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Between World War II and Vatican II, as Italy struggled to rebuild after decades of Mussolini's fascism, an eleventh-century order of contemplative monks in the Apennines were urged by Thomas Merton to found a daughter house on the rugged coast of California. A brilliant but world-weary ex-Jesuit, who had recently withdrawn from a high-intensity public life to go into reclusion at the ancient Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli, was tapped for the job. Based on notes kept for over sixty years by an early American novice at New Camaldoli Hermitage, The Hermits of Big Sur tellsthe compelling story of what unfolds within this small and idealistic community when medievalism must finally come to terms with modernism. It traces the call toward fuga mundi in the young seekers who arrive to try their vocations, only to discover that the monastic life requires much more of them than a bare desire for solitude. And it describes the miraculous transformation that sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of lectio divina, silent meditation, liturgical faithfulness, and the communal bonds they have formed through the practice of the ';privilege of love.'

The Lives of Holy Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

If your parish is planning the dedication of a new church and altar, this book will help prepare the entirecommunity for the celebration. A rich combination of scripture, liturgical text, and questions for further reflection, Our Church, Our Altar invites community-wide catechesis and prayer for a number of occasions, including the laying of a cornerstone, the blessing of a chapel, and the blessing of a new chalice and paten, for example.Our Church, Our Altar will also help you prepare for each anniversary of the dedication of your parish church. Perfect for use by both individuals and communities, the spiritual reflections in this book will help you prepare for these special celebrations within your community of faith.

What does conversion look like for children and youth? How do we teach them that conversion is a way of life that requires daily commitment? These questions are even more pressing today than they were in 1988 when the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (with adaptations for children) was issued. In Children and Youth in the Catechumenate, Anne Koester shows catechumenate ministers how to immerse young seekers into an apprenticeship in Christian life. By using the liturgy of the church and the liturgy of life, she demonstrates the four integral dimensions of Christian discipleship that form young believers for mission.

The Mirror of Faith

You want insights for living? Look to people whose understandings have been practiced for fifteen hundred years. Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica, his twin sister, established a flexible pattern that has adopted, adapted, challengedand outlivedmyriad cultures. Their sons and daughters today, who devote their time and talents to the ';school for the Lord's service' launched by the Rule of Benedict, demonstrate a whole range of options that are accessible to anyone. It is a mistake to think that ';forsaking the world' is the Benedictine option. Options (plural) are, instead, ';for the sake of the world.'

Catholic Morality and Human Sexuality, Revised Edition

From scholarly monographs to papal homilies, Joseph Ratzinger has insisted consistently over decades that Christianity is not a set of ideas to believe or, even less, moral laws to follow. Rather, Christianity is about a person and our encounter with that person.In The Word Made Love, Christopher Collins identifies in the structure of Ratzingers thought the presentation of God as one who speaks and who ultimately speaks Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Humanitys posture before God is one of hearing and responding. For Ratzinger, then, dialogue is the basic structure of all reality, and the Christian Vision articulates the radical transformation that happens when we enter into this divine dialogue. Collins argues that this dialogical, communicative structure is a distinctive aspect of Ratzingers thought and a unique contribution to the renewal of theology in our day.

InMary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul,Deanna Witkowski brings a fresh perspective to the life and music of the legendary jazz pianist-composer Mary Lou Williams (1910-81). As a fellow jazz pianist-composer, adult convert to Catholicism, and liturgical composer, Witkowski offers unique insight gleaned from a twenty-year journey with Williams as her chosen musical and spiritual mentor. Viewing Williams's musical and corporal acts of mercy as part of a singular effort to create community no matter the context, Witkowski examines how Williams created networks of support and friendship through her decades long letter correspondence with various women religious, her charitable work, and her tireless efforts to perform jazz in churches, community centers, concert halls, and schools. Throughout this fascinating story told with equal amounts of deep love and scholarly research, Witkowski illumines Williams's passionate mantra that ';jazz is healing to the soul.'

Homilies in Praise of Blessed Mary

While all of the New Testament writings offer windows into the personal religious experiences of their authors, says Kevin McCruden, the Letter to the Hebrews affords us a truly exquisite example of a particularly creative interpretation of such religious experience. It also supplies us with something all too rare in many of the documents of the New Testament: a glimpse into the personal experiences of the ancient persons who first heard this text. Partially obscured beneath the author's characteristic emphasis on the superiority of transcendent realities is the indelible imprint of the real-life experiences of early Christians who suffered emotionally and physically for the countercultural commitment that they placed in Jesus. For such persons, Hebrews vividly celebrates the unseen vindication of Jesus and, in this way, provides a hope-filled portrait of the victorious Son of God. At the same time, Hebrews is also very much concerned with what we might call the life of Christian discipleship-that is, what it means to journey this side of the age to come in a manner that is faithful to the countercultural character of God's kingdom embodied by Jesus. This brief study will help illumine for readers something of this creative balance between the transcendent and the concrete that Hebrews illustrates so well.

The Catholic Church uses three different sacred oils in some of its most solemn ceremonies: the baptism of children, confirmation, the anointing of the sick, the ordination of a priest, the ordination of a bishop, and the dedication of a church and altar.Sacred Oils explores the blessing and consecration of the oils at the annual Chrism Mass, as well as the guidelines for their usage. Inspirational and educational, this book will delight everyone interested in the ceremonies of the Catholic Church.

