Mexican statues and paintings of figures like the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Lord of Chalma are endowed with sacred presence and the power to perform miracles. Millions of devotees visit these miraculous images to request miracles for health, employment, children, and countless everyday matters. When requests are granted, devotees reciprocate with votive offerings. Collages, photographs, documents, texts, milagritos, hair and braids, clothing, retablos, and other representative objects cover walls at many shrines. Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico studies such petitionary devotion-primarily through extensive fieldwork at several shrines in Guanajuato, Jalisco, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi, and Zacatecas. Graziano is interested in retablos not only as extraordinary works of folk art but: as Mexican expressions of popular Catholicism comprising a complex of beliefs, rituals, and material culture; as archives of social history; and as indices of a belief system that includes miraculous intercession in everyday life. Previous studies focus almost exclusively on commissioned votive paintings, but Graziano also considers the creative ex votos made by the votants themselves. Among the many miraculous images treated in the book are the Cristo Negro de Otatitlan, Nino del Cacahuatito, Senor de Chalma, and the Virgen de Guadalupe. The book is written in two voices, one analytical to provide an understanding of miracles, miraculous images, and votive offerings, and the other narrative to bring the reader closer to lived experiences at the shrines. This book appears at a moment of transition, when retablos are disappearing from church walls and beginning to appear in museum exhibitions; when the artistic value of retablos is gaining prominence; when the commercial value of retablos is increasing, particularly among private collectors outside of Mexico; and when traditional retablo painters are being replaced by painters with a more commercial and less religious approach to their trade. Graziano's book thus both records a disappearing tradition and charts the way in which it is being transformed.

It is far more common nowadays to see references to the afterlife-angels playing harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God among heavenly clouds, the fires of hell-in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological scholarship. Speculation about death and the afterlife seems to embarrass many of America's less-evangelical theologians, yet as Greg Garrett shows, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in what happens to us after death. The rock music of U2, Iron Maiden, and AC/DC, the storylines of TV's Lost, South Park, and Fantasy Island, the implied theology in films such as The Corpse Bride, Ghost, and Field of Dreams, the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings, and the supernatural landscape of ghosts, shades, and waystations in the Harry Potter novels all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. Greg Garrett scrutinizes a wide array of cultural productions to find the stories being told about what awaits us: depictions of heaven, hell, and purgatory, angels, demons, and ghosts, all offering at least an implied theology of life after death. The citizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in between, are telling us about what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if sometimes inchoate-beliefs. They teach us about reward and punishment, about divine assistance in this life, about diabolical interference, and about other ways of being after we die. Especially fascinating are the frequent appearances of purgatory, limbo, and other in-between places. Such beliefs are dismissed by the Protestant majority, and quietly disparaged even by many Catholics. Yet many pop culture narratives represent departed souls who must earn some sort of redemption, complete some unfinished task, before passing on. Garrett's incisive analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope to find after death.

Maps and Meaning is rooted in the authors' experience as clergy and chaplains and is relevant to those looking for a fresh perspective on biblical narratives related to the role of the priest, patients, soldiers, and others who spend time "outside the camp." Drawing on diverse fields, from neuroscience to anthropology, the authors consider the geographical, interpersonal, temporal, and spiritual transitions individuals experience when they move "in" and "out of the camp" and the impact their time outside the camp has on family and community. They offer a unique perspective on self-care for caregivers of different disciplines who negotiate these transitions in their work. And they explore the lives and transitions of patients and returning veterans. Drawing on contemporary explorations of stigma, the authors raise communal questions related to healthcare, returning veterans, and incarcerated people. They propose a societal approach that embraces the inevitability of life's ebbs and flow and that draws maps to facilitate these journeys.

