Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Monasticism

These eighty-six sermons are among the most famous and most beautiful examples of medieval scriptural exegesis. In them the modern reader can catch a glimpse of the genius an entire generation found irresistible.

A landmark in the 'feud' between Citeaux and Cluny, the Apologia contains Saint Bernard's opinion on the place of graphic arts in the monastery and shows his mastery of satire.

Educated at the abbeys of Bonnevaux and Cluny and at the court of his kinsman, Conrad of Hohenstaufen, Amadeus became a monk of Clairvaux in 1125, just about the time its abbot, Bernard, began to be noticed by the Church at large. After twenty years in the cloister, Amadeus became bishop of the troubled diocese of Lausanne. Reform and renewal did not come easily. In one of his letters he tells how his vestments once ran red with the blood of a man murdered while the bishop tried unsuccessfully to protect him.

Amid political skullduggery, as well as the demands of pastoral and...

During his twenty years as abbot of the Yorkshire monastery of Rievaulx, Aelred preached many sermons: to his own monks, in other monasteries, and at significant gatherings outside the cloister. His disciple and biographer, Walter Daniel, mentions hundreds of sermons. In this volume, the first of several, we have twenty-eight of his sermons. They have been translated from the critical edition of a manuscript copied for the Abbey of Clairvaux in the latter part of the twelfth century - that is, not long after Aelred's death on 12 January 1167.

Cistercian abbots were expected to speak...

Spiritual accompaniment -- patient listening and honest openness has become widespread among Christians of many traditions in recent years. Is this modern application of an ancient 'discernment of spirits' the best way for individual persons and groups of Christians to be formed as the People of God?

Can anyone today accompany another person's spiritual experience without a sound knowledge of psychology? Do spiritual accompaniment and psychological therapy overlap? Can one replace the other? Should an accompanist also be a therapist, as some have suggested?

Writing from his...

Thomas Merton is the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century, called the "most important spiritual writer of the twentieth century." To his legion of followers, he appeared to be a peaceful, contented monk advocating the contemplative life, but in 1966 he was a troubled, lonely monk--sad, demoralized, guilt-stricken, and depressed over past sins. Despite being promoted by the Catholic Church as its great teacher and philosopher, Merton struggled with his irreverent behavior toward women and never having learned how to love, and be loved.

Only when the...

Bernard ponders a question dear to early Scholasticism and the Reformation: How far can the fallen human person cooperate in salvation?

Scripture brings the Word of God to us when we read and welcome it in faith as the Word which comes from God and leads to God. Scripture is the means by which we live in God. The ancient monastic (and patristic) way of reading Scripture involves reflection (meditation) and prayer. It is listening to the Word, allowing the Word to become active in our lives. It is, in the words of Saint Jerome, 'opening our sails to the Holy Spirit without knowing on what shores we will land.'

Brother Victor-Antoine is the best-selling author of several cookbooks from his monastery kitchen. Sacred Feasts focuses on using seasonal fresh fruits and vegetables to create inexpensive, delicious, healthy, and beautiful vegetarian dishes to delight your family and friends. Recipes include simple and savory desserts, main dishes, and of course, entire meals to help celebrate feast days,...

Lectio divina, the ancient practice of prayerful reading, is a font whose waters are waiting to quench the thirst of spiritual seekers, both beginners on the spiritual journey and experienced travelers. The art of holy reading transforms lives. Through the practice of lectio individuals and communities discover God's living word addressed to them in their particular now," to enlighten, challenge, encourage, and suggest.

Reading to Live traces the practice of lectio divina from its roots in the ascetic movement in the early church and monasticism to its...

Spiritual Friendship is today the best known and perhaps most influential of the thirteen surviving works of Aelred, abbot of the great English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx from 1147 '1167. During his abbacy he built Rievaulx into a place of spiritual welcome and physical prosperity, desiring to make it a mother of mercy" to those in need. In a three-book Ciceronian dialogue Aelred defines human friendship as sacramental, beginning in creation, as God sought to place his own love of society in al his creatures, linking friends to Christ in this life and culminating in friendship...

In his "Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian," first published in 1978, Philip Rousseau presents a survey of asceticism in the western church until about 400, including a selective study of Jerome, and then, moving into the fifth century, a reading of Sulpicius and Cassian. Rousseau explores such societal changes as the eventual triumph of the coenobitic movement and its growing effect within the church, not least on the episcopate. He focuses primarily on the development among ascetics of a certain concept of spiritual authority; on the attraction of that...