Overview

This book describes a life of love in France, with voyages and stories across the country. It describes a life together undaunted by a fatal pulmonary disease and a lung transplant in Paris that would, in time, bring new life and hope. It faces the hard reality of a death caused by a fresh, unknown assault, which is now called COVID. And finally, it speaks of the love that transcends all of those trials and takes rich new form because of the defeat of death by Christ, what the final section of the book calls ""The Love That Grief Is.""

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9781666711592

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Reviews

""At once candid and consoling; memories of a particular love and loss which will bring tears of recognition to others who have loved and grieved. Chris Seitz's honesty and ability to describe so exquisitely the joy of life with Elizabeth--and then its loss--is a testament to the truth that grief is indeed unspent love, and that great love has no conclusion. Seitz describes his particular experience while at the same time drawing us deeper into the Love who every grief has known."" --L. Ann Jervis, Professor Emerita of New Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto ""The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity apply not only to our relationship with God, but to our lives with one another. Seitz movingly depicts how this is so in this tender account of his time with his wife Elizabeth in France during the last years of her life. Imbued with gentle humor, sympathetic if sometimes wry social observation, and the deep current of love, this book is a testimony in miniature to the vivifying and sanctifying power of human affection in the eyes of God."" --Ephraim Radner, Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto ""Chris Seitz's Le Grand Voyage is a travelogue of a trip none of us would choose, yet every one of us must, in some way, venture. Seitz gives us a beautifully told memoir of a life richly shared together, an unsentimental account of suffering and death's unwelcome intrusion, and a moving witness to love's tenacity in the face of loss. This is a love story--honest, tender, and theologically wise--in which grief is not love's defeat but its continuation. 'Unspent love.' In these pages, sorrow is not denied, death is not romanticized, and yet love, by grace, refuses to yield. Heartbreaking and hopeful, this book is a testimony to the resilience of human love and to the mercy of God who sustains even in the valley of loss."" --Will Willimon, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke Divinity School ""Chris Seitz tells a moving, profound, and cultured story of adventure, loss, and love. It is presented not in an obvious linear fashion but in a manner of re-presentation, often looping back as the priceless past interrupts the storytelling, painting vignettes in such a way that fact and meaning are mixed together. The prose is often raw, but never rough. It breathes words of life drawn from scripture and precious experience."" --Mark Elliott, Honorary Professor, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews ""Le Grand Voyage recounts a storybook life in France, an unimaginable victory over a fatal disease, followed by a tragic turn--death comes for the victor(s) all the same. Part memoir, part theologically informed meditation on grief, the author interrogates disorienting loss in the light of eternity. Others will find here echoes of the particularities of their own losses and recognize those precious intuitions of one's beloved in the eternal present of God."" --Claire Mathews McGinnis, Professor, Theology Department, Loyola University Maryland ""Many of us have benefited from Dr. Seitz's scholarly work, combining as he does profound learning and passionate love for Christ and his church. In this book we benefit from something different: his deep love for his late wife. It is a beautiful, tragic story, an elegy to the great love of his life, now departed, an example of deep mourning, though, as St. Paul would remind us, mourning that is not without hope. It is this generation's A Grief Observed, painfully honest and touchingly human--a book from which all of us can learn."" --Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Grove City College

Author Information

Christopher Seitz is Senior Research Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto. He previously taught at Yale University and the University of St Andrews (UK). He is the author or editor of twenty books and numerous articles. He and his wife, Elizabeth, lived in France from 2016 to 2020, during which time he was Visiting Professor at Centre Sevres in Paris. He is the Director of French Affaires, LLC.

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