Towards Dawn: Essays in Hopefulness
Towards Dawn: Essays in Hopefulness
Essays in Hopefulness
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Winner of the CMA 2026 Book Award for Future of the Church (2nd Place)
Winner of the CMA 2026 Book Award for Adult Spiritual Development (3rd Place)
Do we live in “post-Christian” times? Or has secularization run its course, the sun of a new day breaking on both the Church and the world?
In Towards Dawn: Essays in Hopefulness, Bishop Erik Varden—a Trappist monk and the bishop of Trondheim in Norway—reflects on recent crises of the past and signs of hope for the future. Featuring essays on some of the most pressing subjects of the day for Catholics—evangelization, synodality, liturgy, blessings, the sexual abuse crisis, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and more—Bishop Varden unfurls “a blessed contagion” of hope rooted in authentic spirituality, the universal call to holiness, and the revelation of Christ, who makes all things new.
A compelling collection from one of the most impressive young voices of the episcopacy, Towards Dawn offers neither a bland optimism nor a bitter pessimism but a realistic, clear-eyed confidence that everything—even suffering, disappointment, and injustice—can be purposeful. We can move out of the meaninglessness and despair that surround us toward the Light that shines in the darkness. Here and now, hope glimmers.
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Table of Contents
What People are Saying
“Bishop Erik Varden is one of the great confessors of the faith in our time. In this collection of essays, he weaves together spiritual wisdom from the Scriptures, the tradition of the Church, the lives of the saints, and classical and contemporary literature. He notes that Christianity is premised on the irruption of eternity in time and thus that essential coordinates are and must remain constant. As the Carthusian motto declares, Stat crux dum volvitur orbis—The cross stands firm while the world turns. He concludes that ‘we need a Christocentric conversion in mind and manners to make sense of our significant being, to account for our origin and end, our longings and frustrations, our wounds and our capacity for healing.’ This is a very hopeful book.”
—Tracey Rowland, St. John Paul II Chair of Theology, University of Notre Dame (Australia), member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
“Bishop Erik Varden is the most exquisite and enthralling Catholic writer of our day, leery of the twin temptations of craven modernity and frozen traditionalism, always digging deep into the past and finding renewal and refreshment to meet the needs of the present.”
—Brendan Walsh, editor of The Tablet
“In these dark times, we are profoundly in need of hope. Bishop Erik Varden’s searching reflections deliver. With wit and wisdom, he rightly diagnoses the modern world’s problem—our alienation from our own bodies (see chapter 3)—and provides the only true solution: ‘The embodied application of Christian faith in God’s Incarnation.’ You will come away understanding all the more what Vatican II meant in declaring that ‘only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.’”
—Christopher West, president of the Theology of the Body Institute
“What burns at the heart of each chapter in Towards Dawn, along with the light and fire of a fine, contemplative intelligence, is a flame of faith that, far from being cowed by the grim, unhappy winds of modern secularization, survives and thrives with a fire of conviction at once notably urgent and yet always serene. In a reflection on contemporary society from a spiritual perspective, it’s hard to imagine a more illumined, more authoritative statement than these few lines from the preface: ‘It is often casually said that we live in post-Christian times. I believe that statement to be false. Theologically, the term “post-Christian” makes no sense. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, and all the letters in between. He carries constitutionally the freshness of morning dew. Christianity is of the dawn.’”
—Father Paul Murray, OP, author of A Journey with Jonah and Light at the Torn Horizon
“At the beginning of the third millennium, Pope Saint John Paul II prophetically stated that the bishop is called ‘to be a prophet, witness, and servant of hope . . . instilling confidence and proclaiming before all people the basis of Christian hope’ (Pastores gregis 3). Bishop Erik Varden fulfills this essential duty in this collection of essays. As a man of hope, he thoughtfully reflects on important concerns for the contemporary Church and society, avoiding idealistic optimism and nihilistic pessimism. He builds his reflections on the rock of Jesus Christ, the Truth, and offers the reader profound reasons for hope amid the contemporary cries for meaning and purpose. The book is timely as we celebrate one of the final gifts given to the Church and the world by Pope Francis: the Jubilee Year of Hope.”
—Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila, archbishop of Denver