Books on the Spiritual Life

The Vision of God by Nicholas of Cusa is one of the foundational texts of late medieval Christian mysticism. Known for his negative theology, particularly as displayed in the seminal work De Docta Ignorantia (Of Learned Ignorance), Nicholas shows how accepting the limits of man's rational understanding leads to a fuller experience of the divine. Man, he believed, is capable of comprehending God's inner being, an experience he characterized as a "coincidence of opposites." Unlike his previous ...

The Hippo Lectures is a book of essays that were first given as live audience, public talks. Catholicism being a "both/and" faith, this work is both fiction and non-fiction; speech and story; serious and absurd; broadly maximal and microscopically focused. It's singular glue, however, is the Catholic Faith. All the essays-whether about the environment, beauty, athletics, beer, sex, economics, film, or American politics, to name but a few-are viewed through a Catholic lens. Now nearly past the...

Based on his study of great theologians and philosophers dating back to Aristotle, eminent philosopher and physicist Rev. Dr. Robert Spitzer devised his Four Levels of Happiness, asserting that whichever level dominates our lives will dictate our actions and determine the depth and endurance of our happiness. Incorporating examples from science, philosophy, psychology, and everyday life, Spitzer engagingly lays out achievable ways to ascend the ladder of happiness and find the fulfillment of ...

Many devotional books present different ways to participate in the Mass, but relatively few preseor which there are no fixed prayers. An excellent help in this domain is a short work, Seven Ways of the Cross (1958), by Jesuit Father Jean (John) Galot (1919-2008), who was to become a prolific writer and professor of theology, first at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, then at the Angelicum in Rome, where he regularly contributed to the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano. Father ...

In this insightful guide, Archbishop Luis M. Martínez delves into the depths of the spiritual life. He explores the balance between active and contemplative prayer, offering practical advice on cultivating a deeper relationship with God. Drawing on the wisdom of spiritual masters like St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila, Martínez reveals the secrets to a truly fulfilling and transformative spiritual journey.

In concise, straightforward prose, author Dan Burke here provides an invaluable road map for spiritual growth, complete with signposts to help ensure that you remain on the right path. He guides you through the hazardous terrain that can threaten your spiritual health and shows you how to discern God's will daily and follow it in a meaningful way. Through intensive study of the major Catholic mystics, Dan has acquired the keys to developing a more meaningful relationship with Christ, which he...

A translator, comments Monsignor Ronald Knox in his On Englishing the Bible, has two methods at his disposal: the literal and the literary. In translating Sacred Scripture "for the benefit of a person who wants to be able to read the word of God for ten minutes on end without laying it aside in sheer boredom or bewilderment," then only a literary translation will suffice. And such is the "Knox Bible," the fruit of nine years' solitary labor to craft a fresh translation of the sacred texts. Th...

From the same council that issued the Baltimore Catechism, Manual of Prayers: For the Use of the Catholic Laity will be the constant reference for any Catholic seeking to increase his devotion to God and to cultivate a deeper prayer life. This latest leatherette edition has a new typeset to provide editorial notes, increase readability, and maintain the traditional aspects of the original.You will also find: 1. Prayers and Psalms in both Latin and English,2. Both the traditional (old) and the...

At the beginning of every Mass, the priest-celebrant says, "Let us pray" and then offers a prayer to God the Father, through Jesus Christ, in union with the Holy Spirit. This Opening Prayer is called the Collect. During Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter, this prayer is specific to the day; in the season of Ordinary Time, the Collect for each Sunday is repeated during the following weekday Masses. In Praying with the Church through Advent, Fr. Edward Looney offers a short daily meditation an...

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...

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...

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.

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.

Timeless words from the pen of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen inspire the heart and imagination as readers embark on a Lenten journey toward a better understanding of their spiritual selves. Covering the traditional themes of Lent--sin and salvation, death and Resurrection, sorrow and hope, ashes and lilies--these 50 passages and accompanying mini-prayers offer readers a practical spiritual program as a retreat from the cares and concerns of a secular world view.

