Quick Questions, Uneasy Answers: Reflections for the Lost and Found

by Johnny C. Go

Here’s a Quick Question for you: When was the last time you paused to confront yourself about your faith?

Quick Questions, Uneasy Answers: Reflections for the Lost and Found allows us the opportunity to examine our lives and how we live out our faith in our daily interactions with the people around us. Carefully selected and compiled from the bible blog, Pins of Light, each chapter takes us on spiritual journey in accordance with the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises (SpEx) of St. Ignatius of Loyola. With real commentaries from the bible blog’s followers, this book invites readers to engage in a deeper dialogue with God, to love him more intimately and serve him more eagerly.

195 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

About the author

Fr. Johnny has served as President of Xavier School for the past 12 years. During this time, he brought the school to the pinnacle of academic excellence and well-rounded competence in athletics, media, the arts, and character and spiritual formation. A beloved teacher, he has taught various subjects in grade school, high school, college and graduate levels. A prolific writer and lyricist, he is the author of The Parable of the Elder Brother, a Cardinal Sin Awardee book, and 50something, his first collection of homilies. He is also behind some of the most popular songs sung by both religious and contemporary artists, including "Pilgrim's Theme," and he continues to inspire many through his online blog, Director's Take (jcgosj.com)

Reviews

[John Rey · Rating 5 out of 5]

After 13 years, I finally finished reading this one!

I was at the book launch of this compilation of homilies of Fr Johnny Go, SJ. I had my copy signed and then this book was hidden in my stacks of books for more than a decade!! But what a relief to finally read it and be blessed to have read it.

This compilation really makes you think and reflect. Each homily is accompanied by a reflection question or two. These homilies were actually first published in Fr Johnny’s blog called “Pins of Light”. I haven’t visited it for a while now but I suspect that it is still updated every now and then. Some of those homilies found their way to this book. Since these homilies were blogposts originally, the comments from blog readers were also published for further input and reflection.

I found this complication very insightful and inspiring! Though there are some homilies that are too meandering as if you do not know where it will go, but I think 98% of them are concise yet impactful, so much so that this book won an award. An updated 2017 version of this book has an updated cover showing its award back in 2013(?).

The only thing that I would like to call out in this book is that it was divided in four parts, intended to be reflections following the four-week theme of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. However, there were no explanations as to how the theme of each week of the Spiritual Exercises relates to the homilies under it. There are only quotes included in the opening page for each section but those quotes did not delve into the theme for each week. This setup will be good enough if someone has a background knowledge of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, or if someone has a knack for doing his/her own background research. But as for the common reader, he/she may not bother making that extra step to read outside this book to supplement its four-part organization. I think that this was an opportunity not taken by the author.

I highly recommend this book. If you can’t get a copy perhaps you can drop by Fr Johnny Go’s blog “Pins of Light” and find some homilies like the ones compiled in this book.