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    Using everyday language to explain difficult theological concepts, Teresa of Avila compares the contemplative life to a castle with seven chambers. Tracing the passage of the soul through each successive chamber, she draws a powerful picture of the path toward spiritual perfection. It is the most sublime and mature of Teresa's works, offering profound and inspiring reflections on such subjects as self-knowledge, humility, detachment, and suffering.One of the most celebrated works on mystical theology in existence, as timely today as when St. Teresa of Avila wrote it centuries ago, this is a treasury of unforgettable maxims on self-knowledge and fulfillment.

    Know the Faith is an attempt to present Orthodox Christianity in a way Western Christians can understand, grounding each point in Scripture and patristic theology, with comparisons to what Catholics and Protestants believe.Whether you are an Orthodox Christian seeking to explain your faith to others or an inquirer into this ancient faith, Know the Faith will help you understand and communicate the Orthodox faith as never before.

    Origen (c. 185-254) was born in Alexandria and lived through the turbulent years during the collapse of the Roman Empire.  Origen - An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, First Principles: Book IV, Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily XXVII on Numbers - translation and introduction by Rowan A. Greer - preface by Hans Urs von Balthasar "Indeed, the soul is led by a heavenly love and desire when once the beauty and glory of the Word of God has been perceived; he falls in love with His splendor and by this receives from Him some dart and wound of love."Origen (c.—---254) Origen was born in Alexandria close to the end of the second century. His life spanned the turbulent years during the collapse of the Roman Empire. He sought to rescue and transform what was best of the Roman world and to translate the Christian spiritual quest into a language intelligible to the thoughtful and educated nonbeliever of his day. Origen is one of the first and most important of the Christian mystics, and many of the great themes of spiritual literature can be traced back to him. Von Balthasar, the eminent Swiss theologian, in his preface says of him, "As towering a figure as Augustine and Aquinas...his work is aglow with the fire of a Christian creativity which even in the greatest of his successors burned merely with a borrowed flame."The collected works in this volume represent the heart of Origen's spiritual vision. The translation and introduction is by Rowan A. Greer of the Yale Divinity School.

    Quoting at length from his letters, journals, manuscripts, recorded lectures and published writings, this book traces Fr. Seraphim's intense search for truth and his philosophical development, setting forth his message and offering a glimpse into the soul of a man who lived, even while on this earth, in the otherworldly Kingdom of God. A greatly revised version of Not of This World, this new Life of Fr. Seraphim incorporates years of new research and includes much additional material. Because it deals closely with events in the recent history of Orthodoxy in America, the book has been reviewed prior to publication by clergy, monastics and laypeople from most of the Orthodox jurisdictions represented in this country. New edition includes: 1.)New, previously unpublished material by Fr. Seraphim. 2.)New reminiscences by those who knew Fr. Seraphim. 3.)63 new photographs. 4.)Expanded and updated bibliography and source notes. 1160 pages, 234 illustrations, paperback, Smyth-sewn binding for greater durability.

    Written in the author's early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Books I-IV are concerned with infancy and learning to talk, schooldays, sexual desire and adolescent rebellion, intense friendships and intellectual exploration. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible. This volume, which aims to be usable by students who are new to Augustine, alerts readers to the verbal echoes and allusions of Augustine's brilliant and varied Latin, and explains his theological and philosophical questioning of what God is and what it is to be human. The edition is intended for use by students and scholars of Latin literature, theology and Church history.

    Gives stirring glimpses of Fr Arseny's life in a Soviet prison camp and tells the stories of whose lives were transfigured through their connection with him.

    Simply translated, the title means "love of the beautiful," which reflects the text's emphasis on mystical and contemplative practices to engage all of our senses in the acts of worship and prayer.This introduction to the wisdom of the Philokalia illuminates a text that until now has intimidated the general reader in its scholarly translations from Greek and Russian. Allyne Smith focuses his thoughtful selection on seven themes that recur throughout the five-volume work--repentance, the heart, prayer, the Jesus Prayer, the passions, stillness, and theosis. Smith's enlightening, accessible facing-page commentary fills in the historical and spiritual context, clarifies core teachings, including the Eastern understanding of salvation, and draws connections to modern-day practices, such as contemplative prayer.Now you can experience the spiritual wisdom of the Philokalia even if you have no previous knowledge of Eastern Christianity. This SkyLight Illuminations edition takes you on a journey through this beloved text, showing you how the teachings of Eastern monks can help you become by grace what God is by nature.

    

    These prayers were destined to become one of Bishop Nikolai’s most popular and deeply loved works, and when they first appeared in print they were greeted with exceptional enthusiasm--as is evidenced by the initial review of the book by Fr. Justin Popovich at that time (translated and published in this volume[...]). The prayers contained in this volume[...]are more than simple supplications to God by Bishop Nikolai. They are philosophical and theological explorations of the relationships between eternity and time, heaven and earth, life and death, reality and illusion, Creator and creation, God and man.”

    They are a selection from a group known as the Apostolic Fathers, so-called because several of the authors were most likely disciples of the Apostles themselves. Like much of the New Testament, their writings take the form of letters, and for the most part deal with practical problems of the life of the early Church, as it struggled in the face of persecution to establish itself in the Roman world. They give us a picture of Christianity still drawing on the theology and traditions of its parent religion, Judaism.

    The geographical division between the Eastern and Western Churches was only one manifestation of deeper rifts, characterized by a long history of conflicts, suspicions, and misunderstandings. Although the art, monasticism, and spirituality of Byzantium have come to be recognized as inspirational and influential in the shaping of Eastern European civilization, and of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as well, the West has been in the main ignorant of the historical evolution and the doctrinal significance of Byzantine theology.Here, for the first time in English, is presented a synthesis of Byzantine Christian thought. The reader is guided through its complexities to an understanding of Byzantium: its view of man and his destiny of deification; its ability to transcend the Western captivity; its survival under quite adverse historical circumstances. In the end, he may well find himself receptive to the basic positions of Byzantine thought, which have attained, in this time of need for the reintegration of Christianity itself, a surprising, contemporary relevance.

    In tracing the history of the Church from the time of Christ to the Great Persecution at the beginning of the fourth century, and ending with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, his aim was to show the purity and continuity of the doctrinal tradition of Christianity and its struggle against persecutors and heretics.

    Immensely popular in its own day, it was ranked by Francis de Sales with the Imitation of Christ. In the general rapport between Western and Eastern Christendom, it reached Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, who first recognized its immense spiritual worth, and later, in the nineteenth century, Theophan the Recluse, both of whom edited and translated the work. Rich in its references to the teachings of the saints and Fathers, Unseen Warfarecombines the insights of West and East on that spiritual combat which is the road to perfection and the stripping away of all that militates against it. Staretz Theophan wrote in his foreword, "the arena, the field of battle, the site where the fight actually takes place is our own heart and all our inner man. The time of battle is our whole life." Unseen Warfare is a perfect complement to the Philokalia.

    Seraphim Rose, an Orthodox Christian monk from the mountains of northern California, during a lecture he gave at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1981. The contents of this lecture comprise God's Revelation to the Human Heart. Drawing from a variety of sources -- the Holy Scriptures, patristic writings, the lives of both ancient and modern saints, and accounts of persecuted Christians behind the Iron Curtain -- Fr. Seraphim goes to the core of all Christian life: the conversion of the heart of man, which causes it to bum with love for Christ and transforms one into a new being.