If going to Mass and taking Communion has become just another routine for you, don’t assume that indifference is an ordinary part of growing mature in the Faith. On the contrary: your love of Communion should be growing stronger. You can strengthen it now with this wise book from a little-known saint, Peter Julian Eymard.
St. Peter shows you how surprisingly easy it is to break out of the dullness that can settles into your soul, obscuring the glory of meeting your Lord in Communion. You’ll learn from him how to approach Holy Communion not as a duty, but as a preparation for Heaven. His direction can help you, too, to draw on the spiritual resources God gives you in every Communion. You’ll find valuable directions about what to do when you feel unworthy to receive Communion, as well as useful — and unexpected — advice about how to make your post-Communion thanksgivings more fruitful.
Through Scripture and holy logic, St. Peter Julian Eymard will impress upon you exactly how important Holy Communion is for growth in the spiritual life. Now is the time for you to take up this brief book and let this holy man show you how to transform your Communions into the bountiful sources of grace God wants them to be.
Transform your Communions from routine observances to dynamic encounters with the living God! 160 pages, paperback. Quantity
Written early in this century by Rev. A. G. Sertillanges, a priest who lived in Jerusalem, this acclaimed devotional classic gives you vivid and dramatic details not included in the Gospel:
With Jesus, you'll be jostled by crowds as you enter Jerusalem, choke on the dust of the narrow streets, experience the exotic oriental smells of the city at festival time, share the Last Supper with the disciples, stare into the face of Jesus' accusers, and be there as He dies on the Cross.
Read it slowly and prayerfully. The vivid details and the gripping narrative will soon take over: you'll find yourself engaged in a personal retreat, an interior pilgrimage, and a profound meditation on the love and sufferings of Jesus on the Cross. Paperback, 252 pages, Sophia Institute Press.
Peacetime led those soldiers and sailors to put aside this powerful wartime prayer book as they entered a world rendered more secure because of their sacrifices.
Sophia Institute Press has published this great treasure as Fulton Sheen's Wartime Prayer Book, in a pocket-sized edition similar to the original.
196 pp.
It’s a common but unrecognized problem: without even realizing it, you may have allowed your spiritual life to be distracted and diverted by practices and assumptions which are in fact foreign to authentic faith. That’s why you need Hilda Graef’s Commonsense Book of Catholic Prayer and Meditation! In it, she gives you positive ways to avoid pitfalls and build your spiritual life on the solid rock of truth.
It’s deceptively easy (especially for committed Catholics) to fall into these spiritual traps. You may become frustrated and let your efforts to follow Christ fall by the wayside because you think that your prayers and devotions should make you feel a certain way, and they don’t. Or you may take something as an answer to prayer simply because it came to you after your prayer, even though it brings trouble and difficulty into your life. Graef also details here how quickly you can succumb to sinful habits of injustice, pride, lack of charity, and many others — without even recognizing it’s happening.
Graef, an internationally respected Catholic author, here gives you the spiritual resources you need to clear away these and other roadblocks to your spiritual progress. She shows you how to use common sense in your approach to faith — while remaining loyal to the Church’s teaching in its fullness. 208 pages, paperback. Sophia institute Press - Spring 2002
Marigold Hunt, author of A Life of Our Lord for Children, here continues the tale of Jesus and His Church by retelling for children the events reported in The Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke’s account of the dangerous early days of the Church.
Focusing on the deeds and experiences of Sts. Peter, Paul, Luke, and Barnabas, author Hunt shows children that the Catholic Church which today seems so ancient and established was born in turbulent times, when merely professing belief in Christ could get you killed — and not by rowdies and brigands, but by public officials carrying out their sworn duty.
Time and again, the apostles wind up in jail (some for years), and time and again God frees them by miracles of one sort or another. With Christian hope and great good cheer, they take up again the task with which Christ charged them just before He ascended into Heaven: “Go forth and teach all nations.”
By foot, on horseback, and on frail craft tossed in stormy seas, they do just that, preaching and teaching their way across much of the known world, winning converts and establishing churches in Palestine, Crete, Cyprus, Malta, Phoenicia, the lands that are now Turkey, and even in Rome itself, the pagan capital of the anti-Christian Empire.
