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Athletes of Prayer:
The monastic tradition, rooted in the lives and writings of the Desert Fathers and the Benedictine Rule, was the great birthplace and laboratory for much later Christian spirituality and liturgical development. Antony, Benedict, John Moschus, John Climacus, Cyril of Scythopolis, and Dorotheus of Gaza are only a few of the monastic fathers and saints represented here.
This book surveys the full panorama of ten centuries of Christian monastic life. It moves from the deserts of Egypt and the Frankish monasteries of early medieval Europe to the religious ruptures of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the reforms of the later Middle Ages. Throughout that story the book balances a rich sense of detail with a broader synthetic view. It presents the history of religious life and its orders as a complex braid woven from multiple strands: individual and community, spirit and institution, rule and custom, church and world. The result is a synthesis that places re... View More...
Separated by schism from greek and latin Christians and surviving under arab-islamic suzerainty, the Church of Egypt produced insightful saints and heroic martyrs in a chapter in church history now opened to readers of English for the first time.
New copy, but has suffered rough handling in Publisher warehouse. Light cover wear and creasing to rear cover, binding firm, text pristine. Remainder marked on bottom textblock edge. View More...
Given John Cassian for Lenten reading during the course of his novitiate, Thomas Merton wrote, ''Through Cassian I am getting back to everything.'' Historically and spiritually, Cassian has long been seen as the bridge between the early desert fathers and Western monasticism. Merton's immersion in Cassian-and his later journeys into the thought of Evagrius and the later Byzantine fathers-eventually led him to be among the first American Roman Catholics to connect his own monastic experience with the recovery of early eastern monastic traditions. In October of 1955, Merton was appointed master ... View More...
Given John Cassian for Lenten reading during the course of his novitiate, Thomas Merton wrote, ''Through Cassian I am getting back to everything.'' Historically and spiritually, Cassian has long been seen as the bridge between the early desert fathers and Western monasticism. Merton's immersion in Cassian-and his later journeys into the thought of Evagrius and the later Byzantine fathers-eventually led him to be among the first American Roman Catholics to connect his own monastic experience with the recovery of early eastern monastic traditions. In October of 1955, Merton was appointed master ... View More...
Perhaps the most significant American Catholic spiritual writer of the twentieth century, this volume includes pieces on eleventh- and twelfth-century monastics by Thomas Merton. This volume of previously uncollected studies makes a notable contribution to Merton's extensive and influential legacy. View More...
Here is Thomas Merton's biography of Mother Berchmans (1876-1915), a French Trappistine. He had been inspired by her strength of spirit that enabled her to leave behind beloved home in France in order to help grow the struggling Our Lady of the Angels Abbey in Hakodate, Japan. View More...
As Sydney Griffith, a professor at the Catholic University of America, notes in his preface, one of Thomas Merton's most enduring gifts sprang from his ability to read deeply the Church's vast and often difficult literature and render the wisdom he found there in perceptive, modern American English. This is no small task, considering most translations of the French, Italian, and Spanish texts available during Merton's time were stodgy and impenetrable, hardly in keeping with the illuminating spirit of the authors. Pre-Benedictine Monasticism is supplement and sequel to Cassian and the Fathers-... View More...
These conferences, presented by Thomas Merton to the novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1963-1964, focus mainly on the life and writings of his great Cistercian predecessor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Guiding his students through Bernard's Marian sermons, his treatise On the Love of God, his controversy with Peter Abelard, and above all his great series of sermons on the Song of Songs, Merton reveals why Bernard was the major religious and cultural figure in Europe during the first half of the twelfth century and why he has remained one of the most influential spiritual theologia... View More...
New copy, but has suffered rough handling in Publisher warehouse. Light cover wear and bumped corner, binding firm, text pristine. Remainder-marked on bottom textblock edge next to spine. View More...
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 G... View More...
As novice master of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton presented weekly conferences to familiarize his charges with the meaning and purpose of the vows they aspired to undertake. In this setting, he offered a thorough exposition of the theological, canonical, and above all spiritual dimensions of the vows.Merton set the vows firmly in the context of the anthropological, moral, soteriological, and ecclesial dimensions of human, Christian, and monastic life. He addressed such classical themes of Christian morality as the nature of the human person and his a... View More...
In his novitiate conferences on the Rule of Saint Benedict, Thomas Merton introduces young men embarking on monastic life to the guiding document of that life. He emphasizes the importance of considering the Rule from a perspective that is neither narrowly legalistic nor overly intellectualized, but marked rather by commitment to the goal of Benedictine monasticism, which is not just to obey the Rule but to love and serve God. The Benedictine life, according to Merton, is simply living the Gospel without fanfare. . . . The mainspring of everything in St. Benedict is the love of Christ 'in Hims... View More...
Written during the last decade of Merton's life, these articles reflect his mature thought on monastic life in community and in solitude. Appealing to the monastic dimension in all of us, his reflections have meaning for those living outside as well as inside monastery walls, fellow travelers on the same journey he took, aware of the fragility and imperfections, as well as the great potential for growth and love, within each human person.
Athletes of Prayer:
The monastic tradition, rooted in the lives and writings of the Desert Fathers and the Benedictine Rule, was the great birthplace and laboratory for much later Christian spirituality and liturgical development. Antony, Benedict, John Moschus, John Climacus, Cyril of Scythopolis, and Dorotheus of Gaza are only a few of the monastic fathers and saints represented here.
