The title of Lynn Cooper’s monograph, Embracing Our Time, is remarkably fitting: it both invokes the title of the most important interfaith document in the Catholic tradition, Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”) and it perfectly encapsulates the central lesson she imparts, which includes valuing our time and friendships with people both inside and outside our religious traditions. Cooper emphasizes the importance—and even sacramental holiness—of our everyday, seemingly mundane, often messy and complex, human interactions and relationships. She likewise adeptly unites her own education in academic theology alongside the “texts” of real-world encounter, largely drawn from her experience as a chaplain.

The chapters progress effectively. Chapter 1 provides an overview of different Christian traditions related to spiritual friendship, including the important theme of an anamcara, an Irish Gaelic notion of a “soul friend.” More than a simple historical overview, she enfleshes these concepts through personal stories and cements the chapter, as she does in others, with a guided reflection, a “spiritual provocation.” This effectively sets the stage for the rest of the book by communicating the importance of fully seeing and knowing someone else.

Chapter 2 provides much of the conceptional framework for Catholic interfaith engagement, including a grounding of relationships on a trinitarian model emphasizing its social, communal, and interdependent nature (47). She also examines several Catholic documents pertinent to interfaith friendships, such as Nostra Aetate, Dialogue and Mission (1984) and Dialogue and Proclamation (1994). What I appreciate most about Cooper’s work here is that she is not merely using these texts to construct Catholic theologies of religion or enter debates about salvation outside the church, but for the very concrete and welcome purpose to encourage friendship. She makes the point that documents such as Nostra Aetate are reminding Catholics that reaching out “beyond our sanctuaries and liturgies” is not just ancillary to our identity, but is instead central, a “spiritual priority” (60). This chapter on its own is an excellent option for undergraduate students.

Chapters 3, 5, and 6 are geared toward practices conducive to building friendships. The third chapter has a key emphasis on active listening and thus offers exceptionally pragmatic guidance for forming deeper friendships across difference, with forays into synodality, active listening, mono-tasking, and mindfulness. She again draws upon a successful interplay of storytelling, Catholic teachings, and published authors. But what I am most appreciative of is her connections to things she has learned from Buddhist friends, such as acknowledging distractions (81) or the Zen Buddhist concept of shoshin (87–88). Cooper again forefronts pragmatic skills in chapter 5, where she emphasizes the complexity of interfaith engagements, each deserving attention to contextuality and positionality. There is more to building meaningful friendships than merely acquiring religious literacy, as important as it might be (145). This is also a point made by the author in the final chapter, where Cooper uses narrative to show that religious literacy is better understood as a lived experience and a relationship skill that one can develop (160–61).

The fulcrum of the book is chapter 4, where Cooper addresses the subtitle of the book, with a look at sacramentality in the Catholic tradition. The author has important work to do here because she needs to justify her designation of interfaith friendship as a sacrament. “Aren’t there only seven sacraments?” many Catholic readers may ask or protest. Nonetheless, Cooper successfully orients the reader toward sacramental moments, Augustine’s “outward visible sign of an inward invisible grace,” within everyday interactions and friendships. She accomplishes this expansion of one’s imagination of sacramentality in several ways, including the writings of Kathleen Hughes, Leonardo Boff, Andrew Greeley, Mary Hunt, Andre Dubus, and others, as well as a heartwarming story about her son’s friendship with a fellow kindergartener because of a shared interest in Spider-Man. She notes that “there are opportunities throughout our day for deep and meaningful connection, and they are holy” (109). A friendship across religious borders, Cooper effectively imparts, is one such opportunity for everyday holiness.