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What does it mean to be a eucharistic community? In Christ Now Meet Both East and West approaches the Eucharist from the perspective of Christianity being a religion of the table--a place where our thanksgiving happens by gathering as a people with Christ. Author Thomas O'Loughlin emphasizes that any renewal of ourselves as a eucharistic people involves discovering that we are then sent from that table to act, to be eucharistic in our communal activity. He explains that this task is not located in an awesome temple or an otherworldly place but in the heart of the everyday. Through this action of blessing, praising, thanking, and being eucharistic to our heavenly Father, we set about celebrating our faith eucharistically with the risen Jesus present among us.

In Praying thePsalms in the Voice of Christ, Frank J. Matera offers a way to pray the psalms within the Liturgy of the Hours rooted in the New Testament and the great writers of the early church. Taking his cue from Saint Augustine, Matera demonstrates how to hear the voice of Christ in the psalms so that they can be prayed in the voice of Christ and his Body, the church. In addition to this introduction to a christological reading of the psalms, Matera also provides a commentary on the psalms as they occur in the four weeks of the Divine Office.

Blessings of St. Benedict is a devotional that brings the Rule of St. Benedict to all people of every state of life. In these brief and accessible reflections on this ancient monastic rule, John Michael Talbot offers simple and timeless monastic wisdom for everyone. Dipping into the well of spirituality that is both practical and mystical, this book is designed for both monastics and monastics at heart.

Called to Participate is the late Mark Searle's last testament on liturgical reform. It draws on the teachings, writings, and international lectures of this noted liturgist and professor. Where do we go from here? Seale asks in response to the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council.Searle offers a historical perspective of the roots of liturgical reform during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. He describes the nature of liturgy as ritual activity, where the people of God are invited to participate in liturgy as sharing in the life of God. Selected aspects of the liturgy are considered, such as the proclamation of the Word. He also comments on the social character of the liturgy, which is to move beyond the assembly to participate in God's work in an outward or public ministry.Called to Participate bids us to form a contemporary spirituality that is firmly rooted in the liturgy. It leads worshipers to find entry points into the mystery of God's work in the world. It is a help to liturgical leaders to grasp the nature and function of liturgy and to inspire faith-filled planning, preaching, and catechesis.Barbara Searle, PhD, is a psychologist at the Madison Center and Hospital in South Bend, Indiana.Anne Y. Koester is associate director of the Georgetown Center for Liturgy in Washington, D.C.

Preachers and liturgy planners will find The Cultural World of the Prophets a companion to John Pilch's The Cultural World of Jesus Sunday by Sunday series and The Cultural World of the Apostles series. Each essay offers historical, literary, and Eastern Mediterranean cultural information about the first reading and responsorial psalm of the liturgy of each Sunday.The Cultural World of the Prophets relates the first reading and responsorial psalm to the Gospel as intended by the architects of the Lectionary. It encourages readers to pursue in-depth study and helps them appreciate the specific verses of the first reading and the responsorial psalm in their own right.

Seasons in the Word: Liturgical Homilies, Year A completes a three-volume collection of homilies covering the Lectionary, including feast days. The book results from decades of prayerful preaching on the Sunday Scriptures by Fr. John Sandell to congregations in the Diocese of Fargo.Useful for priests in their own homiletic preparation, Seasons in the Word is also for laypeople who wish to prepare for the upcoming Sunday readings and for individual reflection.

Read the Way You Talk offers instruction for lectors. It presents guidelines for making oral reading meaningful and believable. Three lessons give detailed instructions in eighteen different areas including parallelism, repetition, and pronunciation. Special guidance is provided for using inflection and stressing words. With practice, readers who share the Word of God with others can read as naturally as they speak while they become comfortable with their audience, sure of what they are saying, and confident their message is important.Part I, The Word of God in Human Speech, explains why the readings need to be spoken in conversational tone. Part 2, *Rules for Reading Like Talk, - is divided into lessons and contains rules, explanations of techniques, and examples. Read the Way You Talk is a useful resource for lectors, deacons, priests, and leaders who instruct lectors and seminarians.