From 1962 to 1965, in perhaps the most important religious event of the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council met to plot a course for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. After thousands of speeches, resolutions, and votes, the Council issued sixteen official documents on topics ranging from divine revelation to relations with non-Christians. But the meaning of the Second Vatican Council has been fiercely contested since before it was even over, and the years since its completion have seen a battle for the soul of the Church waged through the interpretation of Council documents. The Reception of Vatican II looks at the sixteen conciliar documents through the lens of those battles. Paying close attention to reforms and new developments, the essays in this volume show how the Council has been received and interpreted over the course of the more than fifty years since it concluded. The contributors to this volume represent various schools of thought but are united by a commitment to restoring the view that Vatican II should be interpreted and implemented in line with Church Tradition. The central problem facing Catholic theology today, these essays argue, is a misreading of the Council that posits a sharp break with previous Church teaching. In order to combat this reductive way of interpreting the Council, these essays provide a thorough, instructive overview of the debates it inspired.

Relentless Gratitude carefully weaves together timeless biblical truths with findings from scientific studies on the life-changing power of gratitude.

You cannot go wrong leading a life of gratitude.

In almost every conceivable scenario, it works. With gratitude, you can improve your health and well-being. Gratitude can improve your productivity at work, relationships with people, and most importantly, your relationship with God.

During tough times, gratitude brings hope and makes us resilient in the face of adversity. Gratitude is akin to a moral fertilizer that fuels the growth of positive traits—so much so that it is often referred to as the mother of all virtues.

Relentless Gratitude carefully weaves together timeless biblical truths with findings from evolving scientific studies on the subject gratitude. It delivers a profound perspective on gratitude that promises to transform your life in a lasting way.

The author shares insights on the importance of leading a life of gratitude, especially in times of hardship and uncertainty. Relentless Gratitude unveils the blessedness of a grateful heart and brings to life the following life lessons:

It is the gut-wrenching experiences we live through that shape us into the people we are today-pliable instruments in the hands of the Heavenly Potter. Through her own hard trials, Sarah Jane Kellogg has come to believe that out of the anguish of the soul-the mind, will, and emotions-revelation is birthed.

In an inspirational memoir, Sarah Jane unpacks the incredible true story of a family tragedy kept secret for decades. As a child, Sarah Jane reveals how she was told her grandparents died in an automobile accident, only to discover later that their lives were taken by a family member. While relying on the memories of her three older cousins and other observers, Sarah Jane provides glimpses into her loving family, the mental illness that ravaged their lives, the emotional wounds that took years to heal, and her own personal grief experiences shared to help other believers find God's pathway to reconciliation after tragedy.

There Is Life after Tragedy is the true story of one family's faithful journey as a long-held secret is revealed that proves God's glory is always within reach, even in difficult circumstances.

Vincent de Paul, the Lazarist Mission, and French Catholic Reform offers a major re-assessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional explanations for de Paul's prominence in the devot reform movement that emerged in the wake of the Wars of Religion, the volume explores how he turned a personal vocational desire to evangelize the rural poor of France into a congregation of secular missionaries, known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Lazarists, with three inter-related strands of pastoral responsibility: the delivery of missions, the formation and training of clergy, and the promotion of confraternal welfare. Alison Forrestal further demonstrates that the structure, ethos, and works that de Paul devised for the Congregation placed it at the heart of a significant enterprise of reform that involved a broad set of associates in efforts to transform the character of devotional belief and practice within the church. The central questions of the volume therefore concern de Paul's efforts to create, characterize, and articulate a distinctive and influential vision for missionary life and work, both for himself and for the Lazarist Congregation, and Forrestal argues that his prominence and achievements depended on his remarkable ability to exploit the potential for association and collaboration within the devot environment of seventeenth-century France in enterprising and systematic ways. This is the first study to assess de Paul's activities against the wider backdrop of religious reform and Bourbon rule, and to reconstruct the combination of ideas, practices, resources, and relationships that determined his ability to pursue his ambitions. A work of forensic detail and complex narrative, Vincent de Paul, the Lazarist Mission, and French Catholic Reform is the product of years of research in ecclesiastical and state archives. It offers a wholly fresh perspective on the challenges and opportunities entailed in the promotion of religious reform and renewal in seventeenth-century France.

