Towards Evening: Reflections on Aging, Illness, and the Soul's Union with God

In the latter part of her life, Daisy Haywood Moseley kept a journal that she later published under the name Mary Hope. Reared in an intensely devout Catholic family, Moseley wrote often on religious subjects for magazines like Commonweal and Catholic World. A collection of spiritual meditations written in 1949, Towards Evening illuminates Moseley's quiet progress toward God. Her daily life, on the whole, appears uneventful; she attends Mass each morning, celebrates feast days, reads deeply and widely and, on occasion, travels. Moseley suffers in the knowledge that as she grows older she will join the ranks of the too-often neglected elderly, but she takes comfort in reading accounts of the lives of Catholic saints who met old age with energy and grace, and in cultivating the holy habit of trust. Even in the face of her vulnerability to the aging process, though, Moseley's inner life glows with a serene belief in God's eternal care, and she finds that pain and isolation can be met with confidence in God's grace. This new edition, edited by noted religion writer LaVonne Neff, includes a glossary as well as a short biography, and Moseley's self-deprecating tone and her deep desire to surrender to God's will make for enlightening reading. (Apr.)