Books on the Spiritual Life

These meditations and devotions by St. John Henry Newman, spanning poetry from his Anglican period (including his most famous and well-beloved poem, "Pillar of Cloud"/"Lead, Kindly Light"), to reflections on God’s Divine Providence from his later period as a Catholic and founder of the Oratory in England, expresses a profoundly confident but deeply human faith that resonates with the very real experiences of modern Christians from all walks of life. These poems intimately show a personal side...

In A Year with the Church Fathers, popular Patristics 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 an...

Julian of Norwich is one of the subtlest writers and profoundest thinkers of the Middle Ages, and the earliest woman writer in English. Her Revelations describe a loving and merciful God and a positive vision of humanity. This sensitive new translation conveys the poise and serenity of her style, and includes the two versions of her text.

Are you ready to embark on a hero's adventure in pursuit of God? This novelized account of the spiritual life tells the story of Austin, a young man guided on his spiritual quest by Father Lawrence, a tough inner-city priest, and Fr. Aelred, a Benedictine hermit. Through a fictional dialogue, Fr. Dwight Longenecker unveils a twelve-part plan for union with God, paralleling the classic purgative, illuminative, and unitive stages of the spiritual life. Discover how our wounds and weaknesses can...

God's love is the subject of Peter Kreeft's imaginative and thoughtful book (a revised and updated version of his book Knowing the Truth of God's Love). With unusual clarity, Kreeft points out that the man or woman who begins to glimpse the God who is Creator, Redeemer, and Lover of our souls, will never be the same. He describes Scripture as God's love story and then tells why divine love is the answer to our deepest problems and the fulfillment of our deepest desires. Posing the hard questi...

The Practical Spirituality of St. Josemaria Escriva In this spiritual powerhouse of a book, Eric Sammons organizes the wisdom of St. Josemaría Escrivá into an action plan for living out holiness in your everyday life. The goal: to foster God's grace within you so that you can be transformed into the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ. Declared "the saint of ordinary life" by Pope John Paul II, St. Josemaría Escrivá -- a twentieth-century Spanish saint and founder of Opus Dei -- did more than a...

Love, Peace and Joy: Devotion to the Sacred Heart is an insightful book inspired by the very words of Our Lord to Saint Gertrude as recorded in her famous Revelations. Based on Gertrude’s teachings, this book outlines ways to quickly receive great graces and attain divine love; methods that are simple and accessible for everyone. Learning how to offer up your own prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus can bring about powerful transformation. This empowering guide helps readers understand the ex...

Learning to Let Go with the Little Flower Do your possessions “spark joy”? In our materialistic society, we are often plagued with the slow torture of accumulated stuff, which creates disharmony, prevents us from living in the present moment, and keeps us from setting our eyes upon Heaven. The Little Way of Living with Less is a spiritual journey guided by St. Thérèse of Lisieux toward a “less is more” manner of living. It shares one couple’s effort to downsize, declutter, and detach― and the...

If God is so good and so powerful, why is there suffering in our world? Why do good people suffer so much? How can we find value and meaning in the midst of the fallenness of the world? These questions--and many others--call for answers. The responses will determine our worldview and way of life. In the Manual for Suffering, the revealed, time-tested, and holistic answer from the depths of the Catholic faith is presented in all its beauty and power.  This manual will also provide spiritual ai...

Excerpt from the Introduction: Father Valuy's work gives the religious practical means of achieving detachment from their own wills in order to practice the type of charity Our Lord demands of them. He strikes at the heart of that duplicity of spirit which can so easily put on the semblance of piety but which in reality is hypocritical in its dealings with other men. Fr. Valuy asks: "Am I one of those proud spirits who expose the faults of others in order to show off their pretended virtues?"...

Venerable Louis of Granada was the favorite author of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John on the Cross, St. Francis de Sales and many others. Among the hundreds of eminent ascetical writers of Spain, Louis of Granada remains unsurpassed in the beauty and purity of his style, the solidity of his doctrine, and the popularity and influence of his writings. Besides ascetical theology, his published works treat of Scripture, dogma, ethics, biography, and history. He is best known, however, for his ascet...