A breakdown of the major elements of the Old Testament with references to books and verses are contained in this 6-page laminated guide. Each book is broken down by: author, major characters, date written, setting, main themes, and a listing of major events with book and verse references.

Gold Nuggets from God's Mine is a devotional resource intended for use every day of the year, with an additional devotion for use during a leap year. Gold Nuggets is an extraction of the rich resources and revelation available in God's Word. The Bible, like a gold mine, contains precious gems that are useful for building strong, successful, and prosperous lives.

In Gold Nuggets from God's Mine, these precious gems from God's Word are mined, polished, and provided for daily spiritual nourishing. The author hopes that through the reading of Gold Nuggets, faith will mature and lives will be changed for God's glory. So, let us begin the exploration of God's gold mine, and may our lives be enriched with God's treasure.

One of the twentieth-century's masterpieces of Catholic theology.

In 2018, at the end of a speech Rod Dreher gave in Genoa, an artist gave him an engraving by his own hand. In broken English, the artist explained that he was in his studio that afternoon when the Holy Spirit told him that he should come hear Rod Dreher, and give him a particular drawing of an obscure medieval saint. None of this made sense to Dreher until two years later, lost in depression and confusion, the saint - a Tuscan hermit named Galgano - appeared in Dreher's life again under circumstances that did not at all seem coincidental, sending Dreher on a search for God's will for his life.

A lifetime of experiencing mystical events and collecting stories from others has solidified Dreher's Christian faith, and convinced him that God reveals himself to us all the time - but we in the modern West have lost our capacity to sense God's presence. How did this happen to us, but not to other peoples in the world? Can it be reversed? If so, how?

LIVING IN WONDER tells the story of how the West became "disenchanted", and gives practical advice - based on history, cultural anthropology, and neuroscience, as well as the testimonies of monks of the ancient Church - on how to regain one's sense of wonder and awareness of the divine. Told through real-life stories of people who experienced miracles, visitations by saints and angels, and in some cases wrestled with demons, this book will open your mind to the reality that the material world is not all there is, and that God is not as silent and as elusive as you might think. You just need to learn how to see with clear eyes.

Join Rod Dreher as he explores why 'contemporary' Christianity seems so empty, and why so many young people are walking away from it. He argues that the enchanted sacramental vision of the church of the first millennium is still true, only hidden, and that the experience of God is something that can happen to anyone - if they are willing to take the risk.

Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body and mind to further the progress of individual Christians. Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety, Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels. The book begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the first, developed by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions and Christian culture in late antiquity.

A Year of Devotional Readings to Help You Abide in Him

Understanding God's heart is the key to understanding life. For, it is his heart that designed redemption through Jesus. From his heart sprang the beauty of world, the wonder of the universe, the creativity of all humankind, and a specific love for you. His heart is the blueprint of all human hearts, and knowing his heart reveals the origin of goodness and bounty he endowed to us.

In Knowing the Heart of God, 365 entries will take you closer to our vastly amazing and tenderly intimate God. You will encounter a daily instalment of encouragement and insight, guidance and wisdom to:

• Understand the heart of God and your own heart
• Discover the purpose of your heart's deep desires
• Unravel the dynamics between parents and children, husbands and wives
• Fight the spiritual battle for your heart
• Connect intimately with the Father each day

God longs for you to know his heart, to tap into his love and plans for you. He designed you to long for the same. Knowing the Heart of God will satisfy your hardwired need to know him and will take you? Day by day? Closer and closer to the God who loves you.

What if there was a way to put a stop to your worrying before it steals your peace of mind? In The Answer to Anxiety, Joyce Meyer reveals truth from God’s Word that shows us how to focus on God when we’re feeling unsettled. She also teaches readers practical steps based on Scripture that we can take when we need to face our fears.

