John Riccardo helps us dive into the Scriptures so that we can apply them to our daily lives. In his inspiring and incisive way, Fr. Riccardo addresses the obstacles we all face in becoming mature disciples. How do we learn to forgive? How do we combat fear and understand suffering? How do we worship the Lord, love others as Christ loves us, and fully surrender our lives to God? If you've enjoyed Fr. Riccardo's gifts of teaching and preaching through his broadcasts and podcasts, this book is for you!

    Faithful to the Biblical account of the Passion, it fills in many hitherto unknown details. Edifying, inspiring, surprising, and heart-rending, Emmerich's descriptions of our Lord's Passion will melt a heart of stone. This book is the best on the Passion we have seen. It also wonderfully portrays the Blessed Mother's role in our redemption. Includes a short biography of Sr. Emmerich. A great book for the whole family! Impr. 404 pgs, PB.

    When his existing homilies were exhausted, Knox began to write new ones for his students based on the Apostles' Creed. The homilies were so well-received that they were later published as The Creed in Slow MotionWith resurgent interest in the life and writings of Knox, as well as forthcoming changes to the English translation of the Creed, the new edition of this classic could not be more timely.

    This is not an abstract invitation but a deeply personal and intimate one. There is so much happening in the world and so much happening within our own hearts, minds, and souls. All this makes it is easy to lose sight of what matters most and get absorbed in what matters least.Mother Teresa is an icon of goodness, one of the most beloved women in history. How did she become so much to so many people? Little by little. Small acts performed with great love. You become an icon of goodness by striving to be good and by consistently doing good.On these pages, you will find the essential teachings of Mother Teresa. They provide remarkable insight into the depths of her heart, mind, soul, and life. They will comfort you in your affliction and afflict you in your comfort. But most of all, in the midst of all this activity and noise of your life, you will hear Mother Teresa encouraging you by gently saying: Do something beautiful for God with your life!

    Often, though, we go through the motions at Mass without an appreciation for what has really happened. Popular speaker and author Mark Hart helps Catholics move beyond the repetition and ritual to see the Mass for what it really is: a heavenly banquet, a wedding feast, in which heaven and earth meet. In his engaging style, Hart guides readers toward a deeper understanding of the Massits roots in the Jewish Sabbath, its sacrificial character, and its signs and symbols. As we are told to go in peace, he inspires us to see the Mass as a place to be nourished so that we can further Christs mission in the world. In the last part of the book, Hart provides pithy answers to frequently asked questions, such as Why cant I leave right after Communion? or Why did the words change? Finally, Hart offers ten things we can do to get more out of Mass.

    For de Caussade, living in the moment meant having a complete trust and faith in God, for God's will defined and guided all things. The practical advice contained in his guidebook for the faithful was originally a series of letters written for the Nuns of the Visitation of Nancy, meant to help them navigate the confusing and difficult work of spiritual enlightenment, and comes together here in two distinct parts, one for the theoretical foundations of abandoning oneself to the present moment and one with practical advice on how to live such a life. Though a departure from the standard Christian perspective, Abandonment to Divine Providence remains a deeply spiritual work with a message that many Christians may find freeing and inspiring.

    Taken from his sermons as well as his writings, these beautiful meditations by the acclaimed spiritual teacher, writer and now Pontiff, give his usual fresh insights into the deeper meaning of this most wondrous event, and show the Pope to be a man who knows how to address both the mind and the heart. Includes many Illustrations. "Christmas is the most profoundly human feast of faith, because it allows us to feel most deeply the humanity of God. The cirb has a unique power to show us what it means to say that God wished to be "Immanuel" - a "God with us," a God we may address in intimate language, because he encounters us as a child. This makes Christmas a feast that invites us in a special way to meditation, to an internal act of looking at the Word. It awakens in us a deeper perception of the truth of the words from Scripture, "The goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior has appeared.'"

