"Following the 15 Stations of the Cross--from Gethsemane to the Resurrection--this reader will inspire you this Lenten season." Lent's forty days are a time to focus on obedience and waiting on God. The biblical models of this intentional patience are Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. Each fasted forty days in solitude, were tested and purified, and lived out this truth: "Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him." (Isa. 30:18) If you, too, want wholeness, wait and stretch your soul toward the sun of God's forgiveness. Each chapter or Station of this new book begins with Scripture, reflection, and quotations for each day from people like John of the Cross, Hildegard, Athanasius, Antony the Great, Benedict of Nursia, Clare of Assisi, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian, Catherine of Siena, and Birgitta of Sweden. They will inspire you, when you are alone with God, to dare new surrenders that can heal you and make you whole. It is the time of Lent. It is time to listen...

Benedict left behind a life of privilege to live in a cave and learn how to be silent. There, he also learned how to walk the way of truth and be God's friend. Set against the bloody backdrop that was Italy in mid-first-millennium, Benedict's life charts a course far different from the violent struggles of his day. In a time of war and want, this monk and abbot aimed to establish and nurture community, cultivate the wilderness, and feed the poor. He also left us his famous Rule, seventy-three short chapters that are the foundation for Western monasticism and remain a spiritual classic. Man of Blessing answers these questions: * What is in St. Benedict's Rule? (A brief chapter-by-chapter summary of the rule of St. Benedict is presented.) * Why did Pope Benedict XVI choose the name "Benedict"? * What other popes have taken the name Benedict? * What were the important events in the life of St. Benedict? * What are St. Benedict's lasting legacies?

Meet the incomparable St. Hildegard: nourishing, challenging, and idea-bursting. This essential reader includes selections from her songs, theological texts, liturgical music, and letters and will stir and awaken your soul. Combined with an introduction to Hildegard's life and era, a map of Hildegard's Germany, chronology, and a thorough bibliography/discography, "Hildegard of Bingen" provides the ideal introduction to the thought of this fascinating medieval mystic and the newest Doctor of the Church.

This anonymous fourteenth-century text is the glory of English mysticism, and one of the most practical and useful guides to finding union with God ever written. Carmen Acevedo Butcher's new translation is the first to bring the text into a modern English idiom--while remaining strictly faithful to the meaning of the original Middle English.
"The Cloud of Unknowing" consists of a series of letters written by a monk to his student or disciple, instructing him (or her) in the way of Divine union. Its theology is presented in a way that is remarkably easy to understand, as well as practical, providing advice on prayer and contemplation that anyone can use. Previous translations of the "Cloud" have tended to veil its intimate, even friendly tone under medieval-sounding language. Carmen Butcher has boldly brought the text into language as appealing to modern ears as it was to its original readers more than five hundred years ago.
Also included in the volume is the companion work attributed to the same anonymous author, "The Book of Privy Counsel," which contains further advice for approaching God in a way that emphasizes real experience rather than human knowledge.