Sister Joan Chittister is a bestselling author for a very good reason. She takes difficult and even mysterious concepts and breaks them open for us. Here she tackles the virtue of mercy and its connection to forgiveness. She feels strongly that most of us don t understand either mercy or forgiveness and don t offer them enough to others. She challenges us to stop judging, accusing, and criticizing those we label sinners and to see ourselves in their number. She invites us to be realistic about our own actions before we throw that first stone at another. This is spiritual reading at its very best. Sister Joan s insights invite all of us to seek holiness through receiving and then offering God s tender mercy and forgiveness to one another. In doing so we become holy. There is no other way.

Explorations of how midrash originated and how it is still used today are presented in this study that offers new translations and interpretations of more than twenty midrash texts.