An Ignatius Press Reprint

Ignatius Press Reprints are identical in content with the most recent print edition of the original title. In order to keep important titles available at reasonable prices, we reprint them digitally in small quantities. We use high quality, acid-free paper, but the books are not smyth-sewn as is customary with our offset press print editions.

With eloquent, moving prose, Sheldon Vanauken tells about those years following the death of his beloved wife, Davy, and how he moved step-by-step through the darkness of his grief into the light of God’s love. But this poignant volume is much more than a sequel to the runaway best-seller, A Severe Mercy: it is a continuing autobiography and an engrossing chronicle of Vanauken’s writings, and always a challenge to live the spiritual life.

Under the Mercy also mirrors the times during which Vanauken redefined his life.  Caught up in the Spirit of the Age, Vanauken drifted from the Spirit of God. But gentle “nudges” from God led him back toward the Obedience. It was a chance rereading of one page of mentor C. S. Lewis that was used as a “channel of grace.” He corrected his errant course and was soon again “under the Mercy”. His spiritual journey led him to eventually “cross the English channel” to Rome and become a Roman Catholic.

Under the Mercy is a vivid record of a then wayward disciple’s return to the Obedience – an intensely moving and personal story. 

“Comparable to Newman’s Apologia. Readers of A Severe Mercy will be excited at the prospect of reading this sequel. Those who loved one will devour the other. They will not be disappointed”.
--Dom Julian Stead, O.S.B., Author, Saint Benedict: A Rule for Beginners