It would be an understatement to claim that this book is anything less than a gift to all who read it and take the time to walk this final pilgrimage with Dr. Richard Gaillardetz. It is simultaneously profoundly personal and deeply theological. Gaillardetz reveals his lived experience through the lens of a theologian, embedding theological trail markers throughout the text as he provides spiritual insights into the reality of living with a terminal disease. Standing in sharp relief to the inevitability of Gaillardetz’s death, is the counterpoint of hope that graces every chapter expressing his faith-filled relationship with Christ and his church.
A theologian throughout, Gaillardetz gives us a theological reflection on the essential elements that underpin the human relationship with the divine. He does so by sharing the intimate reality of his cancer diagnosis through the lens of the liturgical year. By taking the liturgical seasons as the actual hinges of time, he places the Paschal Mystery front and center, where it belongs for all Christians. Within this structure Richard Gaillardetz draws on his gifts as a theologian to illumine the path he walks, to open the concept of grace, relationship, God, love, and community. This is not, however, a theological treatise, rather, it is a story of life, love, faith, and the death that awaits us all understood from within the Paschal Mystery.
The key to this work is found in its subtitle: A Mystagogy of Dying. Mystagogy is most often encountered in the Order of Christian Initiation, where it is the process that guides the newly baptized to a deeper understanding of their experiences of the Easter sacraments. This process helps the baptized recognize and encounter the resurrected Christ alive and at work in their lives, thus drawing them more deeply into relationship with God. Here Richard Gaillardetz is our mystagogue (guide) on a journey that is as much about loving and celebrating as it is about transitioning from one life to the next. Mystagogy opens our experiences to reveal the profound presence of the Spirit moving in our midst. These experiences turn us (conversion) toward God. In this text we walk a pilgrimage with Gaillardetz. His story leads us to contemplate our own journey of conversion. In his honesty, his vulnerability, and his deep sense of trust in God, indeed, in his learning to let go into the mystery that is God, he invites us to walk with him and experience our own turning toward the mystery awaiting us all.
At the end of each chapter, Gaillardetz concludes with the phrase “[d]um spiro, spero,” “while I breathe, I hope.” Hope is the heart of this book. Deeply theological, clearly mystagogical in method, his narrative draws us into the Paschal Mystery, with its spirituality of hope bringing us to the center of our faith: the resurrected Christ, in whom our hope rests. Cancer can rob us of hope and confront us with fear, anxiety, doubt, and suffering. Gaillardetz, however, reveals in this mystagogy of hope that the web of love, friendship, and community sustaining him is constructed on the framework of hope in Christ. Hope such as this cannot be a fragile thing because it carries such weight from diagnosis to final breath; rather, Gaillardetz’s narrative draws back the curtain on hope strengthened from being steeped in the truth St. Paul reveals to all in Romans 8:22-25, a hope that comes from suffering endured. This hope transforms human experience because it is tied to a Christo-centric journey of conversion, as we turn and re-turn to God.
A rich resource for undergraduate and graduate curricula, pastoral ministry, and parish life, all Christians will also profit from reading it. Because of the holistic way in which Gaillardetz deals with life and death, his book belongs in spirituality courses; its readers will necessarily discuss topics related to liturgy, ecclesiology, fundamental theology in light of human suffering, spirituality, and prayer. This book will serve as an essential resource in both academic and adult faith formation settings.
