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Roots of the Bible leads us back to forgotten certainties of the Creation coded in the deep structure (gematria) of its expression in Hebrew.

As Catherine Pickstock so forcefully demonstrates in her brilliant introduction to this new publication of Beauty Looks After Herself, for 600 or more years, the Real has been progressively stripped of transcendental content, so that today an "unbearable

Fulton J. Sheen turned his voice and pen to many subjects during the course of a long and remarkable apostolate. But nothing was closer to the heart of his message than bringing the words of Our Lord and Our Blessed Mother to bear on the problems of modern life and the modern world. In this book, Archbishop Sheen explores the connection between the seven words spoken by Mary in the Gospels, and the seven last words of Jesus on the Cross. Fulton Sheen was unparalleled in his ability to combine theology, devotion, and the profoundest reflections on the central events of the Christian narrative. Displayed here in full are the literary and rhetorical skills of one of the greatest preachers of the 20th century. Sheen's meditations will slake the spiritual thirst of all who desire a fuller understanding of the Gospels and seek to draw closer to Christ and Mary.

The present volume is a shorter edition of Christ in His Mysteries, Dom Columba Marmion's profound reflection on the Mysteries of Christ's birth, death, Resurrection, and Ascension as presented in the Gospels and the Liturgical Year. In Blessed Marmion's words, the mysteries that Jesus lived were lived for us. In them He shows Himself as our model and wills to make Himself one with our souls as Head of the Mystical Body of which we are members. Advent, Christmas, Holy Week, Paschaltide, the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart--following Christ in this way, uniting ourselves to Him, we share more deeply in His Divinity and His Divine life. The Sovereign Pontiff Pius X wrote in his encyclical of November 23rd, 1903, that "the active participation of the faithful in the sacred mysteries and in the public and solemn prayers of the Church is the first and indispensable source of the Christian spirit." There is no surer way, no more infallible means, of making us one with Christ

While a student, Franz Kappus began sending his poetry to a young Rainer Maria Rilke, seeking his advice. The resultant ten letters from Rilke, published after his death, contain words of luminous intimacy where Rilke shapes the ecstasy of youthful desire into a consideration of how to live life deliberately. Becoming an artist is an apprenticeship in solitude, seeking, and suffering. When initially asked by Herr Kappus whether his verses are good, Rilke counters with the dismissal of all such outward concerns, and an admonition to go inside oneself, to discover whether one's poetic motives reach to the hidden recesses of the heart. For the artist is on his own, alone, centered in his innermost depths. Rilke next speaks of surrounding oneself with books, in which one may enter worlds of inconceivable greatness. In a subsequent letter he writes of the artist's vocation as one of growing into the spirit of childhood, where everything that happens is forever a beginning. And he writes of moments of sorrow as a new thing entering us; and, unnoticed, becoming a part of our very life-blood. For Rilke, art is a way of living: becoming a poet or an artist is not so much about learning one's craft as about becoming a certain kind of person. Act is preceded by being, so that an unrestrained devotion to the creative process must proceed from the nurturing of patience and a deepening of one's interior life. An immense inner stillness, reaching through time, rightly precedes all efforts of artistic creation. Developing as an artist is not measured by time or any external markers: "Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree, which does not force its sap, and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them will come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them...." This is a book to encounter in youth and remain with into old age, a vade mecum in the school of artistic being and thoughtful living.

With Christ is an anthology of writings from Blessed Marmion's outstanding trilogy: Christ, the Life of the Soul; Christ in His Mysteries; and Christ, the Ideal of the Monk; as well as from his letters in Union with God and personal notes on his own spiri

