Risen from The Ashes

Abstract

I just finished reading the recent book of Father Marcel Uwineza, SJ, “Risen from the Ashes” published by the Paulines Publication, Nairobi 2022. It is an original way of writing theology as an autobiography, something that is also at the origin of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Saint Ignatius of Loyola is known especially because of his Spiritual Exercises but, for the first Jesuit companions, the Autobiography dictated by Ignatius to Father Gonsalves da Camara is also a foundational document and not just a chronicle of his life. One among those first Companions, Father Jerome Nadal, was reported to have said that “the Father [ Ignatius] could do nothing of greater benefit for the Society of Jesus than this, and that this was truly to found the Society.”