Böcker av Hubert van Zeller

"Prayer must necessarily involve a discipline, but it need not involve a system...In our prayer we must return to the primary purpose of what we are trying to do: we are trying to bring worship to God. The greatest act of worship that man can give to God is to refer back to him what God has already given. Man has nothing of his own to offer, nothing that has not been lent by God."Almost everyone who has believed in God has wondered how to pray to him. But in the same way that no two relationships are identical, no two people's prayer life with God are identical. More important than praying perfectly is praying diligently, with reliance on God's grace, and a readiness to "remain in whatever state of spirituality God chooses to allow." By uniting penance, confidence, and humility to prayer, man will avoid the snares of the devil and come to greater union with God. This book is not for those seeking a step-by-step guide to the interior life of prayer. But it is for those who desire to do everything they can to come close to God. By laying out the principles of prayer, Van Zeller provides both an understandable education for those who have just begun to think about prayer, as well as a helpful review and self-examination for those who have been praying for many years.

Dom Hubert, in summing up this book's theme, quotes Joubert: "How many people eat, drink, marry, buy, sell, build, make fortunes, acquire friends and enemies, enjoy pleasure, endure pain; in short are born, grow up and die-but asleep." It is this sleep which Dom Hubert desires to combat in this series of reflections upon the relations of man with his fellow humans and God. Prayer and the life of grace, married love and friendship, modernity and the Gospel all feature in these pages. The wide array of topics addressed include:How to assist at Mass, and whether or not "Ought I to use a missal or can I go on saying the rosary?" is even the right questionThe difference between sensation and sentiment in married loveThe expression, material, and problem with interior prayer (not to mention it's condition and idiom)The vocation of teachers and the necessity of treating pupils with a supernatural outlookHow to approach the universal call to mystical union with GodWhat true asceticism asks and how it operates.How both the Mass and Marriage call us to a Johannine charityIn the midst of the reflections, Dom Hubert pauses to recall one of his main sources of inspiration-a close friend, the Dominican Father Bede Jarret, and a last series of conversations before Father Jarret's death. "Much especially that deals with Christian love is an echo of those August mornings," writes Dom Hubert, "While the section describing leadership has Father Bede of course as a model."Born in British-controlled Egypt, Dom Hubert van Zeller (1905-1984) was a Benedictine monk of Downside Abbey in Bath, England, where he was educated. Of his scholastic career he said that he "passed no examinations-merely by-passed them." The author of numerous books ranging from scriptural commentary to fiction and biography, he was also renowned as a minimalist sculptor and cartoonist. He was a friend of Ronald Knox and of Evelyn Waugh, who described Dom Hubert's writings as "characterized by vitality and elegance."

"The end of penance is God, not more penances. Thus the approach to penance has to be by way of love, not by way of steeling the will to toughness. Penance must have its roots in charity, not austerity."With characteristic Benedictine discretion, Van Zeller here sets straight common misapprehensions of penance, steering the reader past the Scylla of extremism on the one hand and the Charybdis of avoiding this essential virtue of the Christian life on the other hand. "Take up your cross and follow me," Christ asks each disciple in turn. It is thus a joyful duty for all to understand and approach the penitential cross correctly. Rather than a frightful self-punishment, penance is rather a means to an end-God-and thus must always be tempered and exercised according to that end. Cast in this light, what Van Zeller teaches here is not how one is to do penance, but how one ought to approach penance: "In the last analysis we cannot guarantee the measure of asceticism which will atone for our sins or bring us one single step closer to union with God. Is it not much wiser then to make for something which can be guaranteed? Is it not better to have recourse to Christ, and learn from him a lesson of love? Christ atones for us; love draws us nearer to union." Equipped with this knowledge, each reader may go forth with complete freedom to gladly bear the cross that Christ has fashioned.

The year is 1975. A young man...a painter. Having converted, he tries his vocation as a monk, but decides that monastic life is not for him. Thrown back on his own resources, he quickly becomes enmeshed in difficulties-not least, when he discovers an unusually sympathetic ear in a young married woman-and he struggles to find a place in the contemporary Church. Throughout his searching, he turns to the Benedictine Dom Hubert for counsel, wondering what to do with his feelings. Dom Hubert, also an artist, offers practical advice to his correspondent while astutely pinpointing his mistakes. Not only fascinating as an historical snapshot of the world in 1975 through the eyes of a widely-travelled monk, these letters, full of wit and insight, address many topics which remain pertinent today, including:Seeking peace and balance in the life of the spiritProgress in prayer, and the danger of self-absorption Chastity, and the difference between romance, love, and friendshipPapal infallibility, obedience in the Church, and the crisis of religious vocationsLiturgical aesthetics, the Charismatic movement, and the Latin MassThe fear that God is not enough to satisfy man.¿Dom Hubert van Zeller (1905-1984) was born in British-controlled Egypt and became a Benedictine monk of Downside Abbey in Bath, England. The author of numerous books ranging from scriptural commentary to fiction and biography, he was also renowned as a minimalist sculptor and cartoonist. He was a friend of Ronald Knox and of Evelyn Waugh, who described Dom Hubert's writings as 'characterised by vitality and elegance'.