Along the way, the apostles heal the sick, cast out devils, and work other miracles. They face down mobs, evade murder plots, and defend themselves in courts in city after city. In the midst of it all, Peter — whose authority as the first Pope was accepted by all of the apostles — settles disputes that arise among the Christians and between the new Churches.
All this and more is told in The First Christians, the thrilling — and true — saga of the lives and works of the first apostles of Jesus. 192 pages paperback Sophia Institute Press, Fall 2004.
Saints have over the years inspired many tales that go beyond what we know about them. These pious fictions are delightful and can even be instructive. For the lovely legends of the saints that have come down to us reflect not only the holiness but also the gaiety of the saints. These Irish legends are in that tradition. Patrick, Brigid, Columcille — “the three brightest jewels in Ireland’s crown” — are here, and Canice, Finbarr, Cormac, Finnian, Brendan, Gall, and others.
Here’s the moving story of what happened when Patrick baptized the daughters of the King of Connaught and the shocking tale of the spike that pierced Aengus, the courageous Prince of Munster, just as Patrick baptized him.You’ll read about the spilled jar of milk that led Adamnan to become the Abbot of Iona; how Colman’s alarm clocks (a mouse and a rooster) took turns waking him; and a dozen or so other charming tales.
Alice Curtayne brings to these legends of Irish saints a rich grasp and a deep love of the Catholic faith of her native Ireland. She has unerringly chosen stories which will appeal to readers young and old and she tells them with the poetry and feeling that mark the work of every true Irish storyteller. 176 pages paperback Sophia Institute Press, Fall 2004.
Hatred, murder, terrorism, and war spring from the sins of men. But why does God let innocent children suffer from the effects of these evils? Why does He let earthquakes devastate cities, despair drive souls to suicide, and cancer kill humans and animals?
You and I would prevent these evils if we could. Why doesn’t God?
If He’s good — as our Faith claims — why doesn’t He stay the hand of those about to do evil? Why doesn’t He keep little ones from violence and death? Indeed, how could He have allowed evil to enter the universe in the first place?
In these pages, Benedictine author Dom Bruno Webb brings you face-to-face with evil. Without fudging or flinching, he answers these hard questions and more. In this slim volume, he gives the most convincing explanation of the mystery of evil that’s available today.
You’ll finally come to understand the source of the appalling violence and savagery that lies close to the heart of nature; you’ll discover why the insensate Earth and its inhabitants all groan in pain; you’ll see why, even before they were conceived, Adam’s offspring fell with him, and why God stood by, permitting all this to happen.
Was God helpless? Indifferent? Outgunned? In these wise pages, Dom Bruno Webb shows that evil never defeats God.
On the contrary, He uses suffering to destroy the very sin which gives birth to evil. Here you’ll come to understand why, despite the evil that wracks the Earth and all the beings on it, God nonetheless assured Dame Julian of Norwich that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
Here’s the book that answers, once and for all, the question of why God permits evil. It will enlighten and console all the suffering and sorrowful souls who are puzzled and troubled by the evil that suffuses our universe.
Better: it explains how to transform suffering into deeds that God will use to ensure that finally and indeed, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” In other words, these pages are not only an explanation of evil; they’re a remedy for it, a remedy you can begin using today. 176 pages paperback Sophia Institute Press, Fall 2004.
Motherhood and home schooling had overwhelmed her. The house was dirty, the laundry undone. Holly felt frustrated, discouraged, and alone. She couldn’t find time to snuggle and have fun with her five children or to go out with her husband. Yes, she loved Philip and she did love God, but she had come to resent Philip’s freedom and she almost never found time for prayer.
Today, everything’s better. Holly still home schools, but the house is cleaner, she gets more done, and the kids are happier. There’s less stress, less strife, and less housework. Holly’s been healed of past wounds that troubled her soul and her marriage. Best of all, she spends at least an hour each day in prayer and time each evening with Philip.
Holly brought about these changes with what she calls her Mother’s Rule of Life, a pattern for living that combines the spiritual wisdom of the monastery with the practical wisdom of motherhood.
olly’s Rule is not just another set of schedules; it’s a way for Christian mothers to answer God’s call to holiness.
ith the help of your own Rule, you can get control of your own household, grow closer to God, come to love your husband more, and raise up good Christian children. In these wise and practical pages, Holly shows you how.
