Sophia Institute Press
by Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet
Even three hundred years ago, believers found it difficult to sustain for forty days the proper Lenten spirit. That's why even then, countless Christians turned to the writings of Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704), whose great piety and simple eloquence won him renown as one of the greatest preachers of his time.
There is no better time to begin—or to renew—the habit of meditation than during the penitential season of Lent.
If you want to combine the spiritual benefits of a holy Lent with the supernatural harvest that regular mental prayer brings, then you stand to profit from Bossuet’s Meditations for Lent.
These brief but powerful meditations have been collected from the voluminous writings of the great 17th Century Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, a close follower of St. Vincent de Paul and considered to be among the greatest homilists in Catholic history.
In these pages, Bishop Bossuet will bring you on a stunning inner pilgrimage to encounter Our Lord’s divine charity for souls, as He freely gives His life for you on the Cross. “The whole of Christian life consists in making this journey well,” says the author. “Why do I hesitate to leave?”
Read Meditations for Lent and avoid arriving at Easter Mass distracted and exhausted, having neglected your sacrifices and even ordinary prayers.
Instead, find yourself coming joyfully unto the altar of God, ready and eager to adore the Risen King, with your soul prepared as a worthy dwelling place for the Redeemer.
Paperback, size 7" x 5", 225 pages
by Fr Bede Jarrett, OP
In these pages, Fr. Bede Jarrett helps you penetrate the great mystery of God's presence in our hearts. He explains the ineffable dignity that this presence of the Holy Spirit gives you, no matter how lowly your station or how small you may feel.
He shows you how to listen for the soft voice of the Spirit calling you from within, inviting you to know Him, to love Him, and to cooperate with Him in all things great and small.
No longer need you struggle alone. Let Fr. Jarrett show you how to grow close to the Holy Spirit - the Consoler - who Jesus sent to assuage your loneliness and renew your strength and your hope.
Among the things you'll learn in The Little Book of the Holy Spirit:
- Why you mustn't be troubled when you can't feel the Spirit's presence in your soul
- You can increase the presence of God's Spirit in your soul: what you must do
- Why God's presence in your soul doesn't overwhelm your personality
- How the dignity of each human soul depends on God's presence in it
- Your vision of Heaven can start right away: learn how in these page
- The gift of God that's greater than creation itself. Fr. Jarrett explains it
- How the presence of God enables you to see everything in a new light
- It's a fact, not a metaphor: you really participate in the divine nature
- Can you hear God as He speaks to you constantly? You can learn how
- Where to find the strength to do the right thing, day in and day out
- "The fear of God": what it really means - and why it's a gift from God
- Plus: many other topics to help you know the God who dwells within you
Paperback, size 7" x 5", 128 pages
A Novel of the Priest Hunters and the Brave Young Men Who Fought Them
by Henry Garnett
England, 1585: Queen Elizabeths spies lurk everywhere, searching out Catholics who refuse to attend thenon-Catholic services of the State religion. Officers of the law huntdown and kill Catholic priests, and imprison those who shelter them.
In these perilous times, fifteen-year-old Nicholas Thorpe discovers thathis widowed mother has become Catholic, and he soon joins the Churchshe has come to love.Thus begin Nicholas s adventures in the Companions, a pious underground army ofresistance that shelters priests and leads them in strict secrecy andgreat danger from one estate to another, so the Catholic faithful cancontinue to receive the Sacraments the law now forbids.
In this adventure for all ages, author Henry Garnett brings to life the drama of a nation where unjust laws forced good men and women to choosebetween their country and their Faith, and young people heard early andwell the call to heroism that Christians must be ever ready to heed.
Age range 10 - 17 years
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 208 pages
The Divine Surprises and Chastisements that Shaped the Church and Changed the World
by Diane Moczar
Here are the saints and sinners, popes and kings that God used to shape his Church and change the world. You'll meet Clovis and Charlemagne, Luther and Pope Leo, Suleiman and St. Francis, the Arians, the Franks, the Huguenots, and others whose sins or sacrifices altered the course of history.