"We need a new kind of mystic," writes Fr. Robert Wild; and in The Tumbler of God, he presents a spiritual portrait of G.K. Chesterton that convincingly shows why he is precisely the kind of new mystic we need. Chesterton's mysticism was grounded in an experiential knowledge that existence is a gift from God, and that the only response is a spirituality of gratitude and praise for the unveiled beauty of creation. "What was his 'secret'? It was to love the splendor of the real, and to live in adulthood the innocence and wonder of the child who sees everything for the first time. The Gospel tells us we must become again like little children in order to enter the kingdom. Chesterton shows us how." "One of the best books I have ever read on Chesterton."--Dale Ahlquist "A book that speaks openly of what is, in the end, the most important thing about him: his friendship with God."--Stratford Caldecott "A ground-breaking examination of G.K. Chesterton."--Mark Sebanc "Robert Wild's fascinating perspective is a welcome addition to the enlivening field of Chestertonian studies."--Chris Chan "An exploration, made with deep and affectionate familiarity with GKC's writings, of what is meant by the word 'mystic'."--Francis Phillips, The Catholic Herald

That sacred art scarcely exists today is all too clear. We can perhaps speak of a "religious," but certainly not a sacred art. True sacred art is not sentimental or psychological, but ontological and cosmological in nature. Sacred art cannot be the result of the feelings, fantasies, or even "thought" of the artist-as with most modern art-but rather the translation of a reality largely surpassing the limits of human individuality. Sacred art is precisely a supra-human art. The temple of former times was an "instrument" of recollection, joy, sacrifice, and exaltation. First through the harmonious combination of a thousand crafted symbols, then by offering itself as a receptacle to the symbols of the liturgy. For the temple and the liturgy together constitute a prodigious formula capable of preparing man to become aware of the descent of Grace, of the epiphany of the Spirit in corporeity. It is a matter of urgency, then, to recall what is true in sacred art, especially since in the cultural wasteland of our age signs of resistance to its anarchy and subversion manifest themselves, and a pressing call is felt to recover the traditional conceptions that must form the basis and condition of any restoration.

The rosary is the school of Mary. Whoever takes the hand of the Mother will be guided step by step, Hail Mary after Hail Mary, and led directly to her Son Jesus Christ. The rosary teaches us how to pray--not only by reciting the Ave Maria, but by meditating upon the mysteries of our salvation and contemplating the Lord with the eyes of the one human being who loved Him more than any other. The rosary is a school of prayer opening a path that leads us into ever deeper knowledge and love of God. It is a powerful prayer--like a strong army--that changes first one¿s own life, but then also the whole world around us. The rosary--a little chain that helps us contemplate five mysteries of the life of Jesus--is comparable to the Psalms, for David brought but five little stones against Goliath. With the rosary we overcome the giants who would make us fear the many challenges and sorrows that surround us. MONSIGNOR FLORIAN KOLFHAUS, a priest of the German Diocese of Regensburg, works in the Secretariat of State as a diplomat of the Holy See. He has a PhD in Dogmatic Theology from the Pontifical "Gregorian" University and also has a Master's degree in canon law. Msgr. Kolfhaus is an associate member of the Pontifical Academy for Marian Studies (PAMI). He is the author of a number of articles and books on spirituality and theology, including Totus Tuus Maria: Personal Consecration to Our Lady.

There are no sacred cows for modern scientists. Ironically, modern science has itself become a sacred cow, of which we hear very little criticism. But modern science has long been denounced by some of the wisest among us: our poets. The long essay in this book considers six of the very greatest poets of the English language since the Scientific Revolution. None of them considered as science what we now call science. Nor did they regard as philosophy what we call philosophy. This essay closely examines just how deep is this chasm at the core of our culture and our values--and it does so through some of the finest poetry in our language. Evolution, automation, and philosophical Taoism are discussed elsewhere in this book. "Most people will assume that to champion Romanticism against modern Science is to exalt subjectivism over objectivity, the irrational over the rational, and vagueness over precision. Robert Sworder, however, demonstrates that subjective experience--the universal existence of which is an objective fact--is simply another approach, with its own laws and methodology, to objective truth. He shows how the true representation of qualitative experience requires as high a degree of precision as an operation in mathematics, and how the laws of logic do not mysteriously become invalid as soon as they no longer have quantitative data to work upon. If the physicists could grasp the Romanticism the author writes about (and from), they would not so easily embrace metaphysical absurdity. Data without context is an assault on the human form; Roger Sworder clearly defines one of the necessary contexts without which our humanity is in peril."--Charles Upton, co-author of Shadow of the Rose: The Esoterism of the Romantic Tradition Roger Sworder graduated Master of Arts from the University of Oxford, taking his degree in the study of Classical Philosophy and History. He undertook doctoral studies at the Australian National University with a thesis on Plato's theory of knowledge. His first book, Mining, Metallurgy and the Meaning of Life, examines the consecration and, more recently, the desecration of these crafts in Western history. Other publications include Science and Religion in Ancient Greece: Homer on Immortality & Parmenides at Delphi, A Contrary History of the West, and Mathematical Plato, all published by Sophia Perennis and Angelico Press. He has also published a book of poems, Stop, Don't Read, with Connor Court Publishing. Sworder has retired as lecturer in the Department of Arts at LaTrobe University, Bendigo, where he was a member of a team which provided one of the few courses in traditional studies in the West.

