Name of the Book: Footprints Lessons from Lives
Author: Fr. M.A. Joe Antony, SJ
Publisher: New Leader Books
Year: 2018
Pages: 175
Price: 100
ISBN: 9789383141272
Reviewed by Sr. Teresa Joseph, FMA
Footprints, is one such extraordinary masterpieces that reach us once in a while. It is the third book, fruit of the regular column “It Happened Really’ Fr. Joe Antony wrote in the national Catholic magazine, the New Leader. This book takes the reader through 41 narratives spiced with feeling, emotion, intelligence, sympathy, empathy and all that a fine human being can ever think of. From Touch to It Happened to Me! the book draws the booklover into the heart of the story, now challenging, another time motivating and yet another time leaving speechless.
The narrators in this book, in all most all cases are the hero or the heroine of the story. Whose heart won’t melt when Sally Read says her own experience showed her “how the most basic act of kindness (which often, instinctively, involves touch) has its own immense value in the face of any kind of pain.”
Who will not for a while get frozen hearing Glyzelle Palomar, a 12-year-old girl raise a question for which Pope Francis says there is no answer? “There are many children neglected by their own parents, there are also many who became victims and many terrible things happened to them like drugs or prostitution. Why is God allowing such things to happen” Glyzelle asked the Pope, breaking down into tears as she spoke. “Pope Francis hugged the crying girl and then told the gathering, ‘she is the only one who has put a question for which there is no answer and she wasn’t even able to express it in words but in tears.’”
Who among us can resist our tears hearing how Catherine Lawes daily walked into hell, the Sing Sing prison in the U.S. to show the prisoners a piece of heaven? Here is something more: Then one day in October 1937 Catherine was killed in a car accident. That night the news of her death was passed from one prison cell to another…The next morning the prisoners pleaded for permission to pay their last respects to the woman whom they had come to love deeply.
Moved by their tears the acting Warden who was substituting Catherine’s other half Lewis Lawes, told them, “All right, men, you can go. Just be sure you check in tonight!” Then he opened the gate! What happened next dear readers is simply amazing, hundreds of prisoners marched from the prison without a guard to pay their final respects to Catherine Lawes. “And every one of them checked back in. Every one!” Joe Antony, in his unique style writes: “Sadly we don’t have enough of those people – Francis of Assisi, Don Bosco, Mother Teresa, Pope John XXIII, Pope Francis… and countless men and women like Catherine Lawes – who show us a piece of heaven.”
Footprints simply take the reader to the heart of the matter inviting him/her to enter into the drama of life and become a sympathetic actor: a ministering angel reaching out to those around, being home by opening our heart for someone who longs to come home, striving after simplicity to become simple and unassuming persons, becoming a secure base offering protection and security, encouragement and challenge.
Joe, writes about a televised interaction between Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and a group of girls all teenagers during the interaction titled, ‘Living well in Germany,’ Reem, a Palestinian girl, told Merkel in fluent German that she and her family, who arrived in Rostock from a Lebanese refugee camp four years ago, face the threat of deportation. She said: “I have goals like anyone else. I want to study like them…it’s really painful to see how others can enjoy life, and I can’t.”
That day, after a few words Merkel was forced to stop mid-sentence, she walked up to Reem and started stroking her shoulder. Later, “Merkel’s Government threw open Germany’s doors to a pressing throng of refugees and migrants; a total of 1 million asylum seekers…” This is what happened in Palestine more than two thousand years ago…Thankfully Egypt welcomed the Holy Family writes Joe.
Fr. Antony Pancras, Publisher, New Leader Books, in the publisher’s note, quoting Francis Bacon writes: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” He continues: “One such book which needs to be chewed and digested is what you are just reading right now. The thoughts, presented in this book, flow from the heart of a person who cherishes every moment of life.”
Our author, places before the reader, very touching and thought provoking experiences of life and elegantly spices them with apt references. He brilliantly links some of the real stories to Jesus with well chosen words and expressions. Well, this is more than enough to arouse in you the desire to get hold of Footprints and to allow the 41 real stories to challenge and provoke you.