ONLY SON

by Walter Farrell

Only Son Walter Farrell O.P. 1954 Library of Congress Catalog Card 54-12118 3rd Edition RARE! Sheed and Ward, New York Printed In The United States of America Hardcover With Dust Jacket

Genres: Theology

Hardcover

First published August 15, 1953

About the author

Father Walter Farrell OP., STD., STM., was a prominent Moral Theologian of the Dominican Central Province.

He was editor of the "Dominicana" during his time as a Student Brother at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He later joined the Province of St. Albert the Great after its foundation in 1939. He helped to launch "The Thomist", a quarterly speculative review, in April 1939.

Father Farrell passed away at River Forest, Illinois, at the age of 49.

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sharp difference between Our Lady and her contemporaries stemmed from the double root of her crystalline sanctity and her motherly closeness to God. In all of her day, she had the Son of God under her eyes and uppermost in her heart. Moment by moment, day by day, it became more overwhelmingly clear to the eyes of Joseph that his humble house sheltered more sanctity than the world would ever see in any other age; his house was the home of God and His Mother.



This divine call is answered, not for what can
be had from the answering, but for what can be given in gratitude
for the call; it is love's answer to challenging love, the only possible
answer, the answer of complete dedication, utter surrender.



The voluptuous man makes his mistake in God, soling the artificion of his desires outside of Cod: the happy man finds all that the mistaken man so the same search, but in
on gains and so completely misses. Those who fix on honors and fidas as their goal are really seeking a kind of excellence and abundance; both of these are had in the kingdom of God promised to the poor in spirit and beginning on this earth. Fierce men, through their quarrels and wars, seek security through the destruction of their enemies this possessecurity is promised to the meek in their quiet, undisturbed sion both of the human goods in life and the eternal goods in heaven. The voluptuaries who plunge into the pleasures of the flesh and the softly enervating embrace of the world are really frightened and lonely men seeking consolation for the difficulties and labors of human living; this is the consolation promised to those brave enough to admit mistakes and regret them. Men cheat themselves of the happiness that should properly be theirs from the active life's concern for neighbor when, through an exaggerated caution lest they themselves be empty-handed, they violate all justice in seizing the goods of others. To the happy men of Christ, strangers to such caution, it is promised that they shall indeed not be empty-handed but shall have their All. If loss of this active life's happiness is from defect of mercy, it is from fear of touching even the ragged garment of another man's misery, as though misery were a kind of contagion they dared not risk. Against this, the Lord promises the merciful, not indeed that they shall avoid all misery, but that they in their turn will find the mercy that fills the gnawing emptiness of misery. The happiness of the contemplative needs no reform or changing, nothing more indeed than the full bloom to this life's present bud: so the clean of heart, seeing better for that very cleanness, are to receive the full vision of God which is eternal life; the peacemakers, so clearly the images of the God of unity and peace, are rightly called the sons of God made in His image.



By it he is free for the work of God, free as a rich
be free of the man can never entangling demands of his possessions; he is clearly unconcerned with material riches and men can see for themselves both that his concern for spiritual riches for them is sincere and that there is no
is, taint of greed in the labors of his preaching, and he by his poverty, showing forth more brilliantly the power of God working through so lowly an instrument.