Are we healed through our wounds or do our wounds themselves get healed by some other source?
In this 2025 Lent Book, Erik Varden starts by examining the New Testament where it spells out why Christ’s wounds were efficacious for the healing of humankind. Indeed, why they were necessary for the purpose. This austere way of thinking is indispensable but they have never really satisfied the effective needs of believers or the intuitions of the heart.
Bob Dylan once said, tongue in cheek, ‘Pain sure does bring out the best in people.’ The philosopher Donald MacKinnon said, ‘Suffering never ennobled anyone.’ These are questions people wrestle with today in many fields of life with counsellors, therapists, philosophers, and spiritual directors. But the conundrum remains and in this book Varden sets out to resolve it.
Healing Wounds
Erik Varden
The 2025 Lent Book is a reflection on suffering and healing and what we understand by it.
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Spanish; Italian
Chinese Simplified rights represented by Big Apple Agency
Book Details
Imprint: Bloomsbury Continuum
Publication Date: 05-12-2024
Format: Paperback | 198 x 129mm | 224 pagesAbout the Author
Erik Varden is a monk and bishop. Norwegian by birth, he was, before entering Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. He has published several translations and scholarly monographs and is much in demand as a preacher, spiritual director and lecturer. In 2019 Pope Francis appointed him to the see of Trondheim. He is the author of The Shattering of Loneliness (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018).
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