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Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Little
Brown and Company, 2013.
After 625 pages, the reader comes to the really good part of Mandela's story, namely freedom for his people. As a child, Nelson enjoyed freedom to run in the fields, swim in the stream, roast mealies under the stars, and ride the backs of slow-moving bulls. He had that freedom as long as he obeyed his parents and the rules of his tribe. Neither
God nor the laws of man bothered him. But when he found that his boyhood freedom was an illusion, then he truly longed for the freedom to stay out at night and come and go as he pleased. "I yearned for the basic and honorable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family---the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life."
With the coming of the scourge of apartheid,
these basic freedoms were no longer his. The larger part of this book is concerned with his many years when he was imprisoned for trying to establish freedom for all his people. He found he couldn't be a loyal family man and a freedom fighter at the same time, so he even had to divorce his beloved Winnie in order to work for peace for his nation, for his white and his black brothers and sisters. Mandela discovered that both the oppressor and the oppressed had to be liberated. "I am not
free if I am taking away someone else's freedom....The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity." To free both these classes was his sole purpose when he was released from prison after his quarter of a century of imprisonment.
Examples of Mandela's generosity, fortitude, and patience make this book a very spiritual adventure for this time in history when mankind hungers for role
models.
(Thanks to Sr. Irene Hartman OP for this review.)
Hardback. Paperback and Kindle editions available.
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Saint of the Week
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St. Joan of Arc: (1412-31) May 30
Burned at the stake as a heretic after a politically-motivated trial, Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.
Born of a fairly well-to-do peasant couple in Domremy-Greux (southeast of Paris), Joan was only
12 when she experienced a vision and heard voices that she later identified as Sts. Michael the Archangel, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch.
During the Hundred Years War, she led French troops against the English and recaptured the cities of Orléans and Troyes. This enabled Charles VII to be crowned as king in Reims in 1429. Captured near Compiegne the following year, she was sold
to the English and placed on trial for heresy and witchcraft. Professors at the University of Paris supported Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvis, the judge at her trial; Cardinal Henry Beaufort of Winchester, England, participated in the questioning of Joan in prison. In the end, she was condemned for wearing men's clothes. The English resented France's military success-to which Joan contributed.
On this day in 1431, she was burned at the stake in Rouen, and her ashes were scattered in the Seine River. A second Church trial 25 years later nullified the earlier verdict, which was reached under political pressure.
Remembered by most people for her military exploits, Joan had a great love for the sacraments, which strengthened her compassion toward the poor. Popular devotion to her
increased greatly in 19th-century France and later among French soldiers during World War I. Theologian George Tavard writes that her life "offers a perfect example of the conjunction of contemplation and action" because her spiritual insight is that there should be a "unity of heaven and earth."
Joan of Arc has been the subject of many books, plays, operas, and movies. americancatholic.org site
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