Here, too, are the wars and plagues, the ideas and institutions -- and, yes, the miracles that gave birth to our Christian civilization and often threatened to doom it. Experience the battles of Tours and Lepanto, the Crusades, the Russian Revolution, and Fatima, the miracle that foretold (and offered a way to prevent) the conflicts that killed millions in the twentieth century.
Wars and terrorism have rendered the first years of our new century no less bloody. Has God now abandoned us?
Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know finds the answer in history: from the first days of the Christian era, at key moments when civilization hung in the balance, God has intervened sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically but ever and always he has come forward himself or given strength to those who were faithful to him.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 177 pages
Five Hundred Years that Split the Church and Scattered the Flock
by Diane Moczar
Here's an unabashedly Catholic history that documents scores of sustained and unprecedented assaults on our Catholic Faith these past five centuries and delineates our Church's brave response to each one.
For five hundred years, from Luther to Marx, through Darwin, Hitler, and Rousseau, wave after wave of cynical anti-Catholic men and movements have wrought havoc even worse than that of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, leaving our once noble Christendom a ruined city, devastated politically and spiritually, morally and intellectually.
They've ripped the heart from our culture's chest: the Catholic Faith that once gave life and strength to her body. They've wounded even the Church herself.
Celebrated Catholic historian Diane Moczar counters here with an unflinching sketch of these five woeful centuries with sound reasons for hope. For, as she demonstrates, even after five hundred years of sustained persecution, our Church has not merely survived but continues in many places to flourish.
Almost two thousand years ago, Tertullian noted that the "blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church", a truth borne out these past five hundred years.
Time after time, as Moczar shows, persecution has not snuffed out the Faith but has brought forth great saints whose holy deeds and brave examples frustrated their persecutors by communicating to the besieged Church a vigor greater than that of her persecutors.
These pages will renew your confidence that the Church is indeed Christ acting in the world and that no matter how strong or ruthless or vicious her opponents, she will not be vanquished but will endure to the end of time.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 256 pages
How Christendom Defeated the Ottoman Turks
by Dane Moczar
Historian Diane Moczar pulls back the curtain on one of the most important acts in the drama of Muslim aggression against the West: the 500-year-long siege of Europe by the Ottoman Turks. Tracing the rise of the Turkish people from wandering Asian tribe to mighty pan-continental empire, Islam at the Gates chronicles the heroes and villains, the battles and atrocities, the tragic errors and timely miracles, that marked the Ottomans incursions from Europe s borders to the very heart of Christendom; and then, by the grace of God, their eventual repulsion and final defeat.
In these pages you'll encounter:
- The bold sultans, timid emperors, and vile traitors who aided the Turkish advance and the popes who tirelessly preached Crusade against it
- Brave saints who rallied Christian forces against the invaders including the hardy warrior-monk who died in battle at the age of sixty-one
- The island fortress whose rag-tag defenders continually thwarted superior numbers of Ottoman attackers defying even the great sultan Suleiman
- The suffering of millions of Christian families in occupied lands their children kidnapped and forced into Muslim armies and harems
- Folk heroes from the hills of Hungary and Albania who rose up against their Ottoman overlords and whose guerilla tactics inspired their people
- The tragic fall of Constantinople, seat of Eastern Christianity its people slaughtered, its treasures plundered, its sacred places befouled Europe s pivotal, improbable pair of victories at Lepanto and Vienna, and the defeat of the last great Turkish offensive on September 11, 1697
Solid history and dramatic narrative make Islam at the Gates a moving look at Europe s long struggle against the Turks.
