Gemma Galgani (1878-1903) was a mystic, stigmatist, visionary, ecstatic, victim soul, discerner of spirits, seer of hidden things, prophetess, spouse of Christ, zealot for souls and devotee of the Poor Souls in Purgatory. She died at only 25. Her mother was also saintly, and it is beautiful to see how she helped cultivate this lily of purity. See how Gemma made great sacrifices painful to human nature from her tenderest years. Inspiring and edifying! Impr. 382 pgs, PB

    Nearly a hundred years later, Justin, born and raised in New Jersey, knows little of his family beyond the Garden State.That changes in 2001 when he discovers that his grandfather's cousin, Padre Gaetano Catanoso, is a Vatican-certified miracle worker. After a life of serving the poor and founding an order of nuns, Gaetano had been approved by Pope John Paul II to become a saint, the first priest from Calabria ever to be canonized. A typically lapsed American Catholic, Justin embarks on a quest to connect with his extended family in southern Italy and, ultimately, to awaken his slumbering faith.My Cousin the Saint charts the parallel history of two relatives—Justin's grandfather, Carmelo, and his sainted cousin, Gaetano. While Carmelo leaves his homeland to pursue New World prosperity, Gaetano stays behind to relieve Old World misery. Justin reunites the two halves of a sundered family by both exploring the life of the saint in Calabria and uncovering the untold story of his grandfather's family, raised in New Jersey between two world wars.Justin confronts his own tenuous spiritual moorings in the process. After meeting with Vatican officials in Rome, he is astonished by the complexity of saint-making. After hearing one miracle story after another, he struggles with the line between the mystical and the divine. After seeing his brother fall ill with terminal cancer, he questions the value of prayer. And after reveling in the charm and generosity of his newfound Italian relatives, he comes to learn what it means to have a saint in the family.A compelling narrative written with grace and honesty, My Cousin the Saint is a testament to the challenge of being Catholic in twenty-first-century America. More than a biography, more than an immigrant memoir, more than a chronicle of renewed faith, it is a love letter to a family now reunited across oceans and years.

    was born in Puerto Rico. He began having visions of future events asa young boy, a gift he inherited from his mother. At age 13 he and his family joinedthe LDS Church, and the visions he had been receiving began to make sense as helearned more about the prophecies and doctrines taught by church leaders. Amongthe events he has foreseen are:�� Earthquakes in Utah�� A national financial collapse�� Plagues and sicknesses�� Concentration camps on U.S. soil�� An invasion from foreign troops�� The Saints prevail against the enemyHector's visions are specifically meant to serve as warnings to his own family, but hehopes that by sharing what he has seen, it will help others prepare for the challengingtimes that will soon come upon the world.

    He may have changed his name to become Pope Francis, but it did not change their friendship. Since Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis in 2013, countless books have been written to help the world understand this deeply complex yet simple servant of God. What sets Pope Francis: Life and Revolution apart from all other biographies of Pope Francis is the careful research and original investigation behind it, along with the fact that it is written by an internationally respected journalist—Elisabetta Piqué—who has remained close to the Pope since first meeting him back in 2001. Over 75 individuals were interviewed for Pope Francis: Life and Revolution, including lay people, priests, bishops, and cardinals who have known or worked with Francis at various times in his life. Insights from these people, as well as from friends and family members, allow us to see a profoundly personal side of the Pope. His humility and humanity, courage and conviction, and warmth and wisdom are revealed as Piqué shares little-known episodes from Francis’s life. With a foreword by Cardinal Seán O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap., Pope Francis: Life and Revolution is the definitive resource and narrative of a man personally known by few and revered and respected by many.Pope Francis: Life and Revolution reveals a man consistent in his beliefs and actions. He is a spiritual leader unwavering in his love for God, whose inner joy and peace move him—and can inspire us—to serve the least, the last, and the lost.Also available in Spanish! El Papa Francisco: vida y revolución

    It brings to vivid and shocking life the age in which Shakespeare lived and in which the English martyrs died." Joseph PearceWriter-in-Residence, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

    The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West, and only the willfully blind refuse to see it. From the outside, American churches are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, they are being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the triumph of gay marriage and the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicate, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age. The bad news is that the roots of religious decline run deeper than most Americans realize. The good news is that the blueprint for a time-tested Christian response to this decline is older still. In The Benedict Option, Dreher calls on traditional Christians to learn from the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who turned from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire, and found a new way to live out the faith in community. For five difficult centuries, Benedict's monks kept the faith alive through the Dark Ages, and prepared the way for the rebirth of civilization. What do ordinary 21st century Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox -- have to learn from the teaching and example of this great spiritual father? That they must read the signs of the times, abandon hope for a political solution to our civilization's problems, and turn their attention to creating resilient spiritual centers that can survive the coming storm. Whatever their Christian tradition, they must draw on the secrets of Benedictine wisdom to build up the local church, create countercultural schools based on the classical tradition, rebuild family life, thicken communal bonds, and develop survival strategies for doctors, teachers, and others on the front lines of persecution. Now is a time of testing, when believers will learn the difference between shallow optimism and Christian hope. However dark the shadow falling over the West, the light of Christianity need not flicker out. It will not be easy, but Christians who are brave enough to face the religious decline, reject trendy solutions, and return to ancient traditions will find the strength not only to survive, but to thrive joyfully in the post-Christian West. The Benedict Option shows believers how to build the resistance and resilience to face a hostile modern world with the confidence and fervor of the early church. Christians face a time of choosing, with the fate of Christianity in Western civilization hanging in the balance. In this powerful challenge to the complacency of contemporary Christianity, Dreher shows why those in all churches who fail to take the Benedict Option aren't going to make it.

