To order these books and films from Ignatius Press, go to www.ignatius.com . O r call 800-651-1531 . Let them know you saw the ad here. This is a paid advertisement in the January-March 2022 issue. Advertisements should not be viewed as endorsements from the publisher.Read more
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Articles Under: Spiritual Formation and Prayer
How to change a flat tire. How to turn off the water to an overflowing toilet. How to manage money, create a budget, and balance a checkbook. How to perform the Heimlich maneuver or CPR in an emergency. These are all invaluable life skills that every parent ought to add to their list of “important lessons to impart upon our children.” Sadly, however, if one were to poll most Catholic parents, “how to pray” would likely not even crack their top ten list. Why is that, exactly? Perhaps prayer is seen as a “given,” something more “caught than taught.” Possibly... Read more
“Prayer is first of all a gift from God; in fact, in every one of the baptized, ‘the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words’ (Rom 8:26).” [1] Our habit as Catholics is to begin our prayers with the Sign of the Cross—itself a gift we’ve received from Christ and the Church. By this ancient sign, we ground our prayer in the Holy Trinity, who was revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Because prayer is a gift, our work as catechists isn’t so much to teach children their prayers as it is to... Read more
Interior, conversational prayer with God—which the Catholic spiritual tradition customarily terms “mental prayer” to distinguish it from “vocal prayer,” which is recited audibly—is a key spiritual discipline without which there is little prospect for growth in holiness for the baptized believer. Therefore, catechesis about the role of mental prayer in the spiritual life and the techniques or methods of mental prayer is an urgent necessity in our age and every age. The Meaning and Importance of “Mental Prayer” The term “mental prayer” is traditional but can be misunderstood in contemporary discourse because the term “mental” can suggest “rational,” “speculative,” or... Read more
What Is Prayer? When we hear the word prayer, often we think of vocal prayer, using words either handed down to us burnished by the voices of generations or the words that spring up spontaneously from the heart. Prayer takes many forms, however, and all of them are means to seek God and respond to his love, for, “whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.” [1] This encounter may well happen beyond words, with gestures or in silence. The Power of Faith The response... Read more
There have been some very good books written in the past few years centered on helping parishes to become mission-focused. One of the best of these is a ninety-page book published by the University of Mary, From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age . Monsignor James Shea, in his preface to the book, describes a fundamental cultural shift of recent decades that is dramatically accelerating. We are living in an era of transition away from the relatively comfortable confines of a Christendom-oriented relationship with culture to a new and much more challenging environment. A Catholic (or... Read more
To order these books and films from Ignatius Press click here. Or call 1-800-651-1531. Let them know you saw the ad here. This is a paid advertisement in the July-September 2021 issue. Advertisements should not be viewed as endorsements from the publisher.Read more
To learn more about the Steubenville Adult Conferences, go to https://steubenvilleconferences.com/ Registration will open at the end of January 2022.Read more
To inquire or apply, email [email protected] or call 740-283-6277.Read more
A cascade of trees flowed down the hillside towards the water, a body of water that was bigger than a pond but not quite a lake, on the lands belonging to the Holy Ghost Fathers in southern Connecticut. In England it might be called a mere, but in my childhood, we neither knew nor cared about things like that: for us it was simply boys’ paradise, especially in winter. The Holy Ghost Fathers never bothered us, nor ran us off—in fact, I cannot recall ever seeing them. Perhaps the mere was too far from the main house, or perhaps they... Read more