Imagine some personal hours face to face with Pope Benedict XVI, one of the greatest Catholic thinkers and spiritual writers of the twentieth century. In this slim volume, hundreds of short quotations and sayings taken from Benedict's papal writings, addresses, and homilies have been classified by the Christian virtues of which they speak, and then categorized according to the mysteries of the Rosary and the great themes of prayer, the Church, the Mass, the papacy, Sacred Scripture, the pries...

There have been thousands of books written about prayer and millions of sermons preached about it, yet people continue to wonder: Why doesn’t God answer me when I cry out to him? In light of all the problems we face in life, we want to know why God is often so “silent” when we pray to him. Anthony DeStefano, author of the bestsellingA Travel Guide to Heaven, knew there had to be an answer to this mystery, so he set out on a quest to find prayers that God says yes to all the time. The result i...

Essays on the Beatitudes and The Gifts of the Holy GhostThe Collected Works of Carol Jackson Robinson, Volume 2 This book is the second in Carol Robinson's Collected Works series. Her penetrating and original analysis of the modern world shows the fruit of a mind absorbed in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas— her life-long companion. We hope that these essays will help Catholics understand how the Faith has importance for the totality of their lives which must not be hidden away from the publ...

Letters to the Duchess of Orléans and Meditations on Christian Life The present volume presents a wide selection of letters glowing with affection that Mectilde addressed to Marguerite de Lorraine, Duchess of Orléans (1615-1672).

What does it mean to live as a child of God? In this book, Fr. Piotr Rostworowski offers timeless advice and spiritual counsel to a nun under his direction, aimed at helping her live a life of perfect unity with God. In simple, loving, honest language, this holy father sets out clear guidance and practical methods for how to attain perfection. Likewise, the universality of the issues with which Fr. Rostworowski deals, issues ranging from how to overcome one's own will in temptation to recogni...

Recovering the Christian Mystery of Personhood The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self is a collection of stories, fictional and factual, highlighting two themes: the autonomous self, now in a profound crisis; and the person, whose Christian sources and contours have too long been overlooked. The ongoing cultural and confessional evisceration of Christianity all too graphically proves the validity of Christ's warning: "Apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). For these words were addressed t...

A young man...a painter. Having converted, he tries his vocation as a monk, but decides that monastic life is not for him. Thrown back on his own resources, he quickly becomes enmeshed in difficulties-not least, when he discovers an unusually sympathetic ear in a young married woman-and he struggles to find a place in the contemporary Church. Throughout his searching, he turns to the Benedictine Dom Hubert for counsel, wondering what to do with his feelings. Dom Hubert, also an artist, offers...

Sermons & Meditations on Seeking Christ & His Mother Born in the silence and simplicity of rural New-England, this book gathers some brief reflections and sermons of a parish Priest. The sermons fix their attention upon the Mother of God, and the author's approach is essentially liturgical. Side-stepping the language of apologetics and controversy, he studies the texts of the Roman liturgy and shares what he finds there. The meditations-concentrated and pithy-consider, beneath the lig...

A Presentation for Beginners "If personal holiness is thought of as being a name at the top of a list it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as something which merits a feast in the Church's calendar it is understood wrong....There is nothing 'superior, ' in the sense of being one up on everybody else, about it. The way to think of sanctity is as something which, by being generous and faithful to grace, gives back to God the love which he has given to the soul." While the glamorous and s...

"The end of penance is God, not more penances. Thus the approach to penance has to be by way of love, not by way of steeling the will to toughness. Penance must have its roots in charity, not austerity." With characteristic Benedictine discretion, Van Zeller here sets straight common misapprehensions of penance, steering the reader past the Scylla of extremism on the one hand and the Charybdis of avoiding this essential virtue of the Christian life on the other hand. "Take up your cross and f...

