JOHN DEMPSTER: Can forgiveness be granted so apparently easily?
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It’s rare to find novels with an explicit treatment of Christian themes released in the publishing mainstream.
Earlier this year, I described my enjoyment of Anne Booth’s Small Miracles. Now she’s back with a sequel, Sweet Mercies, set over the Christmas/New Year period in 1995.
Again we meet the Sisters of St Philomena, a community of devout Catholic nuns in Fairbridge, Father Hugh and his curate at St Philomena’s Church, and their wide circle of friends and parishioners. Part of the action is set among the wild beauties of Connemara in west-coast Ireland.
On one level, Sweet Mercies is an accessible, light read, ideal to curl up with at Christmas. There’s lots of laughter – the havoc unwound by two playful kittens; Sister Bridget’s shenanigans with the bingo balls; the tragi-comic decapitation of a statue.
But like its predecessor, the book touches on deeper themes. I love its emphasis that the one family of God exists in two dimensions – those on Earth, and our ‘heavenly family’, those in heaven, united with us in Christ.
We see characters sadly acknowledging the historic abuses in the Catholic Church, and coming to realise that while churches may grievously disappoint us, our faith rests not in institutions, but in the God who calls us to live in a way which nourishes and upbuilds others.
As does Bridget who ‘has really spent a life trying to love God and be kind to people’; as does JJ who ‘has the sweetest soul in spite of everything he has been through’.
One character comes to accept his culpability in mistreating Irish workers in England in his younger life. He confesses to Father Hugh, who pronounces that God has forgiven him, and he resolves to do all he can to make good his past wrongs.
This raises the question: ‘Can forgiveness be granted so apparently easily?’ But Hugh’s words of absolution remind us that we are forgiven because, through the death of Christ on our behalf, justice has been done. God’s mercies are not just sweet, but scandalous, such is the extent of God’s love for us.
There is so much in this book. The palpable sense of peace in a room after a healing prayer. The character who, having lost faith for many years is drawn back to God and finds old words awakening on his lips with new significance.
And there’s the love which permeates the novel, God’s unwavering love for us. It is, as Sister Cecilia discovers ‘good, but a bit unsettling, to be so loved’.
And when the folk of Fairbridge experience divine tenderness and forgiveness through people of faith they are encountering for themselves the sweet mercies of God.