    Teresa's teaching about mental prayer shines through in this wonderful synopsis of her writings about it–something she said "the whole world could not purchase." Learn how we should pray, in order to grow in the spiritual life. Impr. 184 pgs, PB

    —Peter preaching to the crowd after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost We tend to overlook Peter's opening words to the crowd that first Pentecost morning, to our own peril. His denial of drunkenness in the wake of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit should stop us in our tracks. What was going on here? How did the apostles experience the Holy Spirit? What was he teaching them? How was he empowering them? What does this scene in the streets of Jerusalem mean for us today? Father Raniero Cantalamessa offers pastoral advice and leads the reader through passages of Scripture and the Fathers of the Church to remind us of the incalculable power of the Spirit available to us. This spiritual "intoxication" is an infilling—through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and the action of God—that purifies us of sin, renews the heart and enlightens the mind. As St. Augustine said of the Spirit, "He found you empty and he filled you…I like this kind of intoxication. The Spirit of God is both drink and light."

    This meditation on the spiritual life has inspired readers from Thomas More and St. Ignatius Loyola to Thomas Merton and Pope John Paul I. Written by the Augustinian monk Thomas à Kempis between 1420 and 1427, it contains clear instructions for renouncing wordly vanities and locating eternal truths. No book has more explicitly and movingly described the Christian ideal:

    

    For more than four-hundred years, Introduction to the Devout Life by Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales has been regarded as the essential guide to holiness and loving God. This spiritual classic takes on new life in Lift Up Your Heart, where Rev. John Burns has interpreted ten meditations for the modern reader and distilled them into a ten-day mini-retreat that can easily be completed in the midst of a busy life. This practical book goes right to the heart of helping you kick the habit of floating along on your spiritual journey to start actively pursuing holiness and devotion to God. During the course of the retreat, you'll learn the basics of forming a daily prayer routine, including how to offer yourself to God, meditate on his love, and maintain peace in the face of suffering and clarity in the midst of temptation. The meditations will help you:Adopt gratitude as a daily prayer practice.Examine and reorder your priorities and relationships to better reflect your love for God.Discern between good and evil in your life.Desire to love and serve as Jesus did.In a very real sense, Burns helps you take St. Francis de Sales as your spiritual director for ten days. As you do so, you’ll feel God’s fatherly love and restart your faith life, equipped with the tools to connect with God and live for heaven now.

    With unprecedented cooperation from John Paul II and the people who knew and worked with him throughout his life, George Weigel offers a groundbreaking portrait of the Pope as a man, a thinker, and a leader whose religious convictions defined a new approach to world politics—and changed the course of history. As even his critics concede, John Paul II occupied a unique place on the world stage and put down intellectual markers that no one could ignore or avoid as humanity entered a new millennium fraught with possibility and danger.The Pope was a man of prodigious energy who played a crucial, yet insufficiently explored, role in some of the most momentous events of our time, including the collapse of European communism, the quest for peace in the Middle East, and the democratic transformation of Latin America. With an updated preface, this edition of Witness to Hope explains how this “man from a far country” did all of that, and much more—and what both his accomplishments and the unfinished business of his pontificate mean for the future of the Church and the world.

    Catholic homeschooler Cari Donaldson here relates how her friend’s newborn baby, a portrait of the Virgin Mary, and the words of the Miraculous Medal called her forth from a selfish, small way of life into the welcoming arms of the Church.

    Some develop very quickly, but do not achieve significant depth; while others develop quite slowly, but seem to be almost unending in the depth of wisdom, trust, hope, virtue, and love they engender. The best way of explaining this is to look at each of the pillars individually.Before doing this, however, it is indispensable for each of us to acknowledge (at least intellectually) the fundamental basis for Christian contemplation, namely, the unconditional Love of God. Jesus taught us to address God as Abba. If God really is Abba; if His love is like the father of the prodigal son; if Jesus' passion and Eucharist are confirmations of that unconditional Love; if God really did so love the world that He sent His only begotten Son into the world not to condemn us, but to save us and bring us to eternal life (Jn 3:16-19); if nothing really can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rm 8:31-39); and if God really has prepared us "to grasp fully, with all the holy ones, the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ's love, and experience this love which surpasses all understanding, so that we may attain to the fullness of God Himself" (Eph 3:18-20), then God's love is unconditional, and it is, therefore, the foundation for unconditional trust and unconditional hope. There can be nothing more important than contemplating, affirming, appropriating, and living in this Unconditional Love. This is the purpose of contemplation; indeed, the purpose of the spiritual life itself.