Then the man said, You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed. (Gen 32:28) The Bible is full of persons who wrestle with God. As they stumble in their lives, they love and adore their Lord. They also scheme, lie, cheat, steal, quarrel, and fornicate. Abraham, the faith model for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, tells Sarah to lie; Sarah scolds God for ignoring her; Amnon rapes his sister; Judas recognizes Jesus ' unconditional love for him; Mary thinks that by distancing himself from her, Jesus hammered a spike into her breast; Peter's wife crawls into their bed and snuggles up; Jesus ' relatives think he is crazy. In a word, as seekers of God the biblical characters mirror our lives. Like Jacob we limp away from the wrestling match.
"Father Killian McDonnell's Wrestling With God is the work of a gifted poet and a man of profound faith. Nearly every poem in this collection, mostly inspired by Biblical figures or experiences, dramatizes the doubts and struggles of familiar personages: Peter and Andrew, adrift on the stormy sea of Galilee; Mary, the Mother of Jesus, puzzling over her son's abruptness at Cana; Mary Magdalene, Jud
Dr. Stella Nesanovich, Poet, Author, Vespers at Mount Angel: Poems
"When reading Kilian McDonnell's Wrestling with God, Ezekiel's desert vision comes to mind, for here we see bare-boned characters from the Bible given new flesh and breath by a gifted poet. Part of McDonnell's gift is his uncanny ability to find the intriguing moment to focus on his subject. For example, in these poems, we meet Mary as she wonders if she is missing something because her son is cel
Alan Berecka, author of The Comic Flaw and Remembering the Body
"Kilian McDonnell has blessed us with a fourth offering of his very original and descriptive peeks into the lives and thoughts of biblical persons, monks, and even God. In his poems, readers see familiar personages in ways that they had never imagined. McDonnell has the ability to offer rich sensory experiences in minimal words. Using only ten, he describes a camel so well that readers will not on
