The Second Reading, Sunday by Sunday, Year B
Growing in Mutual Service and Love
Engaging the Thought of Constance FitzGerald, OCD
As the Emmaus story unfolds it moves from catechesis to Eucharist to mission. It is a promising paradigm for the process of reweaving the present array of parish ministries into an integrated pastoral practice.Gilbert Ostdiek, OFM, invites those engaged in ministry and those preparing for it to think of their own ministry as part of a larger pastoral tapestry. He also extends the Emmaus paradigm to pastoral leaders who have the responsibility to integrate and coordinate the practice of ministry at parish and diocesan levels.Reweaving the Ministries invites all who are involved in ministry to become ever more fully, in St. Paul's description, co-workers with one another and co-workers with God in the care of God's people.
The Rule of Saint Benedict meets contemporary culture-the connection points and the sticking points between the two are the focus of Conversation with Saint Benedict. Renowned Benedictine scholar Terrence Kardong considers various aspects of modern culture that he considers worrisome and the light that Benedicts Rule might shed on them for Christians today. He also takes up specific aspects of the Rule itself that he finds difficult to deal with. This book, then, offers a rich interplay that does not shrink from recognizing both strengths and weaknesses in our culture as well as in Benedicts own ideas.Among the many topics that Kardong tackles are:laughter and tearssecurityworkeconomicsmonastic garbcell phoneszealhierarchychannel surfingTerrence G. Kardong, OSB, has been a monk of Assumption Abbey in Richardton, North Dakota, since 1956. Since 1982, he has served as editor of the American Benedictine Review. His many books include Pillars of Community: Four Rules of Pre-Benedictine Monastic Life and Day by Day with Saint Benedict. He has also produced highly regarded translations and commentaries on the Rule of Saint Benedict and St. Gregory the Greats Life of Saint Benedict.
Saint Bernards famous work, The Steps of Humility and Pride (in Latin, De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae), is a short book consisting of a mere fifty-seven paragraphs. In it, the Abbot of Clairvaux unpacks the doctrine of the very crucial chapter 7 of Saint Benedicts sixth-century Rule for Monks, which explores the dynamic steps or degrees of both humility and pride. This chapter by Benedict could well be considered the spiritual basis of all Benedictine existence. In Saint Bernards Three-Course Banquet, Dom Bernard Bonowitz makes the teaching of both Bernard and Benedict accessible to modern readers in a set of conferences originally conceived for and delivered to a group of Cistercian juniors, that is, monks and nuns who had completed their novitiate but had not yet made their solemn vows. With Dom Bernard as a guide, many more readers can be sure of drinking at the purest sources of the monastic tradition, which at that depth becomes one with the Gospel itself. A convert from Judaism with a degree in Classics from Columbia University, Bernard Bonowitz was a Jesuit for nine years before entering St. Josephs Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Immediately upon professing vows, his abbot named him master of novices, a position he held for ten years and that gave him ample opportunity to share considerable gifts of mind and heart while initiating newcomers into monastic life, at the levels of both classroom teaching and spiritual direction. In 1996 he was elected superior of the monastery of Novo Mundo in Brazil, which he soon shepherded into a true monastic springtime. In 2008, he became abbot of Novo Mundo, now a community attracting an impressive number of young men anxious to follow the way of Cistercian discipleship.
Continuing the unbroken conversation on ethics that has endured across the Christian generations, David Oki Ahearn and Peter R. Gathje present Doing Right and Being Good. For Ahearn and Gathje, ethics is the critical reflection on morality, focusing on our beliefs, our practices, our held values.In addition to the book's wide-reaching selected readings, Ahearn and Gathje offer introductions to each chapter which provide extensive overviews and establish contexts for moral issues over which sincere Christians differ.The authors examine two broad understandings of ethics: that of doing right (understanding the difference between right and wrong) and being good (specific personal traits). Acknowledging a shared history between Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions, this book takes both historical and ecumenical approaches to ethics.Engaging, and informational, Doing Right and Being Good aims at providing constructive reflection and dialogue to all readers, regardless of background.Chapters are: "The Moral Person," "Sources of Christian Ethics," "Interpretations of Love and Justice," "Marriage, Family, and Sexuality," "Political Life and the Problem of Violence," "Stewardship: Work, Property, and the Environment," "Christian Love at the Margins of Life."
The extraordinary success of the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins shows that their action/adventure novels have tapped into the American psyche. In Left Behind or Left Befuddled, Gordon Isaac takes the reader inside the theology behind the series. In clear and accessible prose, Isaac answers many important questions.
Benedict's Rule: A Translation and Commentary is the first line-by-line exegesis of the entire Rule of Benedict written originally in English. This full commentary - predominately a literary and historical criticism - is based on and includes a new translation and is accompanied by essays on Benedict's spiritual doctrine.A monk who has striven to live according to the Rule of Benedict for thirty-five years, Father Kardong relates it to modern monastic life while examining the sources (Cassian, Augustine, and Basil) Benedict used to establish his Rule. Overviews - summaries of notes, source criticism, or structural criticism - follow some chapters, and a large bibliography of the current scholarship and source references are also included. Benedict's Rule: A Translation and Commentary also includes the Latin text of the Regula Benedicti. This reference work is invaluable to libraries and to those who are called to interpret the Rule. It will be opened again and again. Indexed.
A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary
Gregory the Great (+604) was a master of the art of exegesis. His interpretations are theologically profound, methodologically fascinating, and historically influential.Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in his exegesis of the Song of Songs. Gregory's interpretation of this popular Old Testament book not only owes much to Christian exegetes who preceded him, such as Origen, but also profoundly influenced later Western Latin exegetes, such as Bernard of Clairvaux.This volume includes all that Gregory had to say on the Song of Songs: his Exposition on the Song of Songs, the florilegia compiled by Paterius (Gregory's secretary) and the Venerable Bede, and, finally, William of Saint Thierry's Excerpts from the Books of Blessed Gregory on the Song of Songs. It is now the key resource for reading and studying Gregory's interpretation of the Song of Songs.
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