Peter FELDMEIER, Living Christ: A Spiritual Reading of the Gospels, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2023, pp. 234.  $29.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-6821-4.  Reviewed by Patrick GARRY, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD 57069

In Living Christ, Peter Feldmeier provides on one level an annotated version of the four Gospels.  The book is organized into five chapters—an introductory chapter, and a chapter on each of the Gospels.  The section on Mark, for instance, allows the reader to not only proceed through the entire Gospel, chapter by chapter, but to also learn relevant historical notes and theological insights along the way.  As such, the book serves as an instructive companion to the Gospels—a reference that can be used, side-by-side, with the biblical text.

On a deeper level, Feldmeier seeks to help the reader acquire a more intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ.  As such, the book’s commentary on each chapter of a Gospel aims to engage the reader in the fundamental truths witnessed by the evangelists, thereby facilitating within the reader a deeper and more transformative life in Christ.

A brief focus on Feldmeier’s treatment of Mark’s Gospel may reflect some of the ways in which this deeper engagement is sought. According to Feldmeier, Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, where he encounters the man possessed by the demon, illustrates the theme of struggle.  As Mark indicates in chapter one, Jesus’ ministry involved a struggle between God and the powers of evil.  And in casting out the demon, Jesus is “taking back what was always God’s”—e.g., the soul of a man. (74)  Feldmeier then uses this passage to reflect on the role of the modern Church in fighting evil in the larger culture—a role that secularists seek to confine to a strictly private realm.

Regarding Jesus’ parable of the Sower of the seed in chapter four of Mark, Feldmeier reflects on the ways in which truth often does not immediately register or take hold in our lives.  The challenge is to “stay with it, to cling to it and not let it quickly be snatched away . . . to open our hearts enough to give it [truth] the room it needs to sink in.” (78)  For a person to be fertile ground to God’s message means being available to God and cultivating a heart that is open.  It is never too late, Feldmeier urges, for our ground to become fertile.
In chapter ten of Mark, where Jesus heals Bartimaeus, the blind man, Feldmeier notes how Bartimaeus desperately wants to see, perhaps unlike the apostles who haven’t really seen what Jesus is all about—and who perhaps don’t really want to see the reality of Jesus, versus their own conceptions of what Jesus should be.  As Feldmeier states: “we must seek Christ with the same desperation, the same singlemindedness, if we want to really see and follow.” (102)  Along this same vein, the withered fig tree in chapter eleven of Mark represents the failure of so many people to accept Jesus and his kingdom.

In the Passion account, Mark shows us that “atonement is not about appeasing an angry God or a God who demands a price in blood for sin’s debt.  Rather, it frees us to be rescued by God’s own self from the death we deserve.” (115)  Discipleship, according to Feldmeier, depends on the power of God’s grace, not on our own powers.  Moreover, whereas Jesus kept secret his messianic nature during his Galilean ministry, he now fully reveals it during the high priest’s questioning of him during his trial.

There is much to be gained from Living Christ.  It not only provides a deeper understanding of the historical Christ, but it shows us how the Word can transform our present lives and inspire us to a deeper communion with Jesus.