Do you want to be a better wife and mother? To have more order in your life? To grow in union with God? Are you desperate yet?
With your own Mother’s Rule of Life, you’ll transform motherhood and its burdens into the joyful vocation it’s meant to be. Learn from Holly Pierlot how to craft a Rule that’s right for you and your family. Then use that Rule to help God draw you, your husband, and each of your children into Heaven. 224 pages paperback Sophia Institute Press, Fall 2004. Quantity
Martin Luther ignited the Protestant Reformation by tacking ninety-five anti-Catholic theses to a church door in Germany. Now Dave Armstrong counters with ninety-five pro-Catholic passages from an authority far greater than Luther: the Bible itself.
Protestants (and even many Catholics) will be surprised to see Catholicism so strongly supported by these Catholic verses.
Not Armstrong! As a Bible-believing Protestant, he studied Scripture intently. There he encountered countless Catholic verses that convinced him that the Bible is a Catholic book. It was written by Catholics, preserved by Catholics for more than 1,400 years before Luther was born, and even today confirms the claims of the Catholic Church. “That’s why,” says Armstrong, “early Protestant opinion was virtually identical to today’s Catholic beliefs.”
With humility and care, Armstrong here explains ninety-five key Bible passages that confound all who would use Scripture to criticize the Church and Her doctrines. These are the verses that have drawn so many serious believers — including Armstrong — out of their Protestant congregations and into the Catholic Church.
Armstrong shows that a fair-minded reading of each of these passages (and of the whole Bible) supports the Catholic position on the key issues that divide Protestants from Catholics. Here is Biblical evidence that Catholicism is right about the nature of baptism, the communion of saints, the Eucharist, and the Church; the authority of the Pope, the Bible, and tradition; the salvific role of faith, good works, relics, purgatory, and Mary; the immorality of divorce and contraception; and much more.
The Catholic Verses is essential reading for all persons seeking to understand God’s word in the Bible and to discover the Church that continues to preach His word faithfully today. 256 pages paperback Sophia Institute Press, Fall 2004.
Our times cry out for saints! But how can we grow holy? In these pages, the wise Jesuit priest Raoul Plus teaches us two ways to do so.
First, he explains how we must come to see ourselves as nothing, so we can practice a life of generosity — a life in which all we have and all we do is for God . . . without reservation.
Then he shows how, through recollection and complete devotion to prayer, we can achieve intimate union with God, even in the midst of troubles and distractions.
Does it take strong souls to attain such holy ends?
Certainly. But if you were not strong — and called by God already — you never would have begun reading these lines about a book that promises to teach you how to make “progress in divine union.” Clearly, union with God is something you desire. For souls like you these pages were written. 144 pages paperback Sophia Institute Press, Fall 2004.
"The most amazing combination of experience, common sense, and down-to-earth sanctity that has yet been printed." —Sister Mary de Lourdes, St. Joseph's College
First published fifty years ago, How to Raise Good Catholic Children is a rare treat for today’s parents: a wise and readable book on child care that derives its wisdom from the Catholic home rather than from psychologists.
Author Mary Reed Newland here draws on her own experiences as the mother of seven to show how the classic Christian principles of sanctity can be translated into terms easily applied to children — even to the very young.
Because it’s rooted in experience, not in theory, nothing that Mrs. Newland suggests is impossible or extraordinary. In fact, as you reflect on your experiences with your own children, you’ll quickly agree that hers is an excellent commonsense approach to raising good Catholic children.
Let Mrs. Newland show you how to introduce even your littlest ones to God and develop in your growing children virtues such as:
224 pages paperback Sophia Institute Press, Fall 2004.
In its mother’s womb, a tiny baby grows, explores the waters, and talks with the angel who is there.
These gentle illustrations and wise words tell the story of that baby and the angel in the waters . . . a story that will delight all young children, because the journey from conception to birth is their story, too. 48 pages, full color, paperback. Sophia Institute Press 2005. A wonderful book!
When author David Carlin was a young man, it was scandalous for a good Catholic to be anything but a good Democrat. In the pews, pubs, and union halls of America’s cities, millions of poor European immigrants and their children pledged allegiance to the Church of Rome and the party of FDR.
