The Climate of Monastic Prayer

The Climate of Monastic Prayer
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814663818

This guide to monastic prayer, written in 1968 and thus turning out to be Thomas Merton’s final testament to us, is now available in a new edition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of his death. While he wrote it for other monastics, all seekers drawn to explore the full dimensions of prayer will be enriched by his words, especially as they take on added meaning in today’s dizzying world. The climate in which monastic prayer flowers is that of the desert, where human comfort is absent, where the secure routines of the “earthly city” offer no support, and where prayer must be sustained by God in the purity of faith.

Contemplative Prayer

Contemplative Prayer
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: Image
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2009-11-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0307589536

In this classic text, Thomas Merton offers valuable guidance for prayer. He brings together a wealth of meditative and mystical influences–from John of the Cross to Eastern desert monasticism–to create a spiritual path for today. Most important, he shows how the peace contacted through meditation should not be sought in order to evade the problems of contemporary life, but can instead be directed back out into the world to affect positive change. Contemplative Prayer is one of the most well-known works of spirituality of the last one hundred years, and it is a must-read for all seeking to live a life of purpose in today’s world. In a moving and profound introduction, Thich Nhat Hanh offers his personal recollections of Merton and compares the contemplative traditions of East and West.

Benedictine Daily Prayer

Benedictine Daily Prayer
Author: The Monks of Saint John's Abbey
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 2076
Release: 2016-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814637027

2021 Catholic Media Association Award first place award in backlist beauty Benedictine Daily Prayer provides an everyday edition of the Divine Office for people who desire to pray with the church in a simple manner. Based on fifteen hundred years of liturgical prayer within the Benedictine monastic tradition, Benedictine Daily Prayer offers a rich diet of classic office hymnody, psalmody, and Scripture. This fully revised edition includes: • A new organization for the Office of Vigils, structured on a two-week cycle • Daily Offices also arranged on a two-week cycle • Patristic readings for each Sunday • Concluding prayers for the daily and seasonal offices • A more user-friendly layout and slightly taller format Benedictine Daily Prayer is designed for Benedictine oblates, Benedictine monastics, and men and women everywhere. Small enough to fit in a briefcase for travel, it is arranged by date. Scripture readings are from the NRSV.

Liturgical Feasts and Seasons

Liturgical Feasts and Seasons
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2023-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0718897358

In this third volume of papers from Thomas Merton’s conferences during his decade (1955-1965) as novice master at the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani, his insight into the liturgical pattern of the Christian year and beyond is presented in fresh detail. Merton’s own commitment to this central dimension of Christian life is clear, and nowhere more so than in his work introducing students to the patterns that would mark their lives as monks. Though dating from the period just before the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, Merton's commentaries remain pertinent. The thoroughly annotated text is preceded by an extensive introduction situating this material in the context of Merton's lifelong writing on liturgy. Moreover, as his former student Br. Paul Quenon notes in his foreword, this context is one deeply rooted in Merton’s understanding of Scripture. ‘These notes . . . take us into one man's lifetime of reflection and seasoned experience of the Church Year.’

The Monastic Letters of Saint Athanasius the Great

The Monastic Letters of Saint Athanasius the Great
Author: Saint Athanasius
Publisher: SLG Press
Total Pages: 54
Release: 2023
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0728303574

Fairacres Publications 120 Scholars have often concentrated on the theological writings of St Athanasius (c. 296-373 AD) and on his influence as a religious leader, so that his contribution to the monastic life has not received due recognition. In these six letters addressed to monks, Athanasius is revealed as a wise spiritual guide and loving pastor, determined that the monks should receive sound teaching, so as to avoid the pitfalls of heresies current at that time. As Leslie Barnard notes in his Introduction, ‘The permanent significance of these letters lies in their wisdom, moderation and balance.’

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton
Author: John Eudes Bamberger
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2020-02-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0879070641

Like Bernard of Clairvaux, whose last act was to leave his cloister to mediate 'successfully 'between two nobles and prevent bloodshed, Thomas Merton found in the monastic life of prayer a source of strength, empathy, and understanding. To understand Merton, one must first know him as a Prophet of Monastic renewal. John Eudes Bamberger entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1950, having earned an MD from the University of Cincinnati the previous year and done his internship at Georgetown University Hospital. A student of Thomas Merton from 1952-1955, he worked with Merton, after his ordination in 1956, in screening applicants to the abbey. He served as abbot of the Abbey of the Genesee, in New York state, from 1971 until 2001. Since returning from a term as superior in the Philippines, he lives in a hermitage at Genesee.

The Story of Monasticism

The Story of Monasticism
Author: Greg Peters
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441227210

Some evangelicals perceive monasticism as a relic from the past, a retreat from the world, or a shirking of the call to the Great Commission. At the same time, contemporary evangelical spirituality desires historical Christian manifestations of the faith. In this accessibly written book Greg Peters, an expert in monastic studies who is a Benedictine oblate and spiritual director, offers a historical survey of monasticism from its origins to current manifestations. Peters recovers the riches of the monastic tradition for contemporary spiritual formation and devotional practice, explaining why the monastic impulse is a valid and necessary manifestation of the Christian faith for today's church.

Through a Glass Darkly

Through a Glass Darkly
Author: Holly Faith Nelson
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2011-01-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1554582067

Suffering, the sacred, and the sublime are concepts that often surface in humanities research in an attempt to come to terms with what is challenging, troubling or impossible to represent. These intersecting concepts are used to mediate the gap between the spoken and the unspeakable, between experience and language, between body and spirit, between the immanent and the transcendent, and between the human and the divine. The twenty-five essays in Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory, written by international scholars working in the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, and history, address the ways in which literature and theory have engaged with these three concepts and related concerns. The contributors analyze literary and theoretical texts from the medieval period to the postmodern age, from the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert to those of Endô Shûsaku, Alice Munro, Annie Dillard, Emmanuel Levinas, and Slavoj Žižek. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of religion and literature, philosophy and literature, aesthetic theory, and trauma studies.