God doesn’t want you to live with worry and anxiety. And when you understand that He has a plan for you, you can experience the life-changing peace He offers.

Raimundo C. Barreto Jr. is assistant professor of world Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. His main research interests are the social and political theology of the Reformation and the history of Protestantism in Brazil. Currently he coordinates the research group Intellectual Origins of Mission Protestantism in Brazil.

Rightly understood and rightly communicated, the Christian faith is one of great joy. It is an invitation to God s kingdom, where tears are replaced by laughter and longing hearts find their purpose and their home. This is the heart of the gospel: God s search to reclaim us and love us as his own. But have we truly grasped this? Those of us who have disdained Christianity as a religion of bigotry---have we repudiated the genuine article or merely demonstrated our own prejudice and ignorance? Those of us who are Christians---have we deeply apprehended the mission of Jesus, and do our ways and character faithfully reflect his beauty? From the nature of God, to the human condition, to the work of Jesus, to God s coming kingdom, and all that lies between, how well do we understand the foundational truths of Christianity and their implications? The Faith is a book for our troubled times and for decades to come, for Christians and non-Christians alike. Colson considered The Faith to be his legacy book to the Christian world: a thought-provoking, soul-searching, and powerful manifesto of the great, historical central truths of Christianity that have sustained believers through the centuries. Brought to immediacy with vivid, true stories, here is what Christianity is really about and why it is a religion of hope, redemption, and beauty."

In America, as in Britain, the Victorian era enjoyed a long life, stretching from the 1830s to the 1910s. It marked the transition from a pre-modern to a modern way of life. Ellen White's life (1827-1915) spanned those years and then some, but the last three months of a single year, 1844, served as the pivot for everything else. When the Lord failed to return on October 22, as she and other followers of William Miller had predicted, White did not lose heart. Fired by a vision she experienced, White played the principal role in transforming a remnant minority of Millerites into the sturdy sect that soon came to be known as the Seventh-day Adventists. She and a small group of fellow believers emphasized a Saturday Sabbath and an imminent Advent. Today that flourishing denomination posts twenty million adherents globally and one of the largest education, hospital, publishing, and missionary outreach programs in the world. Over the course of her life White generated 50,000 manuscript pages and letters, and produced 40 books that have enjoyed extremely wide circulation. She ranks as one of the most gifted and influential religious leaders in American history, and Ellen Harmon White tells her story in a new and remarkably informative way. Some of the contributors identify with the Adventist tradition, some with other Christian denominations, and some with no religious tradition at all. Taken together their essays call for White to be seen as a significant figure in American religious history and for her to be understood her within the context of her times.

By almost any reckoning, the Ninety-Five Theses ranks as the most important text of the Reformation, if not in substance at least in impact. As the anniversary of their posting on the church door in Wittenberg approaches, what better way to remember and recognize the occasion than to make this important text more easily understood by twenty-first-century readers? Timothy J. Wengert, one of the best-know interpreters of Luther and Lutheranism active today, sets his newly translated Ninety-Five Theses in its historical context with a detailed introduction and illuminating study notes. To help the reader understand the context and the import of the Ninety-Five Theses more deeply, Wengert provides two more related and essential documents: Luther's Letter to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (to which he appended a copy of the Theses) and Luther's 1518 Sermon on Indulgences and Grace (written to inform the German-speaking public of his view of indulgences). The book is simply constructed with introductions and notes for each of the writings, as well as a study guide with questions for individual or group reflection and conversation.

Taking the Long View argues in a series of engagingly written essays that remembering the past is essential for men and women who want to function effectively in the present--for without some knowledge of their own past, neither individuals nor institutions know where they have been or where they are going. The book illustrates its thesis with tough-minded examples from the Church's life and thought, ranging from more abstract problems like the theoretical role of historical criticism to such painfully concrete issues as the commandment of Jesus to forgive unforgivable wrongs.