Crossing the Threshold of Hope

Crossing the Threshold of Hope by St John Paul II, translated by Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, 229 pages

In 1993, to celebrate fifteen years as pope, St John Paul II agreed to give a televised interview to Italian television.  As it turned out, the interview never took place, but the Pope prepared written answers to the questions Vittorio Messori had submitted and had them delivered to the journalist with permission to use them as he liked.  Thus was born the book-length interview Crossing the Threshold of Hope, in which the saint, just over halfway through his twenty-seven year pontificate, expresses his thoughts on subjects ranging from the fall of communism to the Second Vatican Council to the nature of the papacy.

It is no accident that the book begins and ends with the words from John Paul II's first papal address - "Be not afraid!"  Not afraid of the wickedness of men, not afraid of the seeming absence of God, not afraid of our own weaknesses.  Yet Crossing the Threshold of Hope is not a devotional, nor an apologetic work, nor particularly personal.  Even when answering a question about his own prayer life, John Paul begins with a reference to Scripture and then moves on to Gaudium et Spes.  The Pope seems most comfortable fulfilling his old role as a philosophy professor, but he is not merely interested in idly comparing ideas, but is engaged in building an understanding of the world and of man's place in it that acknowledges the inherent dignity of the human person.  This understanding is built upon the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, the same love which "drives out fear" and delivers the human person from arrogance and slavery into the freedom of the children of God.