A Guided Reading of Pope Pius XI's Encyclical Casti Connubii (On Chaste Marriage) - 2nd Edition In 1930, Pius XI published a letter to the world to answer a fundamental question— "What is Marriage?" As even Christians began to accept divorce and remarriage, contraception, and abortion, the Pope eloquently and beautifully defended the ancient understanding of marriage as grounded in Scripture and natural law. This guided reading of the encyclical Casti Connubii will help you, your friends, and...

Mostly written between 1070 and 1080, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury, the prayers and meditations of Anselm of Aosta created a tradition of intimate, intensely personal devotional works written in subtle and theologically daring prose. While the "Prayer to God" is based on the Lord's Prayer, the "Prayer to Christ" is inspired by ardent private emotion and other prayers invest saints with individual attributes, with John the Baptist as the friend, Peter as the shepherd and Mary Magd...

Prelude to Eternal Life Explains the entire Catholic tradition on the spiritual life. Covers virtually all aspects of our Faith. The masterpiece of possibly the 20th century's greatest theologian. Covers scores of topics, including contemplative prayer, one's predominant fault, the healing of pride, spiritual direction, etc. Clear, complete, orthodox, inspiring! A masterpiece in every sense of the word.

The English Dominican Gerald Vann, author of many beloved works of spirituality, offers in this compact volume a key to bearing the sorrows, tribulations, and trials that enter our lives as we walk our path from birth to death. This key is found in the life, indeed, in the heart, of the Virgin Mary, she who responded with unfailing faith, courage, and compassion to all God asked of her—an unexpected pregnancy; a flight into Egypt; an uneventful life in the backwaters; separation from her son ...

St. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), saint and martyr, might well be called the Saint of Synthesis. His thought, no less than his geographical wanderings, place him between Rome and Byzantium, between the theologies of East and West, and between the early Middle Ages and the ancient Church, whose representatives and traditions (which during his day had suffered much at the hands of imperial and ecclesial censure) he salvaged and brought back to the attention of his contemporaries. In this,...

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...

With Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at the forefront of her vocation, Mother Angelica treasured her beloved Spouse in the Eucharist. She brought Him her joys, sufferings, and all the contents of her heart in Adoration. In twenty-nine brief and brilliant chapters, she guides us to do the same, with Scripture references and Mother's personal prayers, meditations, and intentions. An ever-faithful disciple of the Church and Her Tradition, Mother Angelica saved her most precious words for her ...

Introducing the Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life, a revolutionary guide written by Fr. Spitzer, President of Gonzaga University and esteemed spiritual teacher and writer. Perfect for those who strive to maintain a regular spiritual life while leading hectic lifestyles, this book offers insights on how to both grow closer to God and stay engaged with everyday life at the same time. Drawing from years of experience in organizing successful retreats and seminars, Fr. Spitzer has distilled key ...

Hope for the World, a book by Cardinal Raymond Burke, examines pressing issues of our times in an engaging and thoroughly researched discussion. Presenting his thoughts and insights on relevant topics such as the role of the Catholic Church in today’s world, spiritual renewal, marriage and family, respect for human life, and more, Cardinal Burke puts forth deep faith perspectives grounded in sound reasoning. Using his personal upbringing in a devout Catholic family and early years as a priest...

The Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of Mary is often overlooked and underutilized. Now is the time to respond to Our Lady's call to pray this chaplet fervently. In these pages, you will discover how your own pierced heart can become a portal of grace that opens and transforms you into all that God wants you to be, allowing you to share in the mercy and love of Christ's Sacred Heart by uniting your sufferings to His. Equipped with an enriched understanding of redemptive suffering, Dr. Joseph Holl...

"Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape." C.S. Lewis Lorene Duquin, an experienced grief counselor was no stranger to understanding and explaining grief, and had helped many people work through it. But when she lost her mother she found herself living in an entirely new space. Grieving the Loss of a Loved One contains 52 powerful, one-page meditations that will help you work through the various aspects of grieving as they did for Lorene...

Meditations for a Post Post-Christian Era The book you are holding is a kind of a war journal, written between 2020 and 2021 during "the COVID Interruption" and the violent outbursts in cities across America. Witnessing cultural collapse in every direction, philosopher Father Robert McTeigue, S.J., offers meditations on what it will take to build Christ-centered cultures in our time--what must be retrieved and what must be renewed.

