The Practice of Saying No will appeal to anyone seeking more meaning and spirituality in their everyday lives. Barbara Brown Taylor, acclaimed author of Leaving Church and An Altar in the World (from which this eSelect is taken), writes with the honesty of Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) and the spiritual depth of Anne Lamott (Grace, Eventually) and reveals how to encounter the sacred as a natural part of everyday life.

    This book will help you to see the person you are and the person you can become. Open your heart and mind, and your life will change gracefully.

    This essay is an attempt to contribute effective strategies to engage our own time and culture once more with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and – for a weary world – to awaken the Catholic imaginative vision.

    In this easy to read booklet, you'll find 37 one-minute teachings on how to explain and defend Catholic teaching.

    It’s behind the times. It’s boring.” I say we’ve forgotten our story. It’s time to rediscover that there is genius in Catholicism. Christianity has captivated the world for more than two thousand years. Look a little closer, and you’ll see that it is the most dangerous and exciting thing on earth. Catholicism is a game changer. This book looks at the big picture of who God is, what he has revealed to us, and how that will radically impact our lives if we let it.

    He was baptized a Catholic, but his faith journey led him to Protestant evangelicalism. He became a philosophy professor at Baylor University and president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). And then, in 2007, after much prayer, counsel, and consideration, Beckwith decided to return to the Catholic church and step down as ETS president.This provocative book details Beckwith's journey, focusing on his internal dialogue between the Protestant theology he embraced for most of his adult life and Catholicism. He seeks to explain what prompted his decision and offers theological reflection on whether one can be evangelical and Catholic, affirming his belief that one can be both. EXCERPTIt's difficult to explain why one moves from one Christian tradition to another. It is like trying to give an account to your friends why you chose to pursue for marriage this woman rather than that one, though both may have a variety of qualities that you found attractive. It seems to me then that any account of my return to the Catholic church, however authentic and compelling it is to me, will appear inadequate to anyone who is absolutely convinced that I was wrong. Conversely, my story will confirm in the minds of many devout Catholics that the supernatural power of the grace I received at baptism and confirmation as a youngster were instrumental in drawing me back to the Mother Church. Given these considerations, I confess that there is an awkwardness in sharing my journey as a published book, knowing that many fellow Christians will scrutinize and examine my reasons in ways that appear to some uncharitable and to others too charitable.

    Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change In The Church And The Quest, by Kennedy, Kerry

    And more than helping you find your way out, this book will help you find your way through that place.

    He knows the ways he wants to change your life and the plans he has for your happiness in this life and the next. He has big dreams for you.So much about our world, today is empty and cold. If some of that emptiness and coldness has seeped into your heart, I pray this book will warm you, just a bit, to the idea that you were made for something better, something bigger, and something new. You were made for an intimate relationship with a God who knows you and loves you inside and out.

    Rita is known as the \"Saint of the Impossible\" because of her amazing answers to prayers, as well as the remarkable events of her own life. Desirous of being a nun, she instead obeyed her parents and married. Her husband was cruel, and caused her much suffering, to which she responded with love and prayers and eventually converted him. After the death of her husband and two sons, Rita was able to enter a convent, where she devoted herself to prayer and penance. She abandoned herself totally to God, diminishing herself as He increased in her. An inspiring story of a soul completely resigned to God\'s will. 132 pgs, PB

    As long-held beliefs on love, faith, and God are challenged by the aggregate of changes that have overhauled our world, many of us are left feeling confused and uncertain while old norms are challenged and redefined at breakneck speed.In Wrestling with God, Ronald Rolheiser offers a steady and inspiring voice to help us avow and understand our faith in a world where nothing seems solid or permanent. Drawing from his own life experience, as well as a storehouse of literary, psychological, and theological insights, the beloved author of Sacred Fire examines the fears and doubts that challenge us. It is in these struggles to find meaning, that Rolheiser lays out a path for faith in a world struggling to find faith, but perhaps more important, he helps us find our own rhythm within which to walk that path.

    By practicing the three principles of holy love studied here, we can turn control of our mind and heart over to God and experience the love, glory, and joy of his kingdom here on earth.

    Beautiful, bold commissioned woodcuts by Annika Nelson and her mother Gertrud Mueller Nelson help us meditate on the passion and death of Christ and to see how Christ is among us—often in unexpected places. Also available in Spanish, the booklet is ideal for personal or parish-wide use during the Lenten observance of the Stations of the Cross.

    

    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.