Practicing hospitality is central to building a civil society, not to mention living a Christian life. It can be enriching and joy-filled, but it can also be profoundly demanding and sometimes even dangerous. In The Limits of Hospitality, Jessica Wrobleski explores the ethical questions surrounding the practice of hospitality, particularly hospitality that is informed by Christian theological commitments.While there is no algorithm that distinguishes between ethically legitimate and illegitimate boundaries, the variety of circumstances in which hospitality is relevant and the nature of hospitality itself make advocating firm and fixed boundaries difficult. How much more so for Christians, for whom the practice of hospitality should be a manifestation of agape, a participation in Gods eschatological welcome extended to all people through Jesus Christ!Are limits to hospitality, then, merely a regrettable concession to our finite and fallen condition? Wrobleski offers a rich theological reflection that will interest anyone who has a role in the practice of hospitality in community? Whether such communities are families, households, churches, educational institutions, or nation-states.

God calls each of us to a life of goodness, and our yearnings to become more like God invite us to lifelong practices of conversion. The sacrament of confirmation is a pivotal moment anchoring a Catholic's commitment to God. But do our current sacramental preparation programs really inspire candidates to turn toward the Lord? Leonard J. DeLorenzo demonstrates how preparation for Confirmation can be life-giving for both candidates and those who accompany them. Turn to the Lord: Forming Disciples for Lifelong Conversion empowers parents, confirmation sponsors, and all who contribute to the holistic formation of young people to share the goodness of God in ways that shape hearts, minds, hands, and habits.

Though trinitarian theology has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the last few years, there is a lamentable lacuna in much of this study, a gap between intellectual rigor and concrete experience. While the contributions of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas are important to any foundational study of the Trinity, a strictly philosophical and scholastic approach has proved to be both contentious and problematic. As a result, many are left wanting for more meaningful expressions of this profound mystery. Anne Hunt fills this lacuna and offers a fresh avenue of reflection. She explores the distinctly trinitarian insights of a number of Christian mystics 'Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart, Bonaventure and Elizabeth of the Trinity, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, William of St. Thierry and Julian of Norwich. Readers will find that the mystery of the divine life and love that was so tangibly given and so palpably experienced by these mystics is now offered to us through them.Anne Hunt is faculty dean of theology and philosophy at Australian Catholic University. She is currently vice president of the Australian Catholic Theological Association. She is author of Trinity: Nexus of the Mysteries of Christian Faith, What Are They Saying About the Trinity? and The Trinity and the Paschal Mystery.

To read the Gospel of Mark is to embark on a journeyone in which Jesus teaches his disciples and calls them to learn what it means to follow him. In The Spiritual Landscape of Mark, Bonnie Thurston invites all of us to embark on this spiritual journeyto go away to a quiet place and reflect awhile on what it means to be Jesus disciple.

How does the entrance song of the Mass function within the Roman Rite? What can it express theologically? What should Roman Catholics sing at the beginning of Mass? In this groundbreaking study, Jason McFarland answers these and other important questions by exploring the history and theology of the entrance song of Mass.After a careful history of the entrance song, he investigates its place in church documents. He proposes several models of the entrance song for liturgical celebration today. Finally, he offers a skillful theological analysis of the entrance song genre, focusing on the song for the Holy Thursday Evening Mass-arguably the most important entrance song of the entire liturgical year.Announcing the Feast provides the most comprehensive treatment of the Roman Rite entrance song to date. It is unique in that it bridges the disciplines of liturgical studies, musicology, and theological method.

In The Sacrament of the Eucharist, the latest volume in the Lex Orandi Series, John D. Laurance considers the Eucharist by way of two question.

These profound and inspiring reflections on the Gospel of John will open to preachers, religious, and parish groups interested in Scripture, the treasures that the Fourth Gospel contains for the life of the world.Brendan Byrne draws on the insights in Life Abounding, his academic commentary on the Fourth Gospel, to enrich the understanding of non-scholars in Come to the Light. Discussion questions provided at the end of each talk serve as a starting point for the reader's personal contemplation.

Presiding over the liturgy takes more than following instructions. Good presiding is artful presiding. It is knowledgeable and inspirational. It faithfully grasps the church's heritage and gives it personal expression.In Ars Celebrandi, Father Paul Turner offers a guide for priests in preparing for and celebrating the Mass. Building on a liturgy which adheres to the liturgical books, Turner examines styles of presiding and reflects on principles that will help the presider to foster active participation of the faithful.

The Holy Spirit as the Universal Touch and Goal

Offers the church assistance in visiting and praying with the sick, in facilitating services of Communion, and in tailoring the sacramental rites of anointing and Viaticum to meet the particular circumstances of each individual illness and journey into death. This book is a theological introduction to the rite.

From the Upper Room to Cyberspace

Called in a special way to listen to Gods whispers, the mystics amplify not only what it means to be baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and to having the Trinity living in them but also what is deepest in the human spirit. Mystics experience themselves as an infinite question to which only God is the answer; as an immense longing that only Love can quench; as a nothing in the face of the No-Thing. They are Gods fools, troubadours the great artists and poets of the interior life whose learned ignorance articulates the art of loving God, neighbor, self, the Church, and the world.In Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition Harvey Egan draws on fifty years of reading and teaching the mystics to sketch the varieties and passion of the mystical life across more than two millennia. Through their stories and words Egan reveals that all were conscious of the paradox of human identity supremely and unsurpassably manifested in the God-Man that the genuinely human is disclosed only through surrender to God and that the search for God cannot bypass the genuinely human.