I received a complementary copy of this book for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience.
What would two of history’s great mystics – Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi, think of the present-day Catholic church and the current Pope? Author Bruce Davis speculates on these questions in his new work of historical fiction: The Love Letters: Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi Meet Pope Francis.
Davis’ approach is a creative way to address matters regarding the Church and Christianity. Written as a series of letters exchanged between Francis and Clare, Davis touches on a number of sensitive issues. “I hope our new Bishop of Rome when he awakens to the riches of our Church (that) he empties the coffers. I hope he gives until the coffers are empty of riches and full of the real riches, the gratitude of the people instead,” writes the fictional Clare in one exchange. “Yes, the Church is dead,” writes Saint Francis in another letter. “Our new brother, Bishop of Rome, should begin here. Instead of rebuilding an old Church full of scandal and rules which every normal person says makes no sense. He should begin again. Like you and me Clare, we begin fresh every morning.”
The Love Letters appealed to me because it emphasized love as the basis of Francis and Clare’s simple, mystical faith, and not doctrine. “They debate instead of love,” Francis writes in one letter, bemoaning the current state of the Church.
The style of the book is not for everyone. At 96 pages it is the shortest book I’ve reviewed this year. Yet I enjoyed it as a change of pace from the non-fiction type of material I usually read. Saint Francis and Saint Clare’s God, as Davis writes in the introduction, “was not something limited to the bricks and stones, the ritual and ceremony of Church but was found mysteriously everywhere, in everything, and in everyone.” Davis says Francis and Clare “discovered what we know today is the mystic path.” That’s my path, too, and I found a lot to like in The Love Letters.
