There is only one solution to the problems we face saints! Becoming a saint is a choice, and we must begin choosing the saint within each of us. The biggest crisis of our time is not economic, health care, or vocations, but is an identity crisis. We have forgotten our mission to become saints and forgotten our story as Catholics. We must rediscover that mission and hold each other accountable to accepting responsibility for that mission. We need heroic Catholicism. Everything we need to accomplish our mission is in the Church but the Catholic Church is a sleeping giant. It is time we wake the sleeping giant! This book is a five step guide to choosing the saint within you. The world doesn't need another John Paul II or Mother Teresa. The world needs you. Your ordinary life has an extraordinary purpose.

    Inquisitive questions, "Keys to the Text" feature, and new material compose this useful and concise tool from renowned Bible teacher and pastor Max Lucado.

    Church History is the perfect place to start for anyone who wants to know where to begin this quest for knowledge.Enjoy discovering more about the lives of men and women from various times and places, not only to better understand the church, but also to know how to live wisely in this age. These are some of the many reasons why history is so important.From those who desire to learn more about their fellow followers of Jesus Christ throughout history to those who want to learn more about church for themselves, this book will test you to dig deeper in your faith.

    For over 25 years, since she was healed of crippling arthritis, Sister Briege has ministered hope and healing to countless people all over the world, from huge rallies in Latin America to retreats in Korea. Miracles Do Happen tells the story of Sister Briege's encounter with the healing power of God. It also shares her insights about faith, the power of the Eucharist and the importance of prayer. Most of all, it points the way to a closer relationship with Jesus, greater knowledge of his love, and deeper faith in his power to do the impossible. A Servant Book.

    In this thrilling exploration, Pitre shows how the suffering and death of Jesus was far more than a tragic Roman execution. Instead, the Passion of Christ was the fulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecies of a wedding, when the God of the universe would wed himself to humankind in an everlasting nuptial covenant. To be sure, most Christians are familiar with the apostle Paul’s teaching that Christ is the ‘Bridegroom’ and the Church is the ‘Bride’. But what does this really mean? And what would ever possess Paul to compare the death of Christ to the love of a husband for his wife? If you would have been at the Crucifixion, with Jesus hanging there dying, is that how you would have described it? How could a first-century Jew like Paul, who knew how brutal Roman crucifixions were, have ever compared the execution of Jesus to a wedding? And why does he refer to this as the “great mystery” (Ephesians 5:32)? As Pitre shows, the key to unlocking this mystery can be found by going back to Jewish Scripture and tradition and seeing the entire history of salvation, from Mount Sinai to Mount Calvary, as a divine love story between Creator and creature, between God and Israel, between Christ and his bride—a story that comes to its climax on the wood of a Roman cross. In the pages of Jesus the Bridegroom, dozens of familiar passages in the Bible—the Exodus, the Song of Songs, the Wedding at Cana, the Woman at the Well, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and even the Second Coming at the End of Time—are suddenly transformed before our eyes. Indeed, when seen in the light of Jewish Scripture and tradition, the life of Christ is nothing less than the greatest love story ever told.

    Why is it, asks Bishop Fulton Sheen, that one hears so often the expression "Go to hell!" and almost never the expression "Go to heaven!" Here, at his most penetrating, challenging, and illuminating best is Bishop Sheen with his answer, in a book that breathes new meaning into the truths about heaven and hell, and new life into the concepts of faith, tolerance, love, prayer, suffering, and death.Beginning with "The First Faint Summons to Heaven," Sheen shows how unpopular it is today to be a true Christian, and describes the struggle for living our faith amid the disorders of our times.  Keenly aware of evil in the myriad forms it takes in today's world, Bishop Sheen writes about the constant battle man faces with the "seven pallbearers of character" - pride, avarice, envy, lust, anger, gluttony and sloth - linking them with the corrosive forces that never cease in their attacks on the Church and those who earnestly desire to be serious Christians.In Go to Heaven, a great spiritual teacher and writer, deeply aware of the human and spiritual conflicts being waged in the world, shows us the way to heaven in a most eloquent book, encouraging the reader to choose heaven now, and to understand the "reality of hell."

    What unites figures as diverse as James Joyce, Caravaggio, John Milton, the architect of Chartres, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the later Bob Dylan is a peculiar and distinctive take on things, a style, a way, which flows finally from Jesus of Nazareth. Origen remarked that holiness is seeing with the eyes of Christ. Teilhard de Chardin said, with great passion, that his mission as a Christian thinker was to help people see. And Thomas Aquinas said that the ultimate goal of the Christian life is a ‘beatific vision,’ an act of seeing. This book is about coming to vision through Christ.” — Robert Barron, from the Prelude

    This book helps readers match who they are--their unique spiritual gifts, passions, temperament, talents, and leadership style--with the ministry area for which God designed them. A practical guide, it takes dedicated Christians step by step through the process of reaching their full potential for Christ's kingdom. This new edition of Maximizing Your Effectiveness puts multiple tools, inventories, and worksheets in the hands of readers to empower them to minister according to God's unique design and purpose for their lives.

    Pope Francis, a native of Argentina, is not just the first Pope from the Southern Hemisphere, he is also the first Jesuit to ever hold the Chair of Peter. This means a bridging of the Northern and Southern hemispheres and religious traditions in a way we've never seen before, signifying a new global vision for the 1.2 billion people who call themselves Catholic.Now a leading expert on the papacy provides the ultimate introduction to this new Pope, including biographical information and an absorbing collection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio most persuasive words.

    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.

    Beginning with his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, and scores of other books, Merton's work reflects a living encounter between the traditions of Christian wisdom and the burning questions of the modern world: war and peace, the quest for meaning in the face of absurdity, and the need for dialogue with religious traditions of the East. This volume includes a broad range of Merton's writings, including his letters, and highlights his threefold call: to prayer, to compassion, and to unity.

    How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion-an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus-was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.

    In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about each of us. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time on the road with Augustine, and he invites us to take this journey too, for this ancient African thinker knows far more about us than we might expect.Following Smith's successful You Are What You Love, this book shows how Augustine can be a pilgrim guide to a spirituality that meets the complicated world we live in. Augustine, says Smith, is the patron saint of restless hearts--a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart's true home and he can help us find our way. "What makes Augustine a guide worth considering," says Smith, "is that he knows where home is, where rest can be found, what peace feels like, even if it is sometimes ephemeral and elusive along the way." Addressing believers and skeptics alike, this book shows how Augustine's timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life, covering topics such as ambition, sex, friendship, freedom, parenthood, and death. As Smith vividly and colorfully brings Augustine to life for 21st-century readers, he also offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes.

    A book of 40 devotions combined with space for a personal journal. This book examines some of the hard teachings of Christ, as well as God's disciplines for believers.

    676 – 4 December 749) was an Arab Christian monk and priest. Born and raised in Damascus, he died at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem.A polymath whose fields of interest and contribution included law, theology, philosophy, and music, before being ordained, he served as a Chief Administrator to the Muslim caliph of Damascus, wrote works expounding the Christian faith, and composed hymns which are still in everyday use in Eastern Christian monasteries throughout the world. The Catholic Church regards him as a Doctor of the Church, often referred to as the Doctor of the Assumption due to his writings on the Assumption of Mary.