"There has never been a newer, bolder thinker than Coventry Patmore (or one who was a greater artist at the same time), and he has done more than anyone else to open, finally, the immense domains of Religion to Art."--Paul Claudel Published just a year before his death, these essays and aphorisms were the final flowering of Coventry Patmore's extraordinary vision. The writers of the 19th-century Catholic Literary Revival, of whom Patmore was an outstanding representative, were in search of the whole of reality, and awoke a renewed appreciation of the importance of symbols as a vehicle of metaphysical and doctrinal truth. As Stratford Caldecott indicates in his Foreword to this volume, "many of these truths concern the relation between man and woman, and here [Patmore] anticipates in many respects the Theology of the Body of Pope John Paul II--a theology grounded in the Trinity, and based on the analogies between the love of the soul for God, the love of God for mankind, and the love between man and woman." The transfiguring power of love, both human and divine, is the theme that runs right through The Rod, the Root, and the Flower. Herbert Read compared it to Pascal's Pensées, and Caldecott adds that "here we see a fullness of Catholic wisdom that is not exceeded by any other representative of the Revival, and one that speaks to our age as much as it did to his own, opening vistas within the Word of God that remain incompletely explored even today."

In praise of Augustine, Herbert A. Deane writes, "Genius he had in full measure ... he is the master of the phrase or the sentence that embodies a penetrating insight, a flash of lightning that illuminates the entire sky." To provide the student with a glimpse of that genius and a synthesis of Augustine's views on man and society, the author presents the most important passages from Augustine's entire body of work in which human nature, the social order, and the nature and function of the state are discussed. Marshaling this primary material, he masterfully weaves the connections between Augustine's social and political ideas and the general framework of his thought. A new foreword by Richard A. Munkelt makes a substantial contribution in critiquing Deane's assimilation of certain aspects of Augustine's thought to modern-day liberalism. The new foreword also contains extensive additional bibliography on the subject of Augustine's political thought. "Will undoubtedly remain the basic work on this subject."--Library Journal "Professor Deane significantly contributes both to historical understanding of Augustine's political thinking and to appreciation of its permanent relevance to the moral dilemmas of politics. No other study of Augustine's political thought gives nearly so much so well."--Political Science Quarterly "This book would be salutary, possibly purgatorial, reading for all politicians, psychologists, and educationalists."--Times Literary Supplement

