The Soul of the Earth: Condensed version of Everybody for Everybody

Psychiatrist Samuel A. Nigro’s Soul of the Earth contains over seven hundred pages of condensed wisdom of the ages – illustrating the diverse ways in which the Sacraments are designed to impact and elevate human existence. This book makes splendid reading, but sometimes seems more like a reference work than a thematic exposition. And yet, there is a theme, of course, as it explores the mystery and wonder of each Sacrament respecting its unique role in perfecting every aspect of human existence – showing how each, in turn, lifts the human person toward a specifically human end that radically transcends the spiritually-suicidal entrapment of Darwinian materialism. Interwoven are many smaller patches of insights, brief articles on diverse topics – many like parenthetical comments with their own diverse fascination.
Dr. Nigro starts with the basic physics of all matter taken from Stephen Hawking...and metaphorically spiritualizes all in a unique, but consistent with Tradition, promotion of the Word. The objectionable "matter only" education, so de-spiritualizing of today's youth, is forcefully "ensouled." To understand is to love this book. It is not "more of the same" and effort is required. Each chapter on each sacrament and grace begin with a totally new, but Tradition-compatible, "ensoulment" by specific analogical linkage between elementary physics, the community universals, the transcendentals, the virtues, the humane interactional variables of all therapy, and the last words of Christ on the Cross, all subsumed as part of the named sacrament or grace. After the specific ensouling definitions, the chapter then offers an amazing number of examples of life and aphorisms appropriate to the sacrament or grace. It is a rewarding intellectual and spiritual exercise to interpret or summarize each example using the words of the initial "ensoulment" at the beginning of that chapter. It is delightful to grasp over and over that "all life is sacramental" … greatly helped through knowing the ensouling words to think, realize and live as offered by Dr. Nigro. Never has the Word for a full body and soul loving existence been made more clear as based on science. This is a new schema of understanding -- beginning with basic physics, requiring an open mind and repetition. Dr. Nigro seeks to promote a new way of understanding Christian living, rebutting by full spiritualization of the increasingly common "I am not religious but spiritual" bench-sitting from full reality. In a way, to understand is for the reader himself to be self-ensouled at a higher level of rationality.
Thus is integrated the delightful and enthralling vast numbers of citations from all sorts of authors, both famous and virtually unknown, showering the reader with endless insights into the glorious mysteries of human life, most reflecting thoughts that inspire and elevate. Indeed, at three A.M. on a sleepless night, one could pick up this volume and find random pages filled with gems that calm the mind and raise the soul beyond the petty concerns that usually inhibit relaxation.
The magnitude of the aphorisms and longer citations of authors – loosely subordinated to the themes of sacramental sections – is so great that the name index in the back of the book runs seventeen pages in length and must contain some sixteen hundred names – the vast majority of which are the sources of these insights. While not all of these citations may suit the interest or even meet the acceptance of every reader, the mere multitude of them is bound to provide a treasure trove of reading pleasure. More importantly, I find many of these quotes to be powerful and decisive for human enhancement, truly life-changing truths in many instances, if fully understood -- valuable observations and revelations about human nature and the world This major feature of this work singularly justifies placing this book in everyone’s personal library. It is genuinely remarkable that Dr. Nigro found time to discover all these mostly valuable citations!
In Soul of the Earth, Dr. Nigro presents the culture of Christendom at the height of its historical glory. The author clearly hopes that people will catch on and begin to transform today’s secular, bleak world into a society which