Decisive Orientation of Christian Life: a New Approach to Father Dehon
In view of the celebration of the centenary of the death of our Founder, Father Dehon, in this year 2025, the Dehonian Study Center in Rome has published a new volume in the “Studia Dehoniana” series.
It is a commemorative issue in the context of the Dehonian Jubilee we are celebrating. It is the issue 70 of this series, with 470 pages. The volume presents the results of Fr. Victor de Oliveira Barbosa’s doctoral research in Spiritual Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and offers an analysis of Father Dehon’s lived Christian experience in the light of the theological-decisional method. Its title is “Orientación decisiva de la vida Cristiana” (= Decisive Orientation of Christian Life) and, as the title suggests, it has been published in Spanish.
The author offers a theological-spiritual reading of the Founder’s experience of faith throughout his life, what is called “lived Christian experience,” using a method that focuses on the decision-making process as an element that allows us to interpret the spiritual experience of Father Dehon and the process of inner transformation that took place in him. The intention is that of a theological approach to the Founder’s experience of faith, from which our Congregation was born (cf. Cst 2-5).
Following the steps of the method used, the volume is divided into three parts, each consisting of two chapters, for a total of six chapters. The first part presents a decision-making analysis in two chapters: the first offers a synchronic analysis of the main decisions made by Father Dehon in his life, 24 decisions in total, seeking to understand how they arose from a divine motion and guided him towards a theological attitude; the second proposes a diachronic analysis of the same decisions, establishing the interconnection between them in the development of his Christian life. The second part of the volume presents a mystagogical interpretation of Father Dehon’s lived Christian experience, elaborated in two chapters (chapters 3 and 4): the third chapter proposes an interpretation of divine pedagogy in Father Dehon’s spiritual experience, seeking to understand how the divine mystery is manifested in it; the fourth chapter, on the other hand, offers a reading of Father Dehon’s process of inner transformation in the light of the experience of the divine mystery. Finally, the third part of the book proposes a contextual synthesis, seeking to shed light on the present context, developing it in the last two chapters: thus, the fifth chapter presents a contextual reading of consecrated life today, in the light of Father Dehon’s lived Christian experience; the sixth chapter offers insights that Father Dehon’s spiritual experience can offer to Christian life today. Attached, the volume also presents the theological-decisional method, with its theoretical bases and steps.
Studia Dehoniana 70 aims to present to the Congregation and to all those inspired by its spirituality a different interpretation of the Founder, with methodological rigour, which gives us a different approach to Father Dehon’s experience of faith and helps us to trace, in his lived Christian experience, the fundamental and sometimes unexpected elements of the spiritual heritage he left us. There are several new features in this approach, which make this volume well worth reading on the occasion of the centenary of Father Dehon’s death.
Studia Dehoniana 70 is available in paper format at the Dehonian Studies Center (direttorecentrostudi@dehoniani.org) and also in digital format on the website https://www.studiadehonianadocs.org/#/pdf/orientacion-decisiva-de-la-vida-cristiana.
The full text in Italian will also be available on the website shortly.