Many faithful Catholics greet God and give Him thanks and praise when they arise in the morning and retire at night. How they stay connected with Him and the Faith throughout the day, however, varies widely. Many forget that He is right there to call upon whenever the need or impulse arises. Others see Him all around, in the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, the smile of a child. Uniquely, Catholicism Everywhere treats the reader to the many expressions of God in the hobbies, foods,...

Very few Catholic writers indeed can touch the minds and hearts of all Catholics-whatever their background -and Fr. Paul O'Sullivan happens to be one of these rare few. In How to Be Happy-How to Be Holy, Fr. O'Sullivan teaches all Christians about prayer: 1) how to pray, 2) how to derive immense benefits from prayer, and 3) how to enjoy the deep consolation of prayer. In the process, he focuses first on the profound meanings of our basic Catholic prayers: The Sign of the Cross, The Our Father...

A proper examination of conscience is surely one of the most challenging tasks of the Christian life. For the laity, charged with the work of sanctifying the world "from within as a leaven" (in the words of Lumen gentium), this task is made especially difficult by the clamorous distractions which come simply from being in the world, even if not of the world. To ease the difficulty of this task, Monsignor Knox offers in The Layman and His Conscience a retreat specifically for lay people to "re...

"When I was a child," Saint Paul writes, "I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways" (1 Cor 13:11). This distinction, and the transition from boyhood to manhood, does not seem as easy for us today. Our society, with its increasingly grotesque masculine identity crisis, cannot define "the things of a man."In this revised and expanded edition, author Jason Craig, cofounder of Fraternus, a Catholic mentoring program for bo...

Inspirations & Lamentations: Literary Devotions of an Unusual Sort is a unique devotional book, combining a depth of spirituality, devotion, and desire for Him with a fresh, realistic, faith-filled contemporary assessment of modern life. 

Perfect love casts out fear, and God is love (see 1 Jn 4:16-19). So let us allow His Word to find a home in our hearts each day with these 366 Scriptural exhortations to fear not, as we journey through the books of the Bible using verses drawn from the Divine Mercy Catholic Bible (Revised Standard Version--Catholic Edition 2). At the beginning of his pontificate, the Great Mercy Pope, St. John Paul II, told the world, "Do not be afraid!" That wasn't just an exhortation to be stoic, tough, and...

We are living through the greatest catastrophe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Western civilization isn't dying: it's already dead. Christendom is no more. What we see around us now isn't Christian. It's not even a civilization. It's a walking corpse. That's the bad news. The good news is that the West can be reborn someday. We know this because it died once before. Who brought it back? The mystics, the martyrs, and the missionaries. Now they must save the West once again. In this prescie...

Blaise Pascal reflected that humanity is obsessed with divertissement, that is, diversions. By embracing noise and pleasure, we avoid thinking about anything that may be associated with aging, dying, or our final end. But what if our determination to avoid these thoughts means that we are consigning ourselves to living an aimless life? Best-selling author Vittorio Messori invites you to explore this and other aspects of Pascal's Wager in a compelling, conversational way. In these soul-stirrin...

As Ronald Knox was preparing to enter the Catholic Church, he took with him, as a spiritual-reading traveling companion, Virgil's Aeneid. The physical journey of Aeneas toward Rome provided a well-polished mirror to the spiritual voyage of Knox to that other, perfect Rome-the Eternal City of Christendom. "Ingeniously constructed on the Virgillian frame," as Evelyn Waugh writes in his Foreword, A Spiritual Aeneid is Knox's account of his conversion from the Anglican Church to the one, holy, Ca...

The laity-in the words of Lumen gentium-live in "the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of existence is woven." Where in that web is there room for anything resembling a retreat? Is a retreat for lay people practical, let alone possible? In these two dozen conferences, Monsignor Ronald Knox answers these questions resoundingly in the affirmative, addressing the foundations of the Christian life, the sacraments, and the virtues; the life and death of our ...

With charming rhyming verses, the Benedictine Sisters present glimpses of their everyday life of joy, work, praise -- and fun! Experience the excitement of entering the unknown mystery and beginning a new life inside the hallowed walls of the convent. You will experience the Sisters' excitement about first receiving their habits, their delight in caring for the elderly Sisters (with wheelchair races!), and their joy in tending the frisky farm animals, singing for the Lord, and recording their...