The Season of Light is a guide for families, households, classrooms, communities, and parishes who wish to make the lighting of the Advent candles a daily prayer. For each day of the season, from the First Sunday of Advent until Christmas Day, The Season of Light offers a brief liturgy that is based on the structure of Vespers or Evening Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours: the lighting of the candles (the lucernarium), a reading from the Advent Scriptures, petitions and collect, and a final blessing.The Advent wreath is one of the most enduring customs of the Christmas season. Rich in meaning, the four lights of the Advent wreath kindle our blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. (Titus 2:13). It is a symbol of our faith: that light and life will triumph over darkness and death, that our hope in God's providence and love will never leave us disappointed.With this rich tradition in mind, Jay Cormier has structured the daily liturgies in The Season of Light as follows: The Lucernarium, the lighting of the candle(s); The Word of God, in which a lector reads a Scripture passage that reflects the Advent themes of joyful expectation and the restoration of justice and peace in the dawning of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World; and Prayers, in which the presider or leader offers petitions and all respond. Then the Lord's Prayer is recited, and the final collect and the blessing (including a scriptural blessing and a table blessing before meals) are offered by the presider.The structure and prayers in The Season of Light are offered as suggestions; adaptions are encouraged. For example, families may wish to make the intercessions an opportunity for spontaneous prayers offered by participants; groups with musical ability and leadership may want to incorporate hymns from the rich treasury of Advent and Christian hymnody; those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours regularly might consider including the Advent wreath custom with the psalms and prayers of the Hours.Designed for all those who wish to make the Advent wreath a daily prayer and part of their Christmas observance and tradition, The Season of Light helps Christians celebrate that we are an Advent people: a people who live in the eternal hope and expectation of the ever-burning light of Jesus Christ.

Father Brown reflects here not only on those annunciations of Jesus' forthcoming birth in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but also on the beautiful canticles, the Magnificat and the Benedictus, and on the origins of Jesus as given in the first words of the New Testament.

Ezra-Nehemiah has been neglected in biblical studies, but it is important as one of the few windows into the Persian period of Israel's history, the setting for so much of the final shape of the Hebrew Bible. To know this period is to know what influenced these redactors. In Ezra and Nehemiah Gordon Davies provides that knowledge using rhetorical criticism, a methodology that reveals the full range and progress of the book's ideas without hiding its rough seams and untidy edges.The purpose of rhetorical criticism is to explain not the source but the power of the text as a unitary message. This approach does not look at plot development, characterization, or other elements whose roughness makes Ezra-Nehemiah frustrating to read. Instead, it examines the three parts of the relationship - the strategies, the situations, and the ffects - between the speaker and the audience. Rhetorical criticism's scrutiny of the audience in context favors the search for the ideas and structures that are indigenous to the culture of the text.Rhetorical criticism is interested in figures of speech as means of persuasion. Therefore, to apply it to Ezra-Nehemiah, Davies concentrates on the public discourse - the orations, letters, and prayers - throughout its text. In each chapter he follows a procedure that: (1) where it is unclear, identifies the rhetorical unit in which the discourse is set; (2) identifies the audiences of the discourse and the rhetorical situation; (3) studies the arrangement of the material; (4) studies the effect on the various audiences; (5) reviews the passage as a whole and judges its success. In the conclusion, Davies explains that Ezra-Nehemiah makes theological sense on its own terms, by forming a single work in which a range of ideas is argued.Biblical scholars as well as those interested in literary criticism, communication studies, rhetorical studies, ecclesiology, and homiletics will find Ezra and Nehemiah enlightening.Chapters are "Ezra 1:1-6," "Ezra 4:1-24," "Ezra 5:1-6: 15," "Ezra 7," "Ezra 9-10," "Nehemiah 1- 2," "Nehemiah 3-7," and "Nehemiah 8-10."