The book appeared first in 1934 under the title Consideraciones espirituales and later (in 1939) received its definitive title, after being greatly expanded. Over the years, more than four and a half million copies have been sold, in 43 different languages. This is one of the main attractions of the book-its direct, conversational style, its personal and deeply human character. As a reviewer in Osservatore Romano (March 24, 1950) put it: "Msgr. Escriva de Balaguer has written something more than a masterpiece; he has written straight from the heart, and straight to the heart go the short paragraphs which make up The Way."(from the author's preface:) "Read these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things that I whisper in your ear-confiding them-as a friend, as a brother, as a father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in the end you will be a more worthy soul."

    This venerable devotion was practiced by such great saints, such as St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Gertrude the Great, St. Mechtilde, St. Edmund, St. Bonaventure and St. Therese of Lisieux.Beginning in 1844, Our Lord appeared to Sr. Mary of St. Peter and expressed His desire that world should know and practice this devotion in reparation for man's blasphemy. Through the efforts of Sr. Mary St. Peter, Ven. Leo DuPont and countless others, this devotion has become one of the most loved, and remains one of the most needed in our time.

    Denying the Creator, who made male and female, Nazism and Communism could only fail to appreciate the true meaning of the feminine and reduce woman to a mere instrument of the state. In the name of liberating her from the so-called tyranny of Christianity, atheism, in any form, leads to woman's enslavement.With penetrating insight Gertrud von le Fort understood the war on womanhood, and consequently on motherhood, that always coincides with an attack on the faith of the Catholic Church, which she embraced at the age of 50 in 1926. In The Eternal Woman, she counters the modern assault on the feminine not with polemical argument but with perhaps the most beautiful meditation on womanhood ever written.Taking Mary, Virgin and Mother, as her model, von le Fort reflects on the significance of woman's spiritual and physical receptivity that constitutes her very essence, as well as her role in both the creation and redemption of human beings. Mary's fiat to God is the pathway to our salvation, as it is inextricably linked with the obedience unto death of Jesus her son. Like the Son's acceptance of the Cross, Mary's acceptance of her maternity symbolizes for all mankind the self-surrender to the Creator required of every human soul. Since any woman's acceptance of motherhood is likewise a yes to God, when womanhood and motherhood are properly understood and appreciated, the nature of the soul's relationship to God is revealed.

    Christ taught us the Lord's Prayer as the first and most important of all our catechisms. If you haven't considered it carefully, now's the time to begin and here's the book to help you uncover the riches Christ placed in these familiar words.

    Here we again take up the study of these first principles, not so much as they are concerned with the functioning of the faculty of common sense, but with reference to the classical proofs for Gods existence. We have set ourselves the task of demonstrating the necessity of these principles, their dependence upon the first principle, and their ontological and transcendent validity. It will seen that the proofs for Gods existence rest ultimately upon the principle of identity or of non-contradiction, their proximate basis being the principle of sufficient reason, and their immediate basis the principle of causality. . . .