But the author's shrewd Catholic outlook also makes it an edifying one. Had these events unfolded just a little differently, Christian civilization might have been conquered by the sword of Allah. If we fail to learn the lessons of history, Dr. Moczar warns, the West may yet fall.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 243 pages
Avoiding Bitterness In Suffering
by Dr Ronda Chervin
When Ronda Chervin’s son, Charles, ended his own life, he did so believing that it is pointless to endure inevitable suffering. In the wake of Charles’s death, Dr. Chervin set out to discover some of the most basic — but all too often misunderstood — answers to why God allows us to suffer, and how we can bear it with perseverance and hope.
She shares her discoveries in these pages, helping you understand that while there is no escape from pain, pain itself is the road into the heart of Christ where peace can be found.
You’ll be given encouragement and practical advice as you explore afflictions such as failure, fear, frustration, loneliness, loss, marital problems, physical pain, fatigue, and temptation.
Dr. Chervin explains each affliction in detail and offers reflections on the lives of saints who suffered from the very same cross. Throughout each chapter you’re given practical suggestions on how you can meet Christ in your particular pain.
You’ll draw wisdom from the lives and writings of saints who were addicted, depressed, exhausted, raped, and unhappily married. And among these saints, you’ll discover within their responses a pattern that you can ponder and imitate.
Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering will bring courage and hope that in Christ and in communion with his saints, you can — and will — triumph over every kind of adversity. You’ll also learn:
- How you can overcome the pain associated with loneliness and isolation.
- Five ways to overcome doubts about the Faith.
- Four steps to liberation from the suffering of indecision.
- Five ways to meet Christ in the suffering of exploitation.
- What St. Benedict teaches us about failure – and how it changed the world.
- How to cope with failure and poverty.
- Five ways you can transform fear into trust in Christ.
- How you can turn frustrations and anger into a Christian spirit.
- How you can respond in a holy way to marital discord, demanding spouses, physical abuse, psychological abuse, abandonment, and rage.
- Four ways you can turn to Christ in times of temptation.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 243 pages
The Sign of the Cross
The Fifteen Most Powerful Words in the English Language
by St. Francis de Sales
From the young St. Francis de Sales’s heroic efforts to bring Calvinists back to the Faith comes this succinct, eloquent defense of the age-old Catholic practice of making the Sign of the Cross, which sixteenth-century Calvinists denounced as a Popish invention and many Protestants scorn even today.
Embodying the zeal of youth and the wisdom of age, this gentle jewel of Catholic apologetics traces the origins of the Sign of the Cross back to the Fathers of the Church, to the Apostles before them, and finally to our Lord Himself.
Along with St. Francis’s other lucid explanations of our Catholic Faith and his undaunted love even for those who hated him, this modest book helped restore to their native Catholic faith tens of thousands of heretics who not long before were intent on killing him.
As they did for the Calvinists in St. Francis’s day, so in our day these pages will bring you a better understanding and a renewed love for the Sign of the Cross, that brief and lively exterior prayer by which, from time immemorial, God has been invoked by serious Christians before all of their endeavors.
Among the other things you’ll learn here:
- Why now is always the right time to make the Sign of the Cross
- Why God chooses to attach power to the Sign of the Cross
- Why it is made on the forehead
- How to convince skeptics to value and pray with it
- Two uses of the Sign of the Cross: do you know both of them?
- How the Sign of the Cross is the antidote to the Mark of the Devil
- Errors in the claims of those who oppose this practice
- The theological significance of the motions, vertical and horizontal
- Two reasons it has particular power against the Enemy
- Why you should make the Sign of the Cross publicly and often
Outside the Creed itself, there are few topics to which the Fathers testify as universally and unanimously as the pious practice of making, frequently and well, the Sign of the Cross. With the help of these holy pages, the saints’ love for it will enkindle yours. Soon you’ll be saying with St. Jerome, “With every work, with all of my comings and goings, may my hand make the Sign of the Cross!”
Paperback, size 7" x 5.1", 128 pages
by Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet
Spiritual meditation is the surest way to grow in holiness, and Our Lady is truly an example of perfection. This combination makes Meditations on Mary a spiritual powerhouse that will lift your soul to God and help you along the path to heaven.
