Karl Rahner, a Jesuit Priest who died in 1984, is widely regarded as one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century. His writings played an enormous role in shaping the documents of Vatican II. But while he is best known for his academic theology, his deepest goal was to help ordinary Christians to recognize and respond to the presence of grace in their everyday lives. Rahner famously observed that the Christians of the future will be mystics or there will be no Christianity. With readings for Advent, Lent, and the other liturgical seasons, these sermons, prayers, and reflections offer spiritual nourishment for the whole year.

A major force at Vatican II, Jesuit priest Karl Rahner's writings effect a paradigm shift in modern theology. This anthology showcases the masterful spiritual writings by one of the great religious thinkers of all time.

One of the classics of modern spirituality, Encounters with Silence is one of Karl Rahner’s most lucid and powerful books. A book of meditations about man’s relation with God, it is not a work of dry theology, but rather a book of prayerful reflections on love, knowledge, and faith, obedience, everyday routines, life with our friends and neighbors, our work and vocation, and human goodness. The immense success of this moving work is a tribute to its practicality and the ability of the great theologian to speak simply and yet profoundly to ordinary men and women seeking an inspiring guide to the inner life, one that never forsakes the world of reality. The book is cast in the form of a dialogue with God that moves from humble but concerned inquiry to joyful contemplation. “You will come again because the fact that you have already come must continue to be revealed ever more clearly. It must become progressively manifest to the world that the heart of all things is already transformed, because you have taken them all to your heart. . . . The false appearance of our world, the shabby pretense that it has not been liberated . . . must be more and more thoroughly rooted out and destroyed. . . . And your coming is neither past nor future, but the present, which has only to reach its fulfillment. Now it is still the one single hour of your advent.� (from the book)

While no single anthology could hope to capture the full scope of Karl Rahner's thought--his publications number more than 3,500 separate works in the years between 1924 and 1979--this collection is the best that could possibly be devised, containing 174 selections that reflect the best of Rahner's thought from the early 1950s to 1980.

The ground-breaking treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity by one of the most important theologians of the century is here reprinted on the 30th anniversary of its orginal publication. In this treatise, Karl Rahner analyzes the place of the doctrine of the Trinity within Catholic theology and develops his own highly original and innovative reading of the doctrine, including his now-famous dictum.

A new translation of Father Rahner's book on prayer.

Karl Rahner stands in a long line of great Christian theologians who were likewise great teachers of prayer. He has been called the voice of Vatican II, and is acknowledged as the rare theologian whose writings speak to the ordinary" Christian.

In "The Need and the Blessing of Prayer ," Father Rahner views the human person as essentially one called to prayer. He also highlights prayer as the act of human existence, the great religious act. By encouraging people to "pray in the everyday" - to pray regardless of the desire or mood of the moment - Rahner's theology of the prayer of everyday life challenges us to surrender ourselves to God so that God dwells at the very center of our lives.

The eight chapters of "The Need and the Blessing of Prayer " were originally sermons that Rahner gave during Lent 1946 at St. Michal's Church in Munich, Germany. This work has been reprinted often throughout its thirty-year history, testifying to its enduring message. For as Father Rahner wrote in the first edition, "If we are not supposed to cease praying, then perhaps one shouldn't cease speaking about prayer."

Chapters are "Opening Our Hearts," "The Helper-Spirit," "The Prayer of Love," "Prayer in the Everyday," "The Prayer of Need," "Prayers of Consecration, "The Prayer of Guilt," and "Prayers of Decision.""

Unlike Rahner's theological writings, which can be obscure. these sermons provide a smooth entrance for those who are just beginning to read this fine contemporary theologian and preacher.

"In giving these meditations, my desire was to explain the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius; I was not attempting to present pious meditations and theological considerations, no matter how useful they may be. I attempted to give these meditations on the Spiritual Exercises the kind of theological foundation that my listeners had the right to expect, without falling into the kind of theological investigations that really have nothing directly to contribute to the purpose of spiritual exercises." These words are used by the author who is probably the greatest theologian the Catholic Church has produced in recent centuries. He brings his enormous learning and his unequaled theological acumen to bear on what is probably one of the most influential spiritual works of Roman Catholicism. The combination is as fascinating as it is important. The subject matter is, of course, very controversial. Has St. Ignatius anything to say for modern Christians? Jesuits the world over maintain that he has, others suggest that his writing is totally confined to a particular, and unfortunate, period of Church history. Karl Rahner has been compelled to write with a force and simplicity we do not usually associate with him. Here is a compelling series of meditations which take us out of the stodgy surroundings of so much Christian spirituality, and certainly one of Rahner's greatest works.

Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904-1984) ranks among the most influential theologians of our time. His contributions to the Second Vatican Council (1963-1965) shaped to a large degree the doctrinal formulations on the church, the sacraments, and the role of the laity. And his efforts at reconciling the scholastic method with an existential and anthropological understanding of humanity's relationship with God earned him the reputation of having opened doors for ecumenical dialogue and to those outside the church. Less well known is that toward the end of his life, Rahner had slipped into the role of Ignatius of Loyola in an essay titled "Speech of Ignatius of Loyola to a Modern-Day Jesuit." In doing so, Rahner proved not only that he could readily identify with the spirit of the sixteenth-century reformer and founder of the Society of Jesus, but he also offered a summary of his own theological thought. In fact, Rahner had called the Ignatius speech "a sort of last will and testament" and "a resume of my theology, in general, and of how I tried to live." This is the first English translation of Rahner's Ignatius speech in more than thirty years and the first time for it to appear as a single volume with annotations. Readers are being offered here a fresh lens through which to reappraise Rahner's writings and a contemporary interpretation of the teachings and mysticism of Ignatius of Loyola.