For centuries, spiritual seekers have profited from reading accounts of people’s spiritual journeys. Well-known examples include Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, Teresa of Avila’s The Story of Her Life, Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, and M.K. Gandhi’s The Story of my Life. Reading such spiritual autobiographies can provide us with light for our own journeys and can help us correct course when we veer off the path. Some readers of this autobiography by Kevin Patrick Joyce, Surprised by Grace, have described it as a 21st century Seven Storey Mountain, one of the most popular and influential spiritual memoirs of the 20th century.
This memoir traces the journey of a restless young man from an awakening at the age of seven, leaving home to pursue the Catholic priesthood at the age of fourteen, confronting a vocational struggle in Mexico precipitated by falling in love, and leaving the seminary at the age of twenty-two to pursue marriage.
The story takes a new direction when Joyce engages in an Asian spiritual movement that leads him to a six-month meditation course in Spain with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The course is followed by a spiritual crisis that leads him to a sustained exploration of Eastern and Christian spirituality over a period of several years. His path takes many twists and turns as he pursues spirituality, adventure, romance, and a career in music, all the while seeking his vocation.
During a six-month advanced meditation course in Switzerland at the age of twenty-seven, Joyce surprisingly rediscovers his call to the Catholic priesthood. He returns to the seminary where he undertakes a Master’s thesis comparing and contrasting a well-known Asian spiritual path with that of Catholic Christianity. The story ends with the dramatic beginning of the young man’s entrance into the Catholic priesthood.
A subtheme of this book traces how, over the course of three decades, Kevin Joyce encountered remarkable spiritual masters – both contemporary and from the distant past. These masters provided him with guidance for the spiritual journey. The book reveals how these masters and mentors can also provide direction for the readers’ spiritual journeys. Another final theme that runs through the book has to do with pitfalls that emerge throughout the journey and the rescue operation Joyce calls, “Divine Providence.” This story will support those already on a spiritual journey and encourage skeptics and non-believers to take a gamble on God.