Meditations on Mary features twenty-four of the most powerful and moving meditations written by 17th Century Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet —considered to be one of the best homilists in the history of the Church. Author of Meditations for Lent and Meditations for Advent, Bishop Bossuet has been admired for his piety and eloquence for over three hundred years. Now his meditations on Our Lady are available to you in English — for the very first time!
Although we know Our Lady serves as a perfect example of how a Christian should live and bear witness to Our Lord, Scripture contains only a few glimpses of her life, leaving our knowledge limited and our imagination wanting.
In these pages, Bishop Bossuet takes you on a stunning pilgrimage through the principal mysteries of Our Lady's life. He masterfully blends what he's learned from Sacred Scripture with the spiritual traditions rooted in the heart of the Church, and illuminates it with his own theological reflections.
He'll bring you to a deeper understanding of Our Lady's compassion, her suffering during Christ's Passion, and the loneliness she felt after his Ascension to heaven. Bishop Bossuet will show you how Jesus brings honor to himself by honoring his mother, and how Our Lady is extraordinary solely because of her alliance with Jesus.
Mary teaches us how to let God direct our steps, how to remain humble in commanding and obeying, and how to seek holiness through our daily work. She shows us how to pray with humility and perseverance, to advance in perfection, and, by doing all these things, to conform ourselves to the holy will of God. Each short meditation is worthy of your contemplation, because each contains a lesson directly from the Blessed Mother to sinners like you and me.
Paperback, size 7" x 5", 145 pages
The Summa Domestica
by Leila Marie Lawler
Most wives possess a deep, existential intuition that they bear primary responsibility for creating the home environment, in cooperation with their husbands, who protect and provide for it. When Leila Lawler started out as a young wife and then became a mother, she had no idea how to keep a house, manage laundry, or plan and prepare meals, let alone entertain and inspire toddlers and select a curriculum to pass on the Faith.
She spent decades excavating deeply rooted cultural memories that had been buried under an avalanche of feminist ideology. Lawler developed and meticulously presented these on her popular website, Like Mother, Like Daughter, and has now collected them in this comprehensive, three-volume set to help women who desire a proficient and systematic approach to home life.
The Summa Domestica comprises three volumes: Family Life, which delves into the essentials of establishing the home; Education, which explores the basics of teaching children and preparing them to learn on their own; and Housekeeping, which presents detailed instructions on taking care of the house, meals, and laundry in an active and populous household.
All at once lively, funny, calming, and complete, The Summa Domestica an indispensable how-to book on making and keeping a home that will serve your family best.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5",
by Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J.
Christ urges us to pray without ceasing, but when we try to do so, many of us simply cease without praying. We're distracted by troubles or duty or we quit just because it's late already and we're tired.
Fr. Raoul Plus's no-nonsense prayer manual, How to Pray Always, remedies these problems by dispelling the false notions of prayer we all have and showing how we can, in fact, pray without ceasing - even at times when exhaustion cripples us and cares threaten to sweep us away.
Drawing on the experience of dozens of saints, Fr. Plus explains sure ways we can recollect ourselves before prayer so that once we begin to pray, our prayers will be richer and more productive; he teaches us how to practice interior silence habitually, even in the rush and noise of the world; and he explains each of the kinds of prayer and shows when we should - and should not - employ each.
As humans, our minds are limited and it's generally hard for us to pay attention to more than a few things at once. That's why most of us aren't able to think of God or pray while we fulfill any but the most mindless of our daily duties.
No problem.
For such busy occasions (which constitute most of the time for most of us), Fr. Plus explains how we can pray without words by keeping our wills united to God even when our minds must be directed elsewhere.
In other words, How to Pray Always is one of those rare books that actually fulfills the promise of its title. It helps us become better Christians by showing us how to know, to love, and to serve God, and to live prayerfully and constantly in His loving presence.
Leatherette cover, size 7" x 5", 144 pages
Saint Pius V
The legendary Pope Who Excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, Standardized the Mass, and Defeated the Ottoman Empire
by Prof Roberto de Mattei
Few Catholic writers have been as prolific as University of Rome Professor Roberto de Mattei. Over decades he has produced a wealth of incisive analyses about the Catholic world’s collapse and charted an authoritative path back to health and sanity.
He has now written an exceedingly compelling and powerful biography of Pope Pius V, widely recognized as one of the boldest and most courageous popes of the past millennium, who decisively defeated the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto and fought head-on the Protestant Reformation, which had assailed the Church.
The life of every Christian is a battle, and St. Pius V offers us a luminous example of leadership in a time of trial. In these pages, you’ll learn:
- How the “Revolution of Luther” was met with a papal shrug — that is, until Pius V became pope
- The inside story of how Pope Pius V led the Counter-Reformation on multiple fronts
- How the devastating Sack of Rome in 1527 forever changed the Holy See and had deadly consequences for clergy and religious alike
- Why St. Pius V’s no-compromise approach toward both the Renaissance and Humanist corruption preserved the Church to this day
- The behind-the-scenes story of the Council of Trent — the most dramatic conclave in the history of the Church
- The role inquisitions played in the time of Pope Pius V and what they enabled him to accomplish
- How St. Pius V dealt with stray bishops and how his rebukes and mandates led to meaningful reform of both their lives and the Church
- How St. Pius V dealt with rebellious Catholics in France and England and what led to the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth
You’ll also learn of Pope Pius V’s remarkable spiritual life and regimen, his foresight and prudence in dealing with the iconoclastic fury of the Huguenots in France, and the way he handled the trials of excommunicated heretics and reformed the rotting religious orders of his
day.
Professor de Mattei makes clear that Pope Pius V was so effective and so holy that no pontificate can be judged accurately without measuring it against his. In page after fascinating page, he shows contemporary Catholics what it means to be “a great pope” or “a saintly bishop.” Here, at last, is the complete life and times of one of the Church’s greatest prelates by one of her finest historians.
Paperback, size 9" x 6", 464 pages
The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur
The Woman Whose Goodness Changed Her Husband From Atheist to Priest
by Elisabeth Leseur
This inspiring book gives you a splendid example of how to live as a Christian in a secular environment that can be indifferent or hostile to your Faith. For Elisabeth Leseur had two great loves: God, and her husband Felix. Felix loved Elisabeth as well; yet to their mutual sorrow, he couldn’t share the life of the Spirit that Elisabeth cherished.
Occasionally the happiness of their life together in upper-class Parisian society was shattered by Felix’s frustration and impatience. How could such an intelligent woman waste her time, as he saw it, with ignorant superstitions? Sometimes he and his friends would even ridicule and mock her faith.
But Elisabeth loved Felix too much to allow their home to degenerate into an emotional war zone. She realized that confrontations and arguments were useless; she chose instead to keep quiet and pray for Felix. In her secret diary, she recorded how she used his efforts to destroy her faith as means to grow in love for him and for God.
Throughout their life together, it grieved Elisabeth to think that Felix might be separated from her for all eternity because of his rejection of God. For her, life in Heaven wouldn’t be happy without him. Yet when she died prematurely, Felix was still an unbeliever.
The story doesn’t end there. When Felix found this diary, he discovered how Elisabeth’s whole life bore witness to the truth of the God she loved.
In time, Felix was transformed by the diary and his memories of Elisabeth. He became a Christian and, later, a priest. Now she may even be declared a saint. Elisabeth’s diary and spiritual writings (all included in this one volume) map out for you a path to marital harmony and greater love for God — especially if you love someone who stands outside the Faith. Let Elisabeth’s two great loves, and her faith and perseverance, inspire you now.
Paperback, size 9" x 6", 290 pages
A History of the Christian City Beneath Pagan Rome
by Fr James Spencer Northcote
Enter into the shadows of the Roman catacombs where early Christians attended Mass and hid in fear from Roman soldiers seeking their death for refusing to renounce the Christian Faith.
You'll read dramatic acts of faith and courage as Fr. James Spencer Northcote, the world-renowned 19th-century expert on the catacombs, relates the intense belowground life of the catacombs.
For over three centuries, Christians buried their dead in often elaborate crypts hollowed out for them underground by fossors — designated diggers whose status was just below that of deacons and priests.
With scores of maps and illustrations in these pages, you'll see that the architecture of many crypts was as elaborate as buildings above-ground, creating under the streets and fields of Rome a second-city—indeed, a Christian city in the very heart of pagan Rome—graced with broad underground tunnels and large rooms where assemblies could be held.
In good times and in bad, during peace and during persecutions, the catacombs were central to the vibrant life of the early Church, whose history is here retold from its creation to its eventual decline, loss, and then, hundreds of years later, its rediscovery.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 154 pages
Wellspring of Virtue
by Dietrich von Hildebrand
Of all sins, pride is the most dangerous . . . and the most sorrowful: it cuts the Christian off from God, estranges him from others, and leaves him lost and unhappy.
This book shows readers how to drive pride from the soul and discover the incredible strength and joys of humility today.
You ll also discover the incredible strength of humility, the only virtue that has the power to expel every vestige of pride from your soul. These pages will help you to begin experiencing the joys of humility today.
You'll learn:
- How humility breaks the back of every form of pride
- Why it is impossible to grow spiritually without humility
- Why humility is a form of strength not weakness (as many falsely believe)
- How humility enables you to acknowledge even your gravest sins without despairing
- How humility helps you to see the world clearly, and to love all things in it with greater intensity
- How humility allows you to experience the consolation of God's loving embrace
- Why only humility ensures true freedom
- How humility enables you to see God not as a vague presence, but as a Person who knows and loves you
- How humility helps you to see the dignity of every person (even the dignity of those you are tempted to scorn)
- How humility lets you hear God calling you personally to life with Him Why you best imitate Christ, Mary, and the saints by striving for humility
- And much more!
Paperback, size 6" x 4.5", 114 pages
St. Thomas Aquinas's Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica
by St Thomas Aquinas
From the Church's greatest theologian: the essentials of Catholic doctrine. This book contains Aquinas's simple summary of the Faith. He covers the Trinity, Providence, the Incarnation, the Last Judgment, and much more. It's a concise statement of the key doctrines and elements of the Faith.
Paperback, size 9" x 6", 412 pages
by Cardinal Jean Danielou
The truth about angels — according to the Fathers of the Church
From St. Augustine to John Henry Newman, the greatest among the saints and men of God have lived on familiar terms with the angels; and the Church has always accorded them a very large place in her theology.
Recent theologians have dwelt on dry questions about the nature of the angels, but the early Fathers of the Church, with the memory of Jesus fresh in their minds (and of the angels of whom He spoke often) were fascinated with the energetic action of the angels among men and the ways in which the angels have carried out that mission from the instant of Creation through the time of Jesus; and how they will continue their work even unto the end of time.
From the works of these early Fathers of the Church, the late French Cardinal Jean Daniélou has drawn forth threads of knowledge and wisdom which he has here woven into a lucid and bright tapestry that shows us who the ministering angels really are, and how—in every instant and in every way—they are working for your salvation and mine.
Here you'll find no sentimental cherubs: the Fathers knew that majesty and power cloak actual angels, which is why God gave them the formidable tasks of shepherding not only souls, but entire nations, and the motions of the entire material universe itself.
Open these pages to meet the glorious angels as they were known by the Church's greatest saints and theologians: Origen and Eusebius, and Sts. Basil, Ambrose, Methodius, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom (among others).
Soon you, too, will find yourself on familiar terms with the angels, and they'll begin to play in your life the larger role that God intends them to play.
Paperback, size 8.5" x 5.5", 144 pages
by Dietrich Von Hildebrand
These pages will give you what you need to make your marriage a source of profound happiness and lasting peace:
- Knowledge: You'll come to understand the nature of marriage and its superiority to "living together" and other temporary unions.
