The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

 

This is my third Graham Greene, but the man can write! I found this book simple and beautiful. It is the story of the "Whisky Priest" and God's grace even though we have all "sinned and fall short of the glory of God" Rm 3:23).  God's glory is all over this book. I loved it. I had no idea that priests were outlawed in Mexico in the 30s! I still need to research this. 

James Mustich thinks you need to read this because...

Set in Mexico in the 1930s, when the Catholic Church has been outlawed by the revolutionary government, The Power and the Glory portrays a corrupted and courageous cleric’s devotion to his calling, despite his alcoholism (Greene gives him no name other than “the whisky priest”), his licentiousness (his fatherhood is emblem of his forsaken chastity), and his tortured alertness to his unworthiness. Knowing he risks execution by carrying the sacraments from village to village and nourishing as best he can the spiritual needs of the poor, he struggles to uphold the vision of a God who both eludes and exhilarates him. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, the whisky priest is a hero who, in his very unfitness for the role, reveals the imaginative nobility of faith, hope, and love even in—especially in—the most unexalted settings.