev. Barbara Allen is Chaplain at Strathdon UnitingAged Care, Melbourne. She is completing a book, Animals in Religions, for Reaktion Books.