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Alone with God
Upon the recommendation of a Scottish publisher, we are reprinting as a single volume this most critically acclaimed and popular of modern Camaldolese books. It is a guide to the hermit way of life, based on the teaching of Blessed Paul Giustiniani and featuring a memorable preface by Thomas Merton. Jean Leclerq, O.S.B. (1911-1993) is widely regarded as the foremost twentieth century scholar of Western monasticism, and this is one of his most impressive achievements. If you are only going to read one work of monastic spirituality in your lifetime, this could be your best choice.
The Way of the Heart
Award-winning French author shares the biography and spiritual journey of Cistercian abbot Dom André Louf. Based on a wide variety of interviews, printed sources, and Dom André Louf’s spiritual journal, The Way of the Heart narrates Louf’s spiritual journey from his childhood in Flanders through his becoming a monk in a Cistercian monastery, his ten years of retirement as a hermit in a Benedictine monastery in the south of France, and his death. Throughout his life he periodically struggled with conflicting vocational desires—sometimes wishing to serve as a pastor, academic, abbot, or to immerse himself in eremitic contemplation. That struggle is the leading thread through this biography, which portrays a man whose immense gifts pulled him in many directions, while always endeavoring to submit himself to God’s will.
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who died in 1968, was one of the great spiritual writers of the twentieth century. His published works include a hundred volumes in many genres. But it was perhaps in the essay that he found his natural element. Especially in the last decade of his life, Merton showed in his essays an increasing willingness to dispense with pre-fabricated conclusions, bringing his deeply spiritual, profoundly Catholic sensibility to bear on matters beyond the usual "religious" and "monastic" milieu. This volume is the first to provide a broad cross-section of Merton's work as an essayist, collecting pieces that reflect characteristic examples of his astonishing output and the fantastic breadth of his interests. The 33 essays collected here range from interreligious dialogue to racial justice, from the wisdom of the desert fathers to the novels of Faulkner and Camus, from the nuclear threat to the philosophy of solitude, and throughout, the centrality of the Christian mystery to authentic human identity.
Thomas Merton and the Noonday Demon
How did Thomas Merton become Thomas Merton? Starting out from any one of his earlier major life moments--wealthy orphan boy, big man on campus, fervent Roman Catholic convert, new and obedient monk--we find ourselves asking how by his life's end he had grown from who he was then into a transcultural and transreligious spiritual teacher read by millions. This book takes another such starting point: his attempt in the mid-1950s to move from his abbey of Gethsemani, in Kentucky--a place that had become, in his view, noisy beyond bearing--to an Italian monastery, Camaldoli, which he idealized as a place of monastic peace. The ultimate irony: Camaldoli at that time, bucolic and peaceful outwardly, was inwardly riven by a pre-Vatican II culture war; whereas Gethsemani, which he tried so hard to leave, became, when he was given his hermitage there in 1965, his place to recover Eden. In walking with Merton on this journey, and reading the letters he wrote and received at the time, we find ourselves asking, as he did, with so much energy and honesty, the deep questions that we may well need to answer in our own lives.
The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West
The origins and development of the Divine Office are traced through both Eastern and Western branches of the Church, providing a wealth of historical and liturgical information. From the small beginnings of a few Christians in New Testament Jerusalem, the prayer of the Church spread, changing and evolving as it met and was assimilated by different cultures. This classic study is a major resource for the liturgical scholar.
The Empty Chalice
Drinking to the very dregs the chalice given it, here is the remarkable and inspirational story of a soul that has found, unexpectedly, a heavenly sweetness in its bitterness. After reading this book, the reader is left to ponder the question: "Can I, too, 'drink the chalice offered me' and find in it, not bitterness, but the sweetness of God's Will? This account of a soul's ascent from the shadows of Gethsemane to the light of Tabor is, therefore, a shining beacon for our age pointing the way that we should go if we are to find that for which every human heart yearns: true peace and perfect joy. If you are a person in search of true peace and perfect joy, especially if the fragile ship of your soul is being tossed amidst the tempestuous seas of sorrow and suffering, you will find here an anchor to which to moor your soul in the radical reversal of the transforming union as described in this book.
DeepLight
DeepLight: A Memoir of the Soul is a rich narrative of a contemporary woman's spiritual quest. Within the context of her extensive study of religious and mystical traditions, and her experiences as a woman, a monastic, and an Episcopal priest, Susan Creighton weaves a spiral tapestry of memories, journal entries, and poetry. Her search for an authentic practice of contemplative prayer led across cultural, historical, and religious boundaries, but is most significantly shaped and enriched by the teachings of mystics like St. John of the Cross and the ancient tradition of Orthodox ascetical theology and spiritual practice. Now living under vows as an anchorite, her memoir shares with the reader ways in which the Jesus Prayer and other spiritual practices lead to deeper contemplative prayer as well as helping us develop greater discrimination and compassion for ourselves and others.
Seeking in Solitude
Seeking in Solitude examines select forms of contemporary Roman Catholic eremitic life and practice in the United States. Given the sustained presence of, and increased interest in, the eremitic life and practice, this book responds to the question of the place of the hermit in American Catholicism in a way that neither mystifies nor mythologizes it, but rather attempts to understand it.