    Neither do the daily struggles that all Christians experience in their walk with the Lord. Today as two thousand years ago we fight anger, pride, lust, spiritual sloth. Now as then we strive to be more diligent in prayer, more faithful to the commandments, more patient and charitable toward others. And in our time, no less than in the earliest centuries of Christianity, we need wise guidance to direct us on the road to holiness. In A Year with the Church Fathers, popular Patristic expert Mike Aquilina gathers the wisest, most practical teachings and exhortations from the Fathers of the Church, and presents them in a format perfect for daily meditation and inspiration. The Fathers were the immediate inheritors of the riches of the Apostolic Age, and their intimacy with the revelation of Jesus Christ is beautifully evident throughout their theological and pastoral writings: a profound patrimony that is ours to read and cherish and profit from.

    S. Lewis contemplates the central event at the heart of the Christian faith—Jesus’ crucifixion—arguing that the Protestant Reformation did not go far enough in transforming our understanding of its meaning.In The Day the Revolution Began, N. T. Wright once again challenges commonly held Christian beliefs as he did in his acclaimed Surprised by Hope. Demonstrating the rigorous intellect and breathtaking knowledge that have long defined his work, Wright argues that Jesus’ death on the cross was not only to absolve us of our sins; it was actually the beginning of a revolution commissioning the Christian faithful to a new vocation—a royal priesthood responsible for restoring and reconciling all of God’s creation.Wright argues that Jesus’ crucifixion must be understood within the much larger story of God’s purposes to bring heaven and earth together. The Day the Revolution Began offers a grand picture of Jesus’ sacrifice and its full significance for the Christian faith, inspiring believers with a renewed sense of mission, purpose, and hope, and reminding them of the crucial role the Christian faith must play in protecting and shaping the future of the world.

    Millions have adopted Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and Twitter. What does this mean for the Church? How can Christians harness these new tools to reach out, teach, cultivate community, and change the world?Following Pope Benedict's call to evangelize the "digital continent," The Church and New Media explores the power and risks of New Media, while guiding Christians through this new environment.Foreword by Cardinal Se

    David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists’ misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

    Shows how to forgive in an active, healthy way by moving through a five-step process that renounces vengeance and retaliation but is not passive or self-abusive in any way.

    Life in first-century Palestine was very different from our world today, and many traditional interpretations of Jesus’ stories ignore this disparity and have often allowed anti-Semitism and misogyny to color their perspectives.In this wise, entertaining, and educational book, Amy-Jill Levine offers a fresh, timely reinterpretation of Jesus’ narratives. In Short Stories by Jesus, she analyzes these “problems with parables,” taking readers back in time to understand how their original Jewish audience understood them. Levine reveals the parables’ connections to first-century economic and agricultural life, social customs and morality, Jewish scriptures and Roman culture. With this revitalized understanding, she interprets these moving stories for the contemporary reader, showing how the parables are not just about Jesus, but are also about us—and when read rightly, still challenge and provoke us two thousand years later.

    Using the latest scholarly discussion about the nature of Jewish monotheism as his starting point, Richard Bauckham builds a convincing argument that the early Christian view of Jesus' divinity is fully consistent with the Jewish understanding of God.Bauckham first shows that early Judaism had clear ways of distinguishing God absolutely from all other reality. When New Testament Christology is read with this Jewish context in mind, it becomes clear that early Christians did not break with Jewish monotheism; rather, they simply included Jesus within the unique identity of Israel's God. In the final part of the book Bauckham shows that God's own identity, in turn, is also revealed in the life, death, and exaltation of Jesus.Originating as the prestigious 1996 Didsbury Lectures, this volume makes a contribution to biblical studies that will be of interest to Jews and Christians alike.

    This concise guide is filled with illustrations, sidebars, and memorizable steps to help Christians stand their ground and defend their faith with reason and precision. In his engaging style, Dr. Craig offers four arguments for God’s existence, defends the historicity of Jesus’ personal claims and resurrection, addresses the problem of suffering, and shows why religious relativism doesn’t work. Along the way, he shares his story of following God’s call in his own life. This one-stop, how-to-defend-your-faith manual will equip Christians to advance faith conversations deliberately, applying straightforward, cool-headed arguments. They will discover not just what they believe, but why they believe—and how being on guard with the truth has the power to change lives forever.

    A full fledged techie himself, he relates some classic philosophical reflections, his interviews with dozens of fellow techies, and his own personal take on his Catholic beliefs to provide, like a set of "worked out sample problems," the hard data on the challenges and joys of embracing a life of faith as a techie. And he also gives a roadmap of the traps that can befall an unwary techie believer. With lively prose and wry humor, Brother Guy shows how he not only believes in God but gives religion an honored place alongside science in his life. This book offers an engaging look at how--and why--scientists and those with technological leanings can hold profound, "unprovable" religious beliefs while working in highly empirical fields. Through his own experience and interviews with other scientists and engineers who profess faith, Brother Guy explores how religious beliefs and practices make sense to those who are deeply rooted in the world of technology.