When the Flower Opens: The Extraordinary Friendship Between Abbot Shodo Habukawa and Monsignor Luigi Giussani

This book offers a brief look at the improbable but very real friendship between Monsignor Luigi Giussani and Professor Shodo Habukawa, and presents it as the model of true ecumenism between believers in Jesus Christ and people of other cultures and faiths, people whose hearts beat with the same original needs as ours: for truth, beauty, and love. The book offers brief overviews of Christianity and Buddhism, and explores the development of friendships between members of Communion and Liberation and Buddhists of other countries and traditions. This examination of an interfaith, multi-party friendship is, in itself, a journey in which we will seek and find much beauty, and as Fr. Giussani was fond of pointing out: when we seek beauty, we are seeking Christ.