The Ordeal of Mercy is a book of wide erudition and simple style; its goal is to present the Purgatorio, according to the science of spiritual psychology, as a practical guide to travelers on the Spiritual Path. The author draws upon many sources: the Greek Fathers, notably Maximos the Confessor; St. John Climacus; Fathers and Doctors of the Latin Church, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas; John Donne, William Blake and other metaphysical poets; the doctrines of Dante's own initiatory lineage, the Fedeli d'Amore; the modern Eastern Orthodox writers Pavel Florensky and Jean-Claude Larchet; and the writings of the Traditionalist/Perennialist School, including René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Martin Lings, Leo Schaya, and Titus Burckhardt. Other exegetes of Dante have dealt with the overall architecture of the Divine Comedy, its astronomical and numerical symbolism, its philosophical underpinnings, and its historical context. Jennifer Doane Upton, however--while preserving the narrative flow of the Purgatorio and making many cogent observations about its metaphysics--directs our attention instead to many of its "minute particulars," unveiling their depth and symbolic resonance. She presents the ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory as a series of timeless steps, each of which must be plumbed to its depths before the next step arrives; in doing so she demonstrates how the center of this journey of purgation is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. In the words of the author, "The soul in its journey must divest itself of extraneous tendencies and desires in order to become the 'simple' soul of theology--the soul of one essence, of one will, of one mind. If it can do this it will reach Paradise, its true homeland." "The Ordeal of Mercy is the finest commentary on Dante's Puragtorio that I have ever read, an indispensable book for all those who want to understand the paradoxical dance of grace on the path to liberation."--Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism "The Ordeal of Mercy presents a detailed and erudite metaphysical commentary on the Cantos of the Purgatorio section of Dante Alighieri's 'Fifth Gospel, ' La Divina Commedia, one that is clearly the fruit of extensive research combined with deep contemplation. Dante himself said that his poem had an interior sense beyond the surface meaning; Jennifer Doane Upton's approach accordingly opens the Cantos of Purgatorio--whether we take it as an account of purgation in the post-mortem realms or as the passage through this present life understood as an 'ordeal of mercy'--to the eye of initiatic apprehension, the eye of the Heart. Seemingly minor motifs are homed in on to reveal their deep significance, as well as their place in the broader pattern of the Purgatorio, which corresponds to the stage of Purgation on the Christian Way."--Nigel Jackson, author of The Seventh Tower: Tradition and Counter-Tradition in the Modern World (forthcoming)

IN HIS FIRST APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION, Pope Francis wrote: "We need to recover a contemplative spirit." The Meaning of Blue is about just such a recovery. Blue is the color of heaven, of purity and truth. Its rarity in naturally occurring substances on earth and its abundance shining in the sky speak of the same thing: a celestial light to which our culture is increasingly blind. With examples drawn from both the inspired ambiguity of poetry and the depths of the Bible, Fr. Luke Bell shows the reader a way of knowing creation and language as manifesting divine truth, and then leads further-into the mystical tradition of direct contemplation of God. "To read Luke Bell's The Meaning of Blue is to see with new eyes, to love the world afresh. This very Benedictine book, written by a monk, with its roots sunk in prayer, liturgy, poetry, and the sacraments, aims at nothing less than transformation of the self, so that we encounter life as it really is, bright with the splendor of God. An invaluable guide to the spiritual life, by one who knows whereof he speaks."--Philip Zaleski, editor of The Best Spiritual Writing series and co-author of Prayer: A History

The Mass Explained to Children presents the beauty, depth, and simplicity of the traditional Latin Mass, helping to make it easily understandable for any and every child. With acute sensitivity to the purity and clarity of a child's mind and soul, Maria Montessori wisely instructs in how to prepare for Mass, explains how the altar is set up, and clarifies the meaning and use of the sacred vessels and other elements used during Mass. She describes also the role of the priest, the use and symbolism of vestments, and much more. Then she proceeds--in refreshingly straightforward language, and with abundant illustrations--to follow the order of the Mass as it slowly unfolds in word and gesture. This is a sure guide to the beauties of the traditional Mass for children of all ages, and at the same time a wonderful primer for adults who want to deepen their understanding of the Mass of the Ages.

"The best popular apologetic I know." -C. S. Lewis In 1925, just three years after his reception into the Catholic Church, G.K. Chesterton published a work that proclaimed anew to the doubters of the age that the key to history had arrived nearly two thousand years before. Contra the evolutionists, he first points to the singular nature of man from his very beginnings; and, later, contra the comparative religionists, points to the uniqueness of Christianity in relation to all other paths. Two of those paths, the way of myth and the way of philosophy, were at war until Christ restored the world's sanity in the union of Story and Truth. In Chesterton's telling, the groaning and travail of the ancient world was answered, precisely and definitively, in the still night of Bethlehem and the Birth of our Lord. Chesterton insists the event be seen with fresh eyes: God as Child--a claim no other religion dares to make. As Chesterton writes, "when we do make this imaginative effort to see the whole thing from the outside, we find that it really looks like what is traditionally said about it inside." Looking at Christianity with such new-found sight, one can only be astonished at "the strangest story in the world." The Everlasting Man is the tale of a unique creature, man, made in the image of God, and of the God-Made-Man who fully reveals this fact to him. There is a spiritual path, and mankind has wandered over it with myriad gaits through the centuries. Nevertheless, the path that leads to man's true home begins with the Nativity and ends with the Resurrection, and in between is contained all life and all holiness.