All that changed in the 1960s, with the rise of a new kind of Democrat: wealthy, secular, ideological. Even as Carlin served the party he loved — twelve years as a Rhode Island state senator and once a candidate for Congress — he could only watch in dismay as its national leaders abandoned their blue-collar, pro-life, and religious constituencies and took up with NOW, Hollywood, and the abortion lobby.
So complete has been this transformation that we no longer speak of a natural alliance between Catholics and the Democratic Party. Indeed, Carlin here asks whether today it’s even possible to be both a faithful Catholic and a Democratic true believer.
A veteran sociologist, philosophy professor, and author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, Carlin shows how his party and his religion have taken opposite sides in the Culture War. On issues of human life, sex, faith, morality, suffering — and the public policies that stem from them — the modern, secularist Democratic Party has become the enemy of Catholicism; indeed, of all traditional religions.
Carlin shatters the excuses that Catholic Democratic politicians employ in a vain attempt to reconcile their faith and their votes, and then, with what he calls the “political equivalent of a broken heart,” he examines his own political conscience. As a faithful Catholic and a Democrat approaching his seventieth year, must he now leave the party he’s called home since birth?
David Carlin’s arguments challenge all religious Democrats to ask themselves the same question.
256 pages paperback Quantity
The greatest test of your faith won’t come from Bible-quoting Protestants or polite young Mormons on bicycles! No, your greatest test will be whether you will trust God when you suffer, or whether you will, in the words of Job’s wife, “curse God and die.” In Suffering: The Catholic Answer, Dom Hubert van Zeller helps you prepare now for all your sufferings by enab- ling you to see them with the eyes of the Spirit.
Van Zeller, the wise author of Holiness for Housewives, maintains that you can understand the mystery of suffering only by means of the Passion of Christ. In this book, he explores the fourteen Stations of the Cross, plumbing the inner meanings of each in order to reveal why there has to be pain, and what you should do (and should not do) about it. In his explorations of the Stations, van Zeller finds a great deal to help you in dark times. He reminds you that suffering, properly understood, cannot and should not extinguish happiness, and shows you how to accept your crosses with love. He reveals how you can learn from Christ Himself to turn your failures into victories, and to alleviate others’ suffering by imitating Mary’s compassion.
Above all, van Zeller shows you that suffering has a purpose, and he uses Christ’s Passion to sharpen your vision of life’s meaning. With help from this perceptive book, you’ll learn how not to grow disheartened or to give in to discouragement, but to see your crosses for what they are, and to bear them with perseverance.
by Hubert van Zeller 144 pgs ppbk Quantity
by Jacques Maritain Compiled & Edited by James Kelly
Some Americans claim we should exclude Christian values from the public square. On the contrary, argues philosopher Jacques Maritain, good Christians make good citizens.
They live by gospel values: honesty, integrity, and compassion. They obey the law. They resist the selfishness that unbelief and materialism breed. And they subordinate their own interests to the common good.
No wonder, says Maritain, that American democracy — which arose from a Christian people — has served so well and lasted so long.
Here Maritain shows that in a society unleavened by religious ideals, an enduring democracy can never take root. And once a religious people abandons its faith, even the greatest democracy must wither and die. Untethered from transcendent values, democracy becomes little more than a struggle to be won by the most powerful and the ruthless.
The hour is late. Too long have we stood by while politicians promise never to let their religious beliefs influence their political judgments. Too long has a false understanding of democracy cowed us into laying aside our Christian values when we vote.
As Maritain demonstrates in these lucid pages, Christians are vital to democracy. Good Christians make good citizens, and good citizens make strong democracies. If America and her ideals are to endure, says Maritain, Christians and their values must not be excluded from public discourse, but eagerly welcomed into it.
160 pp paperback Quantity
That’s why, over 700 years ago, St. Thomas Aquinas perfected an easy method for his students to memorize most any information, but especially the truths taught by Christ and His Church.
By the time you finish this book, you will have memorized dozens of key teachings of the Church, along with hundreds of precepts, traditions, theological terms, Scripture verses, and other elements of the Faith that every good Catholic needs to know by heart.
Memorize the Faith! will teach you and your children how to remember anything, but it’s particularly useful to those involved in religious education: catechists and converts, CCD teachers, RCIA members, and homeschoolers of all ages.
Pages: 272; Size: 6 X 9 Quantity