Thought-provoking words from renowned spiritual writer, Henri J. M. Nouwen, lead readers along a journey of conversion during Lent and Easter week. These periods of penance and celebration, lavish with rituals, help us become more sensitive to our own weaknesses and Christ's victory over sin. Through it all, Father Nouwen comforts and reassures us with reminders that God loves and accepts us even in our human state. Each daily reflection--from Ash Wednesday through the Second Sunday of Easter...

Make Lent and Holy Week even more meaningful with brief daily meditations that will help you focus on Our Lord's passion, death, and resurrection. Scripture readings, personal reflection, a question to ponder or an act to consider, and a short prayer to Saint Joseph are sure to lead you to a deeper relationship with Jesus and his foster father, Joseph.

"There are some people whom God takes and sets apart," observes Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl (1904-1964), but "there are others whom he leaves in the masses and whom he does not withdraw from the world. These are people who do ordinary jobs, who have an ordinary household or an ordinary single life. . . . We, the ordinary people of the streets, believe with all our might that this street, that this world where God has placed us, is, for us, the site of our holiness."French poet, social worker,...

Why Must We Suffer? "If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer pain?" And what about the suffering of animals, who neither deserve pain nor can be improved by it? The greatest Christian thinker of our time sets out to disentangle these knotty issues. With his signature wealth of compassion and insight, C.S. Lewis offers answers to these crucial questions and shares his hope and wisdom to help heal a world hungering for a true understanding of human nature.

Reorient your mind and heart this Lent so you can more fully experience the joy of Easter--Christ's victory over sin and death. In this beautiful guided journal for prayer and meditation, Fr. John Burns--author of the bestselling and award-winning book Adore--invites you to strip away your confusion, attachments, and sin so you can return to the Lord and undergo real and lasting conversion. In the liturgy's first reading on Ash Wednesday, the prophet Joel call us to wholehearted conversion: "...

"Take concern to have your heart be more pleasing to our Master day by day." --Padre Pio in a letter to Antonietta Vona, January 2, 1918Padre Pio is many different things to different people. This Italian saint, also known as Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, was an Italian Franciscan Capuchin, Catholic priest, friar, teacher, mystic, and maybe most famously, a stigmatist. In August of 1918, he began to bear the wounds of Christ that would come and go over a period of weeks and to this day cannot be...

Decisions, decisions ... life presents us with so many, big and small. How can we confidently make choices that bring us true happiness? The life of the virtues holds the key, and among those virtues, prudence holds the reins. No, this isn't your grandmother's definition of prudence. This virtue actually inspires practical wisdom, allowing us to choose well and to bring order into our lives. In Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly, Fr. Gregory Pine, OP, aims to work prudence back into th...

What is the greatest spiritual battle? The greatest battles do not occur in a distant land or even in past times but in the depths of the human soul. It is the battle between virtue and vice, the conflict between aspiring to be a saint or living a mediocre life. The conflict between reaching heaven or forfeiting it. In this spiritual masterpiece, Pope Saint Leo IX, identifies our foes: "The enemies in this battle--the vices and temptations which infect our fallen nature--are invisible and int...

All the saints learned how to master mental prayer, which is silently to turn our thoughts to God in a spirit of reverence. It is a holy skill that fills us with grace and draws us ever closer to our Lord. Here is the classic that will show you how you, too, can develop a deep and meaningful prayer life that is necessary to attain the joys of Heaven. You will learn valuable insights on methods of mental prayer and the eight crucial aspects of this important practice. You will learn how to pre...

Here is the book that will help you climb St. Paul's "eight steps," to attain happiness, holiness, and Heaven. Best selling author Kevin Vost breaks open St. Paul's life and spirituality through the lens of St. Thomas Aquinas as well as other saintly and noble men and women. You will see how human knowledge (e.g. science and philosophy) point to the truth of the Divine and how the virtues St. Paul proposes in his letter to the Philippians lead to abiding joy. In this gem of a book, Dr. Kevin ...

To mature as a man is to grow in virtue. And yet, year after year, many of us regress in our fundamental calling for a host of reasons: poor catechesis, modernism, isolation, self-absorption, and, to sum it up, the chains of vice. But God calls us to a life of virtue--that is, a life of faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. These theological and cardinal virtues, the "traditional virtues," which this book walks through, are at the heart and soul of the spiritual ...