Memories of Grace: Portraits from the Monastery.

Memories of Grace: Portraits from the Monastery
By James Stephen Behrens
Acta, $12.95, 156 pp.

Father Behrens was a diocesan priest in Newark, New Jersey, prior to his decision to enter the Trappist monastery in Conyers, Georgia, where he now lives and writes. I have seen his essays and sketches in various places over the years and now, in this brief little book, have had the chance to read a fuller selection of his writings. In one piece, he describes how he became a writer. While visiting his parents in Louisiana he stopped by a bookshop and purchased a pile of works by Walker Percy. The bookshop was staffed by Percy's wife, who evidently told her husband about the book-buying priest. Percy called him up and invited him for lunch, and, in the course of conversation, strongly encouraged him to write. In Percy's words, the Christian story has a "wondrous message" and that message should be written about.

The brief chapters that make up this volume are vignettes of Behrens's life outside the monastery: sketches of his family, his neighborhood, his ministry, and his life in urban America. Sometimes Behrens recalls these stories from the vantage point of the monastic cloister. He often looks behind these everyday tales to discover hidden truths in the manner of those, like Georges Bernanos's unnamed priest, who find grace everywhere.

I enjoyed reading these stories and can only hope that now Behrens will use his talents to speak from his monastic experience to us who are still in the world he remembers so well. I do not think we need monastic piety from him (enough monks supply that need) but, rather, a view of this grace-filled world from a somewhat different perspective. Behrens has a gift for vivid prose; we should look for more from him.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.