Dedication Promises helps explain to children the significance of their dedication in church and the promises their family and church community made to them on that special day. Featuring easy-to-follow language, bright and inclusive artwork, and four simple prayers, this inspiring book shows young children how important they are to God and to the whole church. Dedication Promises includes a special dedication page in the front of the book and is perfect for gift giving.

The Christian life, concerned with both spirituality and doctrine, aims not at rationally defensible truth but at life-transforming love. Greater understanding of the truth will not settle the restlessness in a human spirit; only the redemptive power of relationship with God can calm the soul. The crux of Kierkegaard's presentation of Christianity is not that doctrine is unimportant, but that it is ultimately insufficient for a life lived in relationship with God. In Contemporary with Christ ,Joshua Cockayne explores the Christian spiritual life with SA,ren Kierkegaard (in the guise of his various pseudonyms) as his guide and analytic theology as his key tool of engagement. Cockayne contends that the Christian life is second-personal : it seeks encounter with a personal God. As Kierkegaard describes, God invites us to "live on the most intimate terms with God." Cockayne argues that this vision of Christian spirituality is deeply practical because it advocates for a certain way of acting and existing. This approach to the Christian life moves from first-reflection, whereby one acquires objective knowledge, to second-reflection, whereby one attains deeper self-understanding, which fortifies one's relationship with God. Individuals encounter Christ through traditional practices: prayer, the Eucharist, and the reading of Scripture. However, experiences of suffering and mortality that mirror Christ's own passion also enliven this life of encounter. Spiritual progress comes through a reorientation of one's will, desire, and self-knowledge. Such progress must ultimately serve the goal of drawing close to God through Christ's presence. Engaging philosophy, theology, and psychology, Cockayne invites us to join in a conversation with Kierkegaard and explore how the spiritual disciplines provide opportunities for relationship with God by becoming contemporary with Christ.

Towards the end of his life, Rudolf Steiner published a series of weekly letters addressed to the members of the Anthroposophical Society. Among them were fourteen letters in which he described the mission of the Archangel Michael, the mighty spiritual being who has accompanied humanity's evolution from primordial times right up to the present day. In this insightful book, Charles Kovacs draws on his knowledge of Steiner's work to provide a deeper understanding of the history and ideas that inform each letter. He shows how the Archangel Michael is the great champion of human freedom in the modern age and how he can help us transcend divisions of national identity to embrace a truly universal view of humanity.

Following on from the success of At Home in Lent, Gordon Giles takes a journey through Advent to Christmas and beyond in the company of familiar seasonal and domestic objects and experiences. Focusing on the everyday stuff we typically associate with this time of year, including some things not so festive, he reflects on their spiritual significance, meaning and message in today's world. Beginning with chapters on journeying and travel, the book moves though major Advent themes of expectation, waiting, mortality and hope to the joy of incarnation and salvation. Praise for At Home in Lent: 'It is a great idea and an easy read.' The Reader 'Well written and thought provoking, this really is a book for personal devotion which will enable us to make an unusual, though worthwhile, journey.' The Methodist Recorder 'An amiable, slightly talkative companion.' Church Times

What does it mean to inhabit the life of liturgy? What does it mean to be inhabited by Christ? This book offers a way to rethink what we do when we pray, so that we do not so much call on God for help but join in a conversation. Readers will learn how to think about God through certain habits and practices: how posture effects our perceptions of God and Christ, how feasting on Christ in the Eucharist shapes our understanding of the body-both our individual bodies and the body of the Church. The author also offers tools for forming a deliberate rule of life to ground readers in the transcendent life of liturgy. Readers will recognize the inseparability of the tables of their homes and the Eucharistic Table, relating daily life with Eucharistic life. Dr. Daniel connects the language of the Book of Common Prayer with the everyday realities of ordinary life, compelling the worshiper to discern how daily practices correspond with or fight against her participation in the Eucharistic economy.

Based on the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), Feasting on the Word Worship Companion: Liturgies for Year C, Volume 2 is an invaluable aid that provides liturgical pieces needed in preparing for worship each week. Written and compiled by a team of eleven ecumenical and seasoned liturgy writers under the creative leadership of Kimberly Bracken Long, this resource offers a multitude of poetic prayers and responsive readings for all parts of worship and is meant to complement existing denominational resources. In addition, the weekly entries include questions for reflection and household prayers for morning and evening that are drawn from the lectionary, allowing churches to include them in their bulletin for parishioners to use throughout the week.

During times of the year when two different tracks of Old Testament texts are offered by the RCL, this resource offers an entire set of materials for each track. Also, a CD-ROM is included with each volume that enables planners to easily cut and paste relevant readings, prayers, and questions into worship bulletins.

Be uplifted and inspired as Sr. Terry Rickard, O.P., president of RENEW International, guides you through Lent and Holy Week with thought-provoking spiritual reflections on the daily gospel readings in Daily Devotions for Lent 2021. Rickard also encourages you to go beyond prayer and fasting by completing a quick spiritual act that will help you grow in your love for God and others during this solemn season.

The Living Gospel series of devotionals for Lent and Advent offers spiritual insight and practical wisdom from popular Catholic preachers, speakers, and homilists. A new voice each season and a simple format invite Catholics to hear and embrace the living Word of God.

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.

In Enlightenment and Revolutionary France, new and pressing arguments emerged in the long debate over clerical celibacy. Appeals for the abolition of celibacy were couched primarily in the language of nature, social utility, and the patrie. The attack only intensified after the legalization of priestly marriage during the Revolution, as marriage and procreation were considered patriotic duties. Some radical revolutionaries who saw celibacy as a crime against nature and the nation aggressively promoted clerical marriage by threatening unmarried priests with deportation, imprisonment, and even death. After the Revolution, political and religious authorities responded to the vexing problem of reconciling the existence of several thousand married French priests with the formal reestablishment of Roman Catholicism and clerical celibacy. Unnatural Frenchmen examines how this extremely divisive issue shaped religious politics, the lived experience of French clerics, and gendered citizenship. Drawing on a wide base of printed and archival material, including thousands of letters that married priests wrote to the pope, historian Claire Cage highlights individual as well as ideological struggles. Unnatural Frenchmen provides important insights into how conflicts over priestly celibacy and marriage have shaped the relationship between sexuality, religion, and politics from the age of Enlightenment to today, while simultaneously revealing the story of priestly marriage to be an inherently personal and deeply human one.

Handel's "Messiah" is one of the most beloved musical works of the western world, playing an especially sentimental role in many people's Christmas traditions. The libretto of the work, taken directly from the King James text of fourteen books of the Bible, has turned many otherwise forgettable phrases into memorable, singable, cherished lines of Scripture.

This gift-worthy book will delight and inspire classical music fans and those for whom "Messiah" is a beloved Christmas tradition with essays exploring the theological, historical, and pastoral implications of the Scriptures that make up Handel's "Messiah."

Forty reflections journey in order through the oratorio, taking the reader deeper into less-often studied texts like Malachi 3:3 and bringing new light to oft-recited passages like Luke 2:9-14. Each reflection offers the libretto from "Messiah," the same passage in NRSV, and a brief commentary on the text, written by a respected scholar or pastor. Readers can peruse the book at leisure or examine one reflection per day throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons.