The Four Last Things
by Mother Mary Loyola
By the early years of the twentieth century, Mother Mary Loyola had cemented her reputation as one of the best Catholic writers of her generation, but the First World War prompted her to write a book of consolation for the innumerable mothers, wives and others who had lost loved ones to its ravages. Her intimate knowledge of the subject matter gave her unique insight, for she had lost so many in the course of her long life, beginning with both of her parents and two siblings when she was just nine years old, and recently including several of her own beloved students who were fighting in the trenches of the Great War. She knew only too well the need for a strong faith in these times of intense suffering and loss, and this she amply illustrates in Blessed are they that Mourn.
Paperback, size 5.5" x 8.5", 114 pages
by St Anselm of Canterbury
“And yet the visible sun, as splendid as it is, is a mere created object, and is therefore certainly less radiant than the divine splendor, and less beautiful than the glory of the God Who fashioned it. It consequently follows that the bodies of the saints—suffused with this glory of God—will surpass the beauty and radiance of the sun itself.” —Saint Anselm
The great Doctor of the Church and Benedictine monk Saint Anselm has assembled one of the greatest books ever written on heaven. Relying on his profound insights from prayer and his deep love for Sacred Scripture, Anselm systematically describes various aspects of the happiness of heaven: the beauty of the bodies of the blessed, the velocity of the glorified bodies of the saints in heaven, the strength of the blessed, the pleasures of heaven, and much more. At the same time, Saint Anselm does not shy away from the reality of hell and its unending torments. Nothing spurs the soul to repentance like the thought of being eternally separated from God.
To obtain our celestial homeland, Saint Anselm instructs the reader to meditate daily on the day of judgment and the blessings of heaven. Saint Anselm, who later became the archbishop of Canterbury, exhorts the faithful to daily conversion and heartfelt prayers. It is a book that will make you long for heaven with all your heart and slowly detach you from this world, where “the pleasures, joys, and honors of this mortal life are but brief and ephemeral.”
Hardcover,
This book contains every prayer, meditation, novena, and Mass for the Holy souls that you could imagine. It is a treasure for those who love the Holy Souls and wish to pray TO and FOR our dearly departed. It was the official Manual of the Purgatorian Society promoted under the auspices of the Redemptorists.
This edition was published during the second world war in 1941 and was extremely popular among Catholic Americans during the war years. This is a much nicer and handier version of the paperback edition that Loreto has been selling for years.
Hardcover, size 3.25" x 4.75, 279 pages
Original Printing 1878.
From the Preface:
Two or three years ago it fell into my lot to preach during the Octave with which the Society of the Helpers of the Holy Souls is accustomed to celebrate the annual Commemoration of the Faithful Departed. It occurred to me that some of the miracles of our Lord might be usefully applied in illustration of the doctrine of Purgatory, and this the substance of some few of the chapters of this book was put together. The Holy Souls are sufferers to a degree and in a manner which are but faintly pictured in the bodily maladies which our Lord so lovingly relieved, and they are sufferers whose case He has left very much to the charity of the children of the Militant Church. His Sacred Heart looked further than the outward disease or privation for which He used His healing or restoring power, and, if it is most natural to consider all bodily evils as shadows and images by which spiritual infirmities are represented, it is not an exaggerated extension of the same principle of accommodation to consider the sufferings of Purgatory, all of which are caused by sin or negligence, as included under it. And no phase of department of Christian devotion can ever lose by being connected in any way with considerations on the acts and sayings of our Lord.
401 pages.