- Love: You'll learn to distinguish love from lust, infatuation, and other common counterfeits; and you'll discover the healing role it can play in the best - and bleakest - of marriages.
- Faith: You'll come to see how the sacramental marriage of Christians is the fulfillment and perfection of marriage, giving husband and wife what every spouse secretly longs for.
Especially today, this beautiful book - which reveals the sublime vocation of Christian marriage - is a must for anyone who is eager to live worthily this great mystery of love.
Marriage will show you:
- The one right motive for marrying - and the many wrong ones (some often accepted by Christians)
- The difference between the meaning of marriage and its purpose (and the dangers of confusing the two)
- The five ways in which married love differs from other loves
- Six counterfeit loves: what sometimes passes for love isn't
- The key role of will in sustaining love
- Your unhappy marriage: it may be a clear "call" from God
- How difficulties and suffering can deepen your marriage - and make you and your spouse better persons
- How marriage reveals God's love and presence
- How Christianity intensifies married love
The meaning of marriage as a sacrament: its promises, its demands, and how it is a source of strength and grace
Paperback, size 6.8" x 4.9", 84 pages
by Fr. Frederick Faber
Sharp penance for remembered sins helps stouthearted Christians seize heaven, but gentler souls like Our Blessed Lady and scores of her saints have trod a different path. Their souls are possessed by gratitude, inspired by the remembrance of past benefits, and filled with wonder at the abundant loving-kindness of God.
As Father Faber shows, gratitude is the fertile soil from which springs an ardent, exuberant love of Christ – a love that can be yours as well. These wise pages reveal the critical role that gratitude plays in your sanctification, and they'll remind you of the many things the Lord has given you for which you should be grateful each moment of every day. Here you'll also learn:
- That thanksgiving is the very essence of Christian worship
- Why gratitude is easiest way to heaven and the surest path to joy
- How gratitude dissolves pride even faster than penance
- How gratitude can make you like the Angels themselves
- That ingratitude is the hidden sin of too many good people (What about you?)
- Why you should even be grateful — yes — for blessings received by your enemies
- How gratitude often wins souls more quickly than preaching
- Why it's scandalous that we neglect gratitude more than prayer
- Why you should even be grateful for your troubles
- That gratitude brings far more blessings than most of us ever suspect
Hear in this small book the voices of so many saints who knew that gratitude is the very key to holiness: St. Alphonsus de Liguori, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Bonaventure, St. Bridget of Sweden, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Francis de Sales, St. Francis Xavier, St. Gertrude, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Jane Frances de Chantal, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. John of Avila, St. John of God, St. Lawrence Justinian, St. Louis of France, St. Peter Faber, St. Philip Neri, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others
Paperback, size 7" x 5", 128 pages
A Father Gabriel Mystery #5
by Fiorella de Maria
Father Gabriel has finally returned to St Mary's Abbey, but all is not well in the sleepy Wiltshire village of Sutton Westford. Joseph Beaumont, a former village boy turned London property developer, has returned to build a row of houses on the grounds of a disused mine. A local opposition group – led by Joseph's boyhood nemesis – campaigns to stop the development, and Joseph finds himself the target of increasingly menacing threats. Then, workmen make a gruesome discovery on the building site: the skeleton of a child who went missing thirty years before, while the Great War was raging. Fr Gabriel is called in to investigate, but the task seems impossible. How can he uncover a secret that has been carefully hidden for three decades? Is the killer even still alive? Worse, as the tragic details emerge of a lost little girl's final moments, Gabriel is tormented by the memory of his own daughter and the life that was stolen from her many years before.
Missing Presumed Lost explores the themes of childhood innocence, guilt, and the responsibilities faced by society to protect the young. The book also delves deeper into Gabriel's own troubled past and the need to lay it to rest.
Paperback, size 8" x5.25", 270 pages