Recommendations based on "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling"

given Unprecedented Access To Pope John Paul Ii And The People Who Have Known And Worked With Him Throughout His Life, George Weigel Presents A Groundbreaking Portrait Of The Pope As A Man, A Thinker, And A Leader Whose Religious Convictions Have Defined A New Approach To World Politics--and Changed The Course Of History.john Paul Ii Has Systematically Addressed Every Major Question On The World's Agenda At The Turn Of The Millennium: The Human Yearning For The Sacred, The Meaning Of Freedom, The Glories And Challenges Of Human Sexuality, The Promise Of The Women's Movement, The Quest For A New World Order, The Nature Of Good And Evil, The Moral Challenge Of Prosperity, And The Imperative Of Human Solidarity In The Emerging Global Civilization. il Tempo (rome) an Indispensable Source For All Those Studying The Consequences And Impact Of This Pontificate.

G.K. Chesterton's brilliant sketch of the life and thought of Thomas Aquinas is as relevant today as when it was published in 1933. Then it earned the praise of such distinguished writers as Etienne Gilson, Jacques Martain, and Anton Pegis as the best book ever written on the great thirteenth-century Dominican. Today Chesterton's classic stands poised to reveal Thomas to a new generation.Chesterton's Aquinas is a man of mystery. Born into a noble Neapolitan family, Thomas chose the life of a mendicant friar. Lumbering and shy -- his classmates dubbed him "the Dumb Ox" -- he led a revolution in Christian thought. Possessed of the rarest brilliance, he found the highest truth in the humblest object. Having spent his life amid the vast intricacies of reason, he asked on his deathbed to have read aloud the Song of Songs, the most passionate book in the Bible.As Albert the Great, Thomas's teacher, predicted, the Dumb Ox has bellowed down the ages to our own day. Chesterton's book will enlighten those who would consign Thomas to the obscurity of medieval times. It will confound those who would use Thomas to bolster arid schemes of Christian rationalism. Rather, it will introduce the wondrous mystery of the man who, after a life of unparalleled genius, was seized by a vision of the Unknown and said, "I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw."

“Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert.”–Sara MilesRaised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. “I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian,” she writes, “or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut.” But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed.The mysterious sacrament of communion has sustained Miles ever since, in a faith she’d scorned, in work she’d never imagined. In this astonishing story, she tells how the seeds of her conversion were sown, and what her life has been like since she took that bread.A lesbian left-wing journalist who covered revolutions around the world, Miles was not the woman her friends expected to see suddenly praising Jesus. She was certainly not the kind of person the government had in mind to run a “faith-based charity.” Religion for her was not about angels or good behavior or piety; it was about real hunger, real food, and real bodies. Before long, she turned the bread she ate at communion into tons of groceries, piled on the church’s altar to be given away. The first food pantry she established provided hundreds of poor, elderly, sick, deranged, and marginalized people with lifesaving food and a sense of belonging. Within a few years, the loaves had multiplied, and she and the people she served had started nearly a dozen more pantries.Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters–church ladies, child abusers, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and thieves–all blown into Miles’s life by the relentless force of her newfound calling. She recounts stories about trudging through the rain in housing projects, wiping the runny nose of a psychotic man, storing a battered woman’s .375 Magnum in a cookie tin. She writes about the economy of hunger and the ugly politics of food; the meaning of prayer and the physicality of faith. Here, in this achingly beautiful, passionate book, is the living communion of Christ.“The most amazing book.” – Anne Lamott

The Rule of Taize was written by Brother Roger, its founder, during the winter of 1952-3. His intention was to express for the young men who had committed themselves to the group 'for their whole life in celibacy and to a life together in great simplicity', 'the essential that makes the common life possible'. The community has since become one of the world's most important sites of Christian pilgrimage. Over 100,000 young people from around the world travel there each year for prayer, Bible study, sharing, and communal work. Through the community's ecumenical outlook, they are encouraged to live in the spirit of kindness, simplicity and reconciliation. This is an updated version of the English-French edition first published in 1968.