"These pages do not pretend to furnish theologians and doctors with a new Mariology. My aim is much more modest; I am trying to reach many small souls, for whom a few rays of Holy Mary's beauty will suffice; that they may endlessly admire and better pronounce her name-after the Name of Jesus, the most beautiful of names." Dom Eugene Vandeur's Hail Mary is not another scholarly exegesis on each part of that ancient prayer; it is a poetic, passionate, expressive, rhythmic hymn of praise. In the...

"If my correspondence is anything to go by," writes Benedictine artist and author Dom Hubert Van Zeller, "the problem which men and women living in the world most want to discuss is that of how to handle the affections." The fruit of Dom Hubert's experience as a spiritual director, these 42 short reflections are culled from his correspondence, and engage with questions surrounding the cultural upheaval which followed World War II, the first stages of the sexual revolution, and the modern worl...

An Historical, Liturgical and Devotional Explanation of the Mass according to the Roman Missal "In a word, the service of God is meant to be beautiful, because a true instinct of man makes him realize, even when he is in a state of retrogression and barbarism, that all that is best and noblest must be made subservient to the worship of the Lord and Creator of all." Dom Ernest Graf begins his work The Priest at the Altar with this declaration that beauty is the fundamental form of the Liturgy....

On re-reading this book, Dom Hubert confessed "to being surprised at the tone of attack which runs through a lot of it." But he continues, "I would like to say in this connexion that any blows which are met with in these pages are primarily aimed at myself. All the more combative passages were occasioned by my saying to myself: 'This won't do-it's a misconception (or a mood or a willy) and must be exploded at once.' Then I have sat down and written my piece." Such a candid effort on the autho...

Spiritual Conferences on the Monastic and Religious Life "Every vocation, even the simple Christian vocation, comes from God. Our Lord Himself says 'No man can come to Me, except the Father draw him.' But it is God's love for us-and as we are born miserable, it is His merciful love-which is the origin of this call." A work which goes to the heart of the Rule of St Benedict, this classic of the Irish Benedictine Blessed Columba Marmion has fed generations of God-seeking souls. Capable of touch...

"Prayer must necessarily involve a discipline, but it need not involve a system...In our prayer we must return to the primary purpose of what we are trying to do: we are trying to bring worship to God. The greatest act of worship that man can give to God is to refer back to him what God has already given. Man has nothing of his own to offer, nothing that has not been lent by God." Almost everyone who has believed in God has wondered how to pray to him. But in the same way that no two relation...

Dom Columba Marmion's classic work Christ the Life of the Soul aims at showing forth "the fundamental character of the Christian life, according to the Gospel, the Epistles of St Paul, and the conclusions of theological teaching." Marmion wanted to emphasize that the "Christian life is essentially supernatural, and can only be found in Christ," who is both the model and cause of all holiness. Christ in His Mysteries continues this teaching, demonstrating that Christ's life is manifested to us...

This is the second edition of Dom Hubert van Zeller's short commentary on the Hail Mary which was part of his "In Other Words" series. Originally published in 1963, it has long been out of print. Permission has been granted by Downside Abbey Trustees to republish this wonderful work.

When confronted with the message of the Gospel, the Jews on the day of Pentecost were cut to the heart and said, "Brethren, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37) Catholics today are asking themselves the same question. Phillip Campbell's The Way of Life offers a response. Drawing on the spiritual heritage of the Church, the essays in this book call us to refocus our sight on the Lord, cultivating "eyes to see" that we might have confidence in God's providence. Covering a host of subjects ranging fro...

On the Rule of St. Benedict The Commentary on the Rule takes into account the long history of commentary on St. Benedict's rule and discusses this history at length in the introduction. Each chapter has a selection of the rule, following the divisions of dates on which sections of the rule are read in monasteries, then a commentary on that section, followed by an application, through 72 chapters completing the entire Rule. The commentary makes use of the very lengthy Monastic Tradition, works...

