I was re-reading The Peacemaker by Ken Sande of Peacemaker Ministries when I received Penelope Wilcock’s new book, The Hardest Thing To Do, in the mail. What a lovely (and convicting) serendipity! Ms. Wilcock’s new installment in the saga of the monks of St. Alcuin’s Abbey is a long time in coming. The original trilogy of books about St. Alcuin’s and Father Peregrine its abbot began with The Hawk and the Dove and continued in The Wounds of God and The Long Fall. These three books were published by Crossway in the early 1990’s.

Now we have a fourth book in the series, twenty years later, and it lives up to the fine standard set by the other three. In The Hardest Thing To Do, St. Alcuin’s has a new abbott, Father John, but the brothers are still serving each other and the same Lord, still living quiet, peaceable lives, still striving to practice the rule of St. Benedict in a fallen world. And of course, as is the way of this world, the brothers have a new challenge when they must decide what to do with a human “wolf” who has come into the sheepfold and who threatens to spoil both their peace and their way of life.

In The Hardest Thing To Do, Ms. Wilcock has dropped the framing story that she used in at least the first book of The Hawk and the Dove trilogy. In that first book, a mother was telling stories about the abbey of St. Alcuin’s to her daughters who were experiencing some of the same growing pains as the monks. The part of the novels that is most memorable, however, is the story of the monks themselves, so it was a good move to drop the frame and concentrate on the abbey.

I was concerned that this sequel, twenty years later, might not live up to the quality and depth of the first three books in the series, but I needn’t have worried. Ms. Wilcock, a Methodist minister, has a fine grasp of human foibles and sin and peace-making and the cost of following Christ in our interpersonal relationships. The book is about radical, costly forgiveness, and it doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties of such a choice to forgive our enemies. Forgiveness and reconciliation in the face of real hurt truly are the hardest things to do.

Asking for forgiveness:

I am filled with terror lest you turn me away. I long for the beautiful Gospel that has always puzzled me, but that I know has a beacon in the life of this house. For the forgiveness and gentleness I have found, I should like the chance to show my gratitude. For the hurt and anger I have caused, I should like time to try and make amends. And I have glimpsed the face of Christ here. Before that glimpse dims and is smutched and bleared by the sordid life of the world, I should like to try if I might to touch for myself the vision of that fair loveliness. . . compassion . . . faith . . . peace.

I would pray that all of us could be enabled to do the hard work of forgiving and asking and receiving forgiveness because it’s the only way to true heart peace.