Saturday, December 14thFeel led to keep a diary. A sort of spiritual log for the benefit of others in the future. Each new divine insight and experience will shine like a beacon in the darkness!Can’t think of anything to put in today.Still, tomorrow’s Sunday. Must be something on a Sunday, surely?Adrian Plass is hilarious, pure and simple. His readers are legion – and this is the bestselling book that started it all, converting thousands of people who love to laugh into avid Plass readers.The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass (aged 37 ¾) is merriment and facetiousness at its best – a journal of the wacky Christian life of Plass’s fictional alter-ego, who chronicles in his ‘sacred’ diary the daily goings-on in the lives of ordinary-but-somewhat-eccentric people he knows and meets. Reading it will doeth good like a medicine!

Manyhave called her a saint. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India'shighest civilian honor, the Jewel of India, in 1980. Pope John Paul II declaredher “Blessed,” beatifying her in 2003. For nearly fifty years at the head ofCalcutta’s Missionaries of Charity, the Albanian-born Agnes GonxhaBojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa, advocatedfor the poor and homeless, ministered to the sick, provided hospice for theafflicted, and embodied the very essence of humanitarianism. Now, revised andupdated, Kathryn Spink’s definitive, authorized biography is “simply the best . . . around,” according to James Martin, SJ, author of The Jesuit Guide to(Almost) Everything. “Thoroughly researched, sensitively written andunfailingly inspiring, Kathryn Spink's book should be, after Mother Teresa'sown writings, your first resource for understanding one of the greatest saintsin Christian history."

The Basis for the HBO Documentary. A National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.   Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of the church. We meet founder L. Ron Hubbard, the highly imaginative but mentally troubled science-fiction writer, and his tough, driven successor, David Miscavige. We go inside their specialized cosmology and language. We learn about the church’s legal attacks on the IRS, its vindictive treatment of critics, and its phenomenal wealth. We see the church court celebrities such as Tom Cruise while consigning its clergy to hard labor under billion-year contracts. Through it all, Wright asks what fundamentally comprises a religion, and if Scientology in fact merits this Constitutionally-protected label. Brilliantly researched, compellingly written, Going Clear pulls back the curtain on one of the most secretive organizations at work today. A New York Times Notable Book A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New York magazine,Slate, Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, People, The Week, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews A GoodReads Reader's Choice

Today the Byzantine mystic, writer, and monastic leader Symeon the New Theologian (ca. 949 to 1022 ce) is considered a saint by the Orthodox Church and revered as one of its most influential spiritual thinkers. But in his own time a cloud of controversy surrounded him and the suspicion of heresy tainted his reputation long afterward. The Life was written more than thirty years after Symeon's death by his disciple and apologist the theologian Niketas Stethatos, who also edited all of Symeon's spiritual writings. An unusually valuable piece of Byzantine hagiography, it not only presents compelling descriptions of Symeon's visions, mystical inspiration, and role as a monastic founder, but also provides vivid glimpses into the often bitter and unpleasantly conflicted politics of monasticism and the construction of sanctity and orthodoxy at the zenith of the medieval Byzantine Empire. Although the many volumes of Symeon's spiritual writings are now readily available in English, the present translation makes the Life accessible to English readers for the first time. It is based on an authoritative edition of the Greek.

This omnibus edition brings together Phillip Keller's three devotional classics, A Shepherd Looks and the 23rd Psalm, A Shepherd Looks at the Good Shepherd, and A Shepherd Looks at the Lamb of God. As a shepherd, Phillip Keller knew what it was to protect a vulnerable flock on a daily basis. The special skills of a shepherd demanded compassion, care, and guidance. His practical experience provides a wellspring of profound spiritual insight, reflected in these timeless meditations on the most famous psalm of all, on the relationship between the Good Shepherd and his sheep, and on the sacrificial role of Christ the Lamb of God.

"Hamm has simply produced the best book on Quaker history in recent years." --Quaker History" . . . will stand as one of the most important works in the field." --American Historical Review