Description
Product Description
“I can say in all sincerity that I am at peace. I consider this as God’s special gift to me.”
—Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, announcing on August 30, 1996, that his cancer had returned after fifteen months of being in remission. The Cardinal died November 14, 1996.
In the final two months of his life, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin made it his mission to share his personal reflections and insights in this book, The Gift of Peace. Using as a framework the previous three years, which included false accusation of sexual misconduct, diagnosis of cancer, and return of the cancer after fifteen months of being in remission, Cardinal Bernardin tells his story openly and honestly. At the end of his life, the Cardinal was at peace. He accepted his peace as a gift from God, and through this book, he shares that gift with the world. The Gift of Peace is part of the Cardinal’s pastoral legacy; through this book his ministry lives on.
From The Gift of Peace:
“The past three years have taught me a great deal about myself and my relationship to God, the Church, and others. . . . Within these major events lies the story of my life— what I have believed and who I have worked hard to be. And because of the nature of these events, I have spirituality and gained insights that I want to share. By no means are these reflections meant to be a comprehensive autobiography. They are simply reflections from my heart to yours. I hope they will be of help to you in your own life so you too can enjoy the deep inner peace—God’s wonderful gift to me—that I now embrace as I stand on the threshold of eternal life.”
I invite those who read this book to walk with me the final miles of my life’s journey.
Peace and love,
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
From Library Journal
The well-loved cardinal of Chicago completed this book during the last few months of his life. In it he records the personal struggle of his final three years, during which he faced charges of sexual misconduct, later dropped as admittedly false. Eventually, Bernardin made peace with his accuser, helping the younger man reconcile with his Catholic faith before he died of AIDS. Bernardin also accepted his own imminent death from pancreatic cancer as a true lesson of the cross, writing here about his mixed sense of abandonment and hope with a profound awareness of the meaning of shared suffering and Christian love. A very moving last testament, written with simplicity and deep wisdom.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
The Gift Of Peace is the final legacy left to us by one of America's most beloved and respected clerics. Preparing The Gift Of Peace was an extraordinary effort which consumed Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's final days, and offers deeply personal reflections about his last three headline-filled years. The Gift Of Peace also reveals the Cardinal's spiritual growth amidst a string of traumatic events: false accusations of sexual abuse; reconciliation a year later with his accuser (who had earlier recanted the charges); a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and surgery; the return of cancer (in his liver); his decision to discontinue chemotherapy and live his remaining days as fully as possible. Even after Cardinal Bernardin relinquished the day-to-day operation of the Archdiocese in his final weeks, he continued to work on The Gift Of Peace. Cardinal Bernardin was known for his gift of reconciliation, and for a "consistent ethic of life" that urged a reverence for life from conception to natural death. In his final years he made a trip to Israel with Jewish leaders; launched the Catholic Common Ground Initiative to heal rifts among America's Catholics; and sent a letter to the Supreme Court urging them not to approve "physician-assisted" suicide. The Gift Of Peace is a worthy testament to the memory of a Christian life amidst contemporary issues and modern day challenges of life in the last years of the 20th century. --
Midwest