In the last decade of his life, while living as a hermit-monk in dialogue with the world, Thomas Merton created a body of visual art that has remained largely unknown and little studied in the nearly forty years since his death. With this book, Merton's art at last moves out of the shadows to be...

Chanting the psalms, or psalmody, is an ancient practice of vital importance in the Christian spiritual tradition. Today many think of it as a discipline that belongs only in monasteries—but psalmody is a spiritual treasure that is available to anyone who prays. You don’t need to be...

From John Chrysostom in the fourth century to Teresa of Avila in the sixteenth to William Butler Yeats in the twentieth, this wide-ranging collection is a treasury of writings on prayer from throughout the history of Christianity. Lorraine Kisly has arranged the material according to the great general...

The spiritual exploits of Saint Anthony the Great—the prototype of the Christian "Desert Father"—have been immortalized in stories and art since the fourth century. Here is the stunning account of a modern seeker's quest to get beneath the legends that surround Anthony and...

When Thomas Merton entered a Trappist monastery in December 1941, he turned his back on secular life—including a very promising literary career. He sent his journals, a novel-in-progess, and copies of all his poems to his mentor, Columbia professor Mark Van Doren, for safe...

A landmark work of scholarship and literary translation, The Gnostic Bible presents the most significant and beautiful sacred texts of gnostic mysticism. The gnostics were religious thinkers who believed that salvation is found through mystical knowledge and personal religious experience....

"You can't 'get' to heaven," says Mother Macrina, "you must become heaven," and the way that happens is through prayer, repentance, and love. The wise and lively Mother Macrina—a fictional character born from the imagination of author Irma Zaleski—is a modern-day...

This collection of folk tales, legends, and narratives about the life of Francis of Assisi and his followers appeared about seventy-five years after the saint’s death, in the early fourteenth century. The writings have remained popular ever since due to their beauty and charm,...

Preface ix
Introduction1

1. New Testament Times  13
    Jesus   15
    Paul     19
    John     21

2. The Early Church    24...

This introduction to the writing and preaching of the greatest medieval European mystic contains selections from his sermons, treatises, and sayings, as well as Table Talk, the records of his informal advice to his spiritual children.

From the time of the desert fathers to our own "post-Christian" age, the literature of monastic wisdom has provided inspiration for those of us who lead ordinary lives in the world. Father Jeremy Driscoll, a poet and theologian who is also a Benedictine monk, brings the genre into the...

Thousands have fallen in love with the anonymously authored book The Way of a Pilgrim—the account of an ordinary man's encounter with the Eastern Orthodox Christian practice of the Jesus Prayer, which consists of the constant repetition of the short phrase, "Lord Jesus Christ,...

This pocket-sized treasury of wisdom from the influential Christian contemplative, political activist, social visionary, and literary figure is abridged from the larger collection Seeds by Robert Inchausti (Shambhala, 2002).

The Practice of the Presence of God is among the most enduringly popular of all Christian devotional works. It is a collection of conversations with a simple seventeenth-century French Carmelite monk who, through the simplest of everyday activities, was able to achieve a profound intimacy...

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) is one of the most beloved of the Catholic saints. In 1562, during the era of the Spanish Inquisition, Teresa sat down to write an account of the mystical experiences for which she had become famous. The result was this book, one of the great classics of spiritual...

She was the last person anyone would have expected to become a nun, yet she became one of the most famous nuns of all time. She was a brilliant administrator in a world where such vocations were all but closed to women. And above...

Hundreds of sayings were attributed to the sage from Nazareth by ancient admirers. More than fifteen hundred versions of five hundred quotations are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, the Gospel of Thomas, and other Gospels found at Nag Hammadi. Marvin Meyer has combed additional Jewish,...

Why have we come to revere Francis of Assisi, a simple thirteenth-century Italian merchant's son, as a saint? Why has his appeal endured over eight hundred years and even expanded beyond the world of Catholicism to make him one of the most beloved religious figures of all time? This penetrating...

The place "where God happens," according to Rowan Williams's striking new reading of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, is between each other. It's a truth that we of the twenty-first century most urgently need to learn in order to heal the experience of alienation that has become...

God. It's such a small word to stand for such an immense mystery. Great theologians and ordinary folks have wrestled with it and lost. But this is just as it should be, according to Irma Zaleski. Any answer to the question "Who is God?" that satisfies our minds will likely be a false one,...