Recollection

Recollection by Antonin Sertillanges, OP, translated by the Dominican Nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery, Menlo Park, California, 235 pages

In this collection of reflections Fr Sertillanges seeks to summon the reader to recognition of the reality of the world and his own place in it, to the human condition in all its high dignity and abject wretchedness.  To do so, he calls upon his own wide learning, including quotes and allusions from sources from Aquinas to the Zend-Avesta.  Life, he tells us, must be understood and lived in the light of eternity.  The recognition of a reality by which we are produced and which we cannot reproduce demands a response.

Recollection is often excellent but becomes thin in places, despite the book's high purpose and the author's considerable erudition.