Fulton J. Sheen was remarkable in his ability to uncover many layers of meaning in the life and words of Jesus of Nazareth. The Seven Beatitudes and The Seven Words from the Cross - both were delivered from a mountain, but the connection runs deeper than

Catholic schools have long contributed to the mission of the Church and to the flourishing of society. During the past few decades, however, Catholic schools have suffered severe losses, both in their religious identity and in their capacity to attract students. With penetrating insights, pointed anecdotes, and drawing upon recent empirical studies and Church documents, Ryan Topping describes the near collapse of Catholic education in North America and uncovers the enduring principles of authentic renewal. In The Case for Catholic Education you'll discover: - the three purposes of Catholic education - why virtue is more important than self-esteem - the elements of a true "common core" curriculum - essential differences between "progressive" and "Catholic" models of learning - helpful study questions and a research guide "This is an accessible and eminently readable book on a topic which no Catholic can afford to ignore."--Joseph Pearce, Aquinas College, Nashville, TN "The Case for Catholic Education speaks to the heart of the debate over whether Catholic education is 'worth it.'"--Sister John Mary Fleming, O.P., Executive Director for Catholic Education, USCCB "The Case for Catholic Education will surely play a vital role in reinvigorating the handing-on of essential Catholic truths."--Sister Joseph Andrew Bogdanowicz, O.P., Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, Ann Arbor, MI "This short book contains an astonishing wealth of insights and practical suggestions."--Dr. Keith Cassidy, President of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy, Barry's Bay, ON, Canada "Ryan Topping has written an engaging and coherent analysis of the state of Catholic education in North America, which will be useful for teachers in Britain, too."--Dr. Paul Shrimpton, Magdalen College School, Oxford, UK "An insightful view of our threatened patrimony and a framed vision for what educating and forming our children may still yet become."--Dr. Jason Fugikawa, Dean of Academics and Faculty, Holy Family Academy, Manchester, NH "The Case for Catholic Education includes sound advice in regards to the teaching of Good Books and then Great Books in the high school years, and for including Christ throughout an education."--Patrick S.J. Carmack, Founder of the Angelicum Academy and the Great Books Academy homeschool programs "It is impossible to read this book without feeling stirred to the joy--and the work--of better educating our young people."--Patrick Conley, Director of Faith Formation, Cathedral of St. Paul, MN "In his latest offering, Ryan Topping presents a lucid and lively exploration of the foundations of a true Catholic education."--Veronica Burchard, Vice President for Education Programs, Sophia Institute for Teachers, Bedford, NH"Every Catholic educator and school administer should read and re-read this fine book."--Dr. Jason West, President and Academic Dean, Newman Theological College, Edmonton, AB, Canada "This engaging book combines incisive appraisal and exposition with inspiring encouragement and exhortation."--Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., Dominican Province of St. Joseph, New York, NY Ryan N. S. Topping earned a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Merrimack, NH. He is the author of Happiness and Wisdom (CUA Press, 2012), Rebuilding Catholic Culture (Sophia Institute Press, 2013), and Renewing the Mind: A Reader in the Philosophy of Catholic Education (CUA Press, 2015).

