Touch the Wounds: On Suffering, Trust, and Transformation

In this masterfully written book, Tom?s Hal?k calls upon Christians to touch the wounds of the world and to rediscover their own faith by loving and healing their neighbors.

One of the most important voices in contemporary Catholicism, Tom?s Hal?k argues that Christians can discover the clearest vision of God not by turning away from suffering but by confronting it. Hal?k calls upon us to follow the apostle Thomas's example: to see the pain, suffering, and poverty of our world and to touch those wounds with faith and action. It is those expressions of love and service, Hal?k reveals, that restore our hope and the courage to live, allowing true holiness to manifest itself. Only face-to-face with a wounded Christ can we lay down our armor and masks, revealing our own wounds and allowing healing to begin.

Weaving together deep theological and philosophical reflections with surprising, trenchant, and even humorous commentary on the times in which we live, Hal?k offers a new prescription for those lost in moments of doubt, abandonment, or suffering. Rather than demanding impossible, flawless faith, we can look through our doubt to see, touch, and confront the wounds in the hearts of our neighbors and-through that wounded humanity, which the Son of God took upon himself-see God.

Tom?s Hal?k is a Czech Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, and scholar. He is a professor of sociology at Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish of St. Salvator Church in Prague, president of the Czech Christian Academy, and a winner of the Templeton Prize. His previous books with University of Notre Dame Press, I Want You to Be and From the Underground Church to Freedom, won the Foreword Reviews' INDIES Book of the Year Awards in Philosophy and in Religion, respectively.

Gerald Turner has translated numerous Czech authors, including V?clav Havel, Ivan Kl?ma, and Ludv?k Vacul?k, among others. He received the US PEN Translation Award in 2004.