Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Monasticism

This little rule can be a place to begin.

"Listen, my child. I want you to place the ear of your heart on the solid ground of the Master's wisdom (what I received, I'm passing on to you). This advice is from a spiritual father who loves you and gives you the sort of counsel that will shape your whole life."

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's The Rule of Saint Benedict presents the timeless wisdom of the Rule in a vibrant new...

In these conversations with film maker and writer Lucette Verboven, Thomas Keating OCSO - bestselling author, Trappist monk and founder of the Centering Prayer movement - looks back on his long life and spiritual development. Following on from his previous books Invitation to Love, Open Mind, Open Heart and The Mystery of Christ, Father Keating now turns his attention to the themes of awakening, the nature of true happiness and the character and purpose of death.

World Without End also contains an interview with Abbot Joseph Boyle OCSO, who presides over the...

In Benedict Backwards, Terrence Kardong builds the case that the Rule of Benedict is best read "backwards," that is, with emphasis on the last chapters, not the first ones. Benedict starts out dependent on the Rule of the Master, but he ends on a much more self-assured note, revealing more about his own thoughts on matters of monastic life. Kardong shows the final chapters of the Rule are primarily about community, and they provide insight into Benedict's vision for his monks.

In Creating Cistercian Nuns, Anne E. Lester addresses a central issue in the history of the medieval church: the role of women in the rise of the religious reform movement of the thirteenth century. Focusing on the county of Champagne in France, Lester reconstructs the history of the women's religious movement and its institutionalization within the Cistercian order.

The common picture of the early Cistercian order is that it was unreceptive to religious women. Male Cistercian leaders often avoided institutional oversight of communities of nuns, preferring instead to...

Gertrud the Great (1256-1302) entered the monastery of Helfta in eastern Germany as a child oblate. At the age of twenty-five she underwent a conversion that led to a series of visionary experiences. These centered on "the divine loving-kindness," which she perceived as expressed through and symbolized by Christ's divine Heart. Some of these experiences she recorded in Latin "with her own hand," in what became Book 2 of The Herald of God's Loving-Kindness.

Books 1, 3, 4, and 5 were written down by another nun, a close confidant of the saint, now often known as "Sister N." Book...