The great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev set for himself the task of revealing to the western world the distinctive elements of Russian philosophy: its existential nature, eschatologism, religious anarchism, and preoccupation with the idea of Divine Humanity. In the present collection of essays (the first volume of Berdyaev's essays ever to appear in English translation), he attempts to define "the new religious consciousness" as it emerged in Russia in the first decade of the 20th century. Berdyaev, like Merezhkovsky and Blok (among others), believed that the dawn of the new century would bring an end to the old atheistic and positivistic world-view and the beginning of a new era of the spirit. The other essays treat such figures as Tolstoy, Solovyov, Rozanov, Bely, Florensky, and Bulgakov--all of them giants of Russian religious thought. "Nikolai Berdyaev's essays, like his longer works, are always insightful, penetrating, passionate, committed--expressions of the whole person. They are as intensely alive now as when they were first written. In them Berdyaev enters into genuine dialogue with his fellow thinkers from the great period of Russian religious philosophy. We are indebted to Boris Jakim for the excellence of both the selection and the translation."--RICHARD PEVEAR, translator of War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov "Nikolai Berdyaev managed to play two roles in the Russian religious renaissance of the twentieth century. He was a passionate participant in the movement, but also one of its astute critics. His genius in both roles is on full display in this collection of essays assembled and beautifully translated by Boris Jakim. Berdyaev's portraits of his peers provide us with a concise, colorful, and deep-thinking compendium of all the main themes that occupied the Russian religious thinkers of his generation--the last generation to come of age in Russia before the Revolution of 1917. With the centennial of that great upheaval at hand, we can see more clearly than ever the relevance of revisiting religious-philosophical debates which, far from being over, retain their freshness as vehicles for thinking not just about the future of Russia but about the spiritual challenges facing the modern world."--PAUL VALLIER, author of Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov "Nikolai Berdyaev, the existentialist Russian philosopher of freedom and creativity, in this collection of selected essays on key figures representative of Russia's Silver Age, is unabashed in both his praise and criticism of them. Lyrical is his style, his analyses are no less cogent and cutting at times. The translator, Boris Jakim, has taken careful pains in his effort to bring out the best in Berdyaev's literary and social criticism as he discusses the thought of such notables as Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov, Vasily Rozanov, Lev Shestov, Alexander Blok, Pavel Florensky, and Sergius Bulgakov, along with a penetrating essay on theosophy and anthroposophy in Russia."--ROBERT F. SLESINSKI, author of Pavel Florensky: A Metaphysics of Love

Jean Hani's The Black Virgin: A Marian Mystery differs from his previous writings through its sharper theological focus. In Hani's view, the key to the enigma of the Black Virgin was given at Lourdes by Mary herself: in declaring herself The Immaculate Conception, she initiated us into the Marian Mystery in all its profundity. And it is precisely through an apprehension of the Mystery as a whole that the ultimate meaning of the Black Virgin can be grasped. Chapters include: The Black Icon-Regina Mundi-The Mother of God-"I am Black but Beautiful"-Woman "Through his research into hidden or lost meanings, Jean Hani has revealed and restored to our attention the most 'initiatic' dimensions of the Christian religion." Jean Borella, author of The Secret of the Christian Way, and The Crisis of Religious Symbolism (forthcoming from Angelico Press) Jean Hani (1917-2012), former professor emeritus at the University of Amiens, was the founder of the Centre de Recherche sur l'Antiquité Classique and a frequent contributor to the journal Connaissance des Religions. After writing his PhD thesis on the influence of Egyptian thought upon Plutarch, he produced annotated translations of the latter's writings for the well-known Collection Budé. Later he became known for his mastery of traditional hermeneutics and exegesis, and his broad knowledge in the field of comparative religion. Hani's writing is sensitive to the predicament of those moderns who seek a firm foundation in traditional Christian values, while striving also to integrate into that foundation whatever of value can be salvaged from the contemporary world. His findings were presented in four important works now available from Angelico Press in translation: the present volume, along with Divine Craftsmanship (Preliminaries to a Spirituality of Work), The Divine Liturgy (Insights into its Mystery), and The Symbolism of the Christian Temple.

Can the medieval world still speak to the modern? The implicit answer in Bede Jarrett's remarkable work, Social Theories of the Middle Ages, is a resounding "yes". Fascinating as a purely historical study, it serves also to present the foundation whereby

Joan Windham's Sixty Saints for Girls contains all her stories of girl and woman saints from her other books, with a number of new ones added. The stores are arranged by date, beginning with Our Lady's mother, St. Anne, and finishing with another Anne, Anne de Guigne (this Anne, who died in 1922, aged 10, has not been canonized, but she was declared Venerable on March 3, 1990 by Pope John Paul II). In between is a lovely mix of saints, young and old, princesses and pilgrims, mothers and grandmothers and nuns: a goose-girl and a horse-dealer's daughter; a girl who was kidnapped by pirates, a veterinarian, and (believe it or not) a ventriloquist! These stories are ideally suited to inspire readers to fall in love with virtue. No child reading them will ever suppose that saints are all cut to one pattern or that holiness is less interesting than bad behavior. Anyone who wants to know what a saint is really like will get a clear and beautiful picture by reading these accounts, and they can be enjoyed over and over again by children of all ages, and by adults alike.

