Elizabeth A. Johnson is a religious sister, member of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and emerita professor of theology at Fordham University in New York City. Her many books include the influential She Who Is — a bold work of feminist theological understanding published more than 30 years ago now. We know many Roman Catholics for whom Johnson has been a pivotal thinker for imagining and reimagining the sacred and Divine.
Johnson is profiled in our Living Spiritual Teachers Project. You’ll find interviews, articles, quotes, and reviews, at this link.
This book of her articles and meditations centers around two themes. First, in the author’s words from the Introduction: “These meditations present something of a panoramic view of the living God who loves planet Earth and accompanies all its inhabitants in their living and dying with the intent to save, having particular care for those who suffer from social and ecological injustice.” This is Johnson’s forte — to focus readers on ways of knowing God that have been, until now, underdeveloped in the Christian imagination.
Second, the theme of these meditations refers to the title of the work. Johnson explains that “Come, have breakfast” are words of the risen Jesus from the Gospel of John that are rarely noticed by Christians. These words are, she explains, “a bugle call of divine hospitality toward all people and all living creatures, revealing a passionate divine desire that all should be fed. Pulsing from the story is a call to the community of disciples of Jesus to act on behalf of nourishing others.”
Thirty essays, none more than eight pages, cover topics such as the kinship of all creation, “Messianic peace” (the first chapter in a part of the book called “Jesus and the Earth”), a probing of what “dominion” means when we talk about God (with a reimagining of what you might remember or think about the biblical book of Job), and the role of God in the intricate web of interactions that is the universe (with frequent reference to Thomas Aquinas).
In the case of the example just mentioned, Johnson writes beautifully in conclusion: “Infinite wellspring of life, God creates the world by empowering the world to make itself,” and refers to the Creator as “sheer aliveness,” adding, “The very fact that the Creator gives be-ing to everything in every place means that the living God cannot be ranked with any other particular factor or included in any list of finite causes. Rather, the Giver of life vivifies, pervades, and surrounds all things as their dynamic source, present empowerment, and ineffable goal.”
