By the fourth century A.D., devout Christians--men and women alike--had begun to retreat from cities and villages to the deserts of North Africa and Asia Minor, where they sought liberation from their corrupt society and the confining shell of the social self. The Desert Fathers is the perfect introduction to the stories and sayings of these heroic pioneers of the contemplative tradition. Selected and translated by Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers opens a window onto early Christianity while presenting us with touchingly human models of faith, humility, and compassion. With a...

"God is our home but many of us have strayed from our native land.The venerable authors of these Spiritual Classics are expert guides--may we follow their directions home."--Archbishop Desmond Tutu
How can a just God abandon His creatures to suffering?How do we reconcile our notions of divine goodness and omnipotence with the fact that the universe is visibly unfair?Sooner or later, these questions confront anyone who attempts to lead a life of faith.And nowhere have they been articulated with greater drama, poignancy, and despairing fury than in the Biblical parable of the blamelessly...

A Vintage Spiritual Classic
In this original selection of his public sermons, private papers, and devotions, Newman s thoughtful belief in the Word of God shines through, as do his teachings on how to be in this world but not of it, and how to reconcile faith and reason.
Devoted to his own religious calling for nearly a century, John Henry Newman is one of the most definitive authorities on Christianity and theology. A cardinal of the Catholic Church, he had a pivotal role in Britian's reembrace of the Catholic Church in the 19th century. In 2010, he was officially canonized by Pope...

Faith and Freedom: An Invitation to the Writings of Martin Luther is the first selection in decades for the general reader from the many dozens of volumes that constitute Martin Luther s collected works. The selections included here, chosen for their pastoral tone, speak across the centuries and inform the spiritual concerns of today.Drawing on Luther s Bible prefaces and commentaries, his treatises and sermons, his letters, his table talk, and his enduring hymnbook, Faith and Freedom will provide a spiritual resource for anyone seeking the heritage of modern Christian...

A reissue of a classic Christian text from the founder of the Jesuit Order.
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyla is the core work of religious formation for members of the Society of Jesus, the single largest religious order within the Roman Catholic Church. For four and a half centuries in many thousands of editions in all languages, The Exercises have embodied fundamental spiritual principles essential to authentic Christian living.
The mystical insight informing Ignatius's own relationship with God--which he distilled in The Exercises--is that the...

This indispensable guide to the search for kinship with God was written by the great nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), whose writings set the stage for existentialism and continue to exert a lasting influence on believers and nonbelievers alike.
Kierkegaard struck out against all forms of established order-including the established church-that work to make men complacent with themselves and thereby obscure their personal responsibility to encounter God. He considered Training in Christianity his most important book. It represented his effort to...

Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth-century monk who wrote that "Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, a cry of joy in the heart," was both a mystic and a reformer. His writings reveal a mystical theology that Thomas Merton, a monastic heir to Bernard s Cistercian reform, says "explains what it means to be united to God in Christ but (also) shows the meaning of the whole economy of our redemption in Christ." Critical of the monastic opulence of his times, Bernard exhorted his monks to consider that "Salt with hunger is seasoning enough for a man living soberly and wisely." Martin...

Now available together in a single volume, these two classics were written by seventeenth-century England's most famous prisoner of conscience, Baptist John Bunyan (1628-1688). Imprisoned for twelve years for his preaching, he wrote first a dramatic allegory of Christian life and followed it with the compelling story of his own conversion. Both have been beloved by generations of spiritual seekers and still speak powerfully to modern readers.
Pilgrim's Progress recounts the perilous journey of Christian from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, and in its second...

Late Have I Loved Thee is the first collection of Saint Augustine's varied writings on human and divine love, chosen to reflect his lifelong preoccupation with ordo amoris, the principle of rightly directed love. "My weight is my love," he writes in The Confessions. He sees our ability to love as disordered by sin, so that we often choose badly what and how to love. Only by recognizing that we are commanded to love God first can any other object of our love be properly ordered, Late Have I Loved Thee draws on the riches found in Augustine's sermons, letters,...