The prayer of the heart is one of the dearest treasures of Christianity. It transforms any prayer by the fire of God's love, allowing for an immersion in Christ whereby He is able to communicate to us the Holy Spirit. In his new book Praying with the Heart: The Little Way to Jesus, Jean Khoury entrusts to us the secret of the sustainable and successful way of practicing prayer of the heart. While remaining rooted in the living Tradition, the book offers new and abundant practical insights as well, making it a useful contemporary manual to this ancient spiritual practice. No Christian who loves Jesus and longs for the Holy Spirit should ignore this fruitful means of prayer. Jean Khoury obtained his BA in Philosophy and MA in Spiritual Theology from the Institut Catholique de Toulouse and the Pontifical Theological Faculty Teresianum. He is currently completing his PhD in Spiritual Theology at the Angelicum, Rome. Through his work and writing, Jean has become a respected authority on mysticism and the spiritual life. He has lectured and led retreats throughout the world, and in 2003 founded the School of Mary to promote formation in the spiritual life.

The history of education can easily be described as theme and variation on one motif: reform. From Plato's critique of the Sophists in Protagoras to John Henry Newman's considerations of education in The Idea of a University in 1854, from the educational projects of Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Loris Malaguzzi in the 20th century to Kieran Egan's call for a reimagination of education in the 21st, educators and philosophers have regularly turned to two fundamental questions: "What is the purpose of an education?" and "How is it to be achieved?" This is the essence of Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man. For Schiller, the salvation of education--and of man--lies in the realization of Beauty. Only Beauty, in his thought, has the ability to ennoble both thinking and sentiment, and only Beauty can allow the human person to awaken what he calls the "play impulse," which manifests itself as "the extinction of time in time and the reconciliation of becoming and absolute being, of variation with identity" (Fourteenth Letter). Play is important to Schiller because play returns the human person to himself: "For, to declare once and for all, Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing" (Fifteenth Letter). It is important in times such as ours that we turn to philosophies of education that emphasize not the utilitarian desires of governments and corporations but the simultaneously transcendent and immanent qualities that reveal to us what it is to be human. Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man is such a text. Schiller does not provide us with a pedagogical strategy, nor does he offer us a definitive answer as to what such an aesthetic education would look like. But he does indicate where we should seek the right kinds of questions. (From the Foreword.)

This is the time for a new politics, a new economics. Not As the World Gives, drawing on the Church's two millennia of reflection on the Gospel, especially in the encyclicals from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus, shows us the nature of society by showing us ourselves. We are beings created to give and receive -- called to "walk towards the true freedom that Christ taught us in the Beatitudes," as Pope Francis expressed it. There is no peace without justice, but neither can there be justice without love. Far from being an impractical dream, Catholic social doctrine can transform the way we work, the way we govern, and the way we treat the natural world. What emerges from this sequel to the author's The Radiance of Being is a vision of integration and wholeness, a society both divine and human, and a "humanism open to the absolute."

Michael Martin's Meditations in Times of Wonder is a collection of what might be called "postmodern metaphysical poetry." It inhabits a space characterized by love and anger, by pathos and laughter, by perplexity and grace. "Michael Martin's poetry, like that of St. John of the Cross, is animated by a true mysticism which penetrates the mist of mystery and heals the schism that rends faith from reason." -- Joseph Pearce "Meditations in Times of Wonder hums the harmonies between the mundane and transcendent, between the natural and the divine, between time-bound and timeless truths. The effect of many of the poems is that of a Pre-Raphaelite painting -- rich, allusive, nourishing, and evocative." -- Karen Swallow Prior