Anselm Stolz, the author of this book, was a Benedictine monk of the German abbey of Gerleve. He was called to Rome to teach theology at Sant'Anselmo, the Roman Benedictine college, until his early death from typhus in 1942. In his life and teaching, as his confrère Elmar Salman points out, he united Christian belief and Christian living, he not only talked the talk in books and lectures, he walked the walk, in his life and death. A lifetime later, another Benedictine professor, Gerardo Békés...

Sermons on the Gospels for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany In these modern days of the six-minute homilette, some may question the use of translating musty old sermons. Why bother with the past? Yet if we want to be whole Catholics, we need to know what went before us, as well as our present. In these confusing times where some in the Church are trying to erase any reminder of the past, it becomes all the more necessary to be familiar with the Faith as handed down through the centuries, in or...

The Sanctoral Cycle I In these modern days of the six-minute homilette, some may question the use of translating musty old sermons. Why bother with the past? Yet if we want to be whole Catholics, we need to know what went before us, as well as our present. In these confusing times where some in the Church are trying to erase any reminder of the past, it becomes all the more necessary to be familiar with the Faith as handed down through the centuries, in order to better explain what we believe...

Sermons on Septuagesima, Lent, & Eastertide In these modern days of the six-minute homilette, some may question the use of translating musty old sermons. Why bother with the past? Yet if we want to be whole Catholics, we need to know what went before us, as well as our present. In these confusing times where some in the Church are trying to erase any reminder of the past, it becomes all the more necessary to be familiar with the Faith as handed down through the centuries, in order to bett...

Sermons for Pentecost and the Time after Pentecost In these modern days of the six-minute homilette, some may question the use of translating musty old sermons. Why bother with the past? Yet if we want to be whole Catholics, we need to know what went before us, as well as our present. In these confusing times where some in the Church are trying to erase any reminder of the past, it becomes all the more necessary to be familiar with the Faith as handed down through the centuries, in order to b...

This book consists of a series of daily meditations written by the eminent Latinist Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1885-1971) who served as the Vatican's chief Latinist for over 40 years. The English edition has been out-of-print since 1965. In it, Cardinal Bacci explores vast areas of Catholic principles on the spiritual life using such sources as: Sacred Scripture, the writings of the Saints with particular emphasis on St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church Fathers, many passages from Thomas a Kempis' "Th...

Poems by Saint John of the Cross Regarded by many as one of the finest Spanish poets, the 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross wrote sublime poems that chronicle the soul's purificatory pilgrimage through the dark night of the soul to the joy of mystical union with the Creator. To translate such works, with their passionate, intimate intensity, requires both boldness and delicacy. The translator of poetry faces many challenges. As the late poet Timothy Murphy notes in his introduction, s...

An Unabridged Edition with The Original Four Parts and All Chapters, Table of Contents: On Selection of Men for The Work of The Church - On the Sort of Life, The Pastor Ought to Live - On the Best Methods of Dealing with The Various Types of People Which Every Pastor Will be Likely to Encounter - On the Necessity That the Pastor Guard Himself Against Egotism and Personal Ambition, with footnotes.

An essential addition to the HarperCollins Spiritual Classics series, The Way of a Pilgrim is combined in one volume with its companion work, The Pilgrim Continues His Way. Translated from the original Russian by Reginald M. French and with an introduction by Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions, The Way of a Pilgrim is the chronicle of an anonymous nineteenth century Russian Christian's travels and spiritual inquiries. Eye-opening and extraordinary, The Way of a Pilgrim offers a one...

The mission given to Sister Josefa Menéndez by Our Lord. The divine words of the message, addressed to the people of the world, are a reminder of the Love and Mercy of Our Lord. Jesus considered it necessary to come and confirm the promises of the New Testament with the words of the 20th century. Thus, nineteen centuries after having declared it during his public life, Jesus asks Josefa to remind us, and to confirm to us, in a very clear way, that he is a God of love, forgiveness, and inexha...