On April 24, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, the twenty-first-century successor of the Apostle Peter and the spiritual leader of more than one billion Roman Catholics. Who is this complex man whose office grants him sole charge of the world's largest religion? How will his tenure influence the future? The Essential Pope Benedict XVI answers these questions through carefully chosen selections from his homilies, interviews, theological essays, and articles on the crises facing the church today. This collection lays out Benedict's thinking and relates...
On April 24, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, the twenty-first-century successor of the Apostle Peter and the spirit...
John F. Thornton Helen Jane Waddell M. Basil Pennington
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...
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 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...
"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 t...
John Henry Newman John F. Thornton Susan B. Varenne
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...
A Vintage Spiritual Classic In this original selection of his public sermons, private papers, and devotions, Newman s thoughtful belief in the Wo...
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...
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...
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...
This indispensable guide to the search for kinship with God was written by the great nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-185...
Bernard of Clairvaux John F. Thornton Susan B. Varenne
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...
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 ...
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...
Now available together in a single volume, these two classics were written by seventeenth-century England's most famous prisoner of conscience, Baptis...
John F. Thornton Susan B. Varenne James J. O'Donnell
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,...
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 pr...
Thomas More is perhaps most familiar to us from his courageous struggle with Henry VIII, unforgettably portrayed in Robert Bolt's classic, A Man for All Seasons. But that final struggle, which ended in his execution for treason, was only the crowning act in a life that he had devoted to God long before. In the first selection in decades made for the general reader from his collected works, this volume traces More's journey of moral conviction in his own words and writings. Drawing on a variety of More's late writings-the extraordinary "Tower Works," written in prison, his poignant...
Thomas More is perhaps most familiar to us from his courageous struggle with Henry VIII, unforgettably portrayed in Robert Bolt's classic, A Man fo...
