(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best christian saints

For sure!

I wrote a post a few months back here that addresses this just a bit, geared more toward the idea of "Patron Saint of [insert thing here]". And a similar post on why Catholics participate in Marian Devotion and specifically elevate her even among the saints - that can be found here.

As for a Biblical pathway to engaging with the saints... bear with me, I'll try to make some sense of it here.

Let's first consider a few things:

We know that our God is God of the living, not God of the dead, and the persons referenced by Christ in St. Mark's Gospel would have certainly been considered, by our human definition, to be "dead" at the point in history where Jesus Christ walked the earth. Further, we see living examples of "dead people" being alive in Christ both at the Transfiguration, hanging out with Jesus in tents (thanks, Peter), and after the Crucifixion as well.

St. Paul, of course, teaches in multiple places throughout his letters about the "oneness" of the Body of Christ as the Church. It's reflected in the Creeds as well, as one of the four marks of the Church. Nowhere is it said, or even implied, that there exists a marked separation between the earthly Body of Christ (what Catholics call "the Church Militant") and the heavenly Body of Christ (what we call "the Church Triumphant"). Before proceeding with additional Biblical commentary, I want to ask, logically, what sense it would make if the members of the Church in heaven would have less intimacy, rather than more, with the rest of the Body of Christ still present on earth after being immediately present to the perfect love of God and beholding His image?

Moving on, we know that those in heaven are aware of the repentance of humans on earth, and rejoice at the fact. We also know that at the liturgy going on in heaven, the prayers of the saints rise up to the altar as incense. Who, or what, they are praying for I'll leave up to you, but it logically can no longer be for their own salvation or deliverance. Perhaps, just maybe, it's for their brothers and sisters still on earth.

One other the to consider in relation to the saints in heaven and their relationship to us:

After a run down of all the Biblical heroes in Hebrews 11, the beginning of Hebrews 12 describes them in a curious way. Not as saved souls in a far off land, but surrounding us as a cloud of witnesses, being near us as we run the race of perseverance with our eyes on Jesus Christ. Those, to me, never sounded like words that separated us from our brothers and sisters who have gone before us. Rather that it makes them intimately available to us.

As for the dynamics of intercession -

One of the verses always used against this is 1 Tim 2: 5, Jesus Christ as the One Mediator between God and man. And that's true - there was no way to heaven post-Fall until God became man and dwelt among us, opening the gates of heaven once more. But the verse to begin that chapter speaks volumes, as well.

We hear that prayers and intercessions be made for all men which we also know intuitively to be true. I pray for you, and you for me. And me for my wife, and her for me. And among friends, pastors, enemies, people we don't even know. Hearkening back to the logic of that One Body of Christ for a moment, now that the gates of heaven are opened, does it fit more that our prayers, love, care, affection and empathy for our brothers and sisters should cease once we enter the heavenly realm and are in the eternal presence of God, or is it more likely that our love, care and concern for others becomes superabundant once we have sight of God's perfect love for them?

Some dynamics to consider further - we know that nothing unclean shall enter heaven, so everyone in heaven has been perfectly purified, made clean, sanctified (shout out to purgatory here, a discussion for a different time). It follows, then, that since the prayers of the righteous are powerful, that the prayer of one made perfectly holy in God's presence in heaven will avail more than one mired by the effects of the Fall, still on earth. It's not a matter of "you there in heaven, your soul is better than mine". It's more "you're in an advantageous position to pray in the direct presence of God for all eternity, and by His great mercy He allows you to help me." The saints' intercession has never been "Hey St. so and so, can you help me with this because God can't?". It's always been, "St. so and so, you persevered by the grace of God against this particular thing in your earthly life. Can you pray with me and for me from your post in heaven for God's grace in overcoming this?".

In your situation, it's the difference between reading and being inspired by St. Teresa of Calcutta's perseverance through a prolonged period of spiritual darkness, and believing that God grants her the ability to intercede on your behalf in His sight when, in humility, you let her example and prayers guide you closer to Him. Who knows, He may see fit to grant the grace through her intercession to answer your prayer, just as He did for the two miracles put forth for her canonization.

After all, God has been known to make His glory known through things as simple as handkerchiefs or shadows, why not by the prayers of an adopted son or daughter that persevered through the earthly life and lives with Him in heaven?

Now, many will say "why do you interpret these Scriptures this way?" or "That's proof texting, this is wrong because of x,y, and z" or "what Paul meant here is actually this." Perhaps. But if you wish, take what I've said and analyze it alongside the accounts of the early Church with how they viewed those who passed before them as Christian martyrs. Read accounts of miracles granted by God after asking for the intercession of a particular saint. And if you wish to read further... I highly recommend Patrick Madrid's Any Friend of God Is A Friend Of Mine and Scott Hahn's Angels And Saints: A Biblical Guide To Friendship With God's Holy Ones.

Whew, I've said a lot. Hopefully it makes a bit of sense. Feel free to keep the discussion going - I'll be praying for ya!

Peace,

DK

My first try didn't seem to go through, so here's a second.

Amazon reviews are an okay place to start. A lot of people offer helpful comments. But, as you said, getting into thinkers that appeal to other audiences outside of just philosophers gets a bit sticky. I wouldn't be so quick to denounce or dismiss the religious aspect. Keep in mind if you want to read Augustine you'll be reading a religious thinker, so he has to be translated as such. For example, you could get a more technical translation of the Confessions, or you could find one operating more in the poetic spirit of Augustine, but regardless you're going to be reading a deeply religious text. Both are good translations, and both capture something of Augustine that the other probably misses. In the end, you have to ask yourself what you want more and what fits your purposes more. Also with regard to religious thinkers, it's important to try to read them on their own terms without having made up your mind before getting into the book. Allow yourself to agree with the thinker as much as you can--get inside their heads, travel with them, dwell with them. At the end, you can make a judgement, but give them a fair trial. This is also where translations can help. Some are simply more engaging, even if they're not "word-for-word" translations. A great example of this is Coleman Barks' "translations" of the poems of Muslim mystic Rumi. He actually completely fails (intentionally so) to translate Rumi word-for-word. Instead, he tries to write a poem in English that captures the language, feeling, and ideas of Rumi himself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's a lot nicer than just reading a book of translated poems full of footnotes and technicalities. If I'm going to write a deeply researched paper on Rumi, perhaps I should find another translation, but if I want to really learn Rumi and try to gain from his knowledge, I might want to begin with Barks.

As for other reviews, you can often find them simply by Googling. For example, here's a review on Hannay's translation of a book by Kierkegaard that is done in a professional, scholarly way. I found it on the first page of Google searching "alastair hannay translation review."

It sounds like hard work, and it is, but it's worth it.

Also, if it makes you feel any better we used Penguin editions for many of my undergraduate classes as text books.

Welllll as a former atheist I am going to have to tell you that if "wanting to see the world as simpler" is your goal, I certainly don't think Catholicism will help. It turns out that God is complicated, theology is hard, and virtue is extremely challenging. I found atheistic materialism with a healthy dose of liberal politics made for a much simpler and especially easier worldview.

But truth isn't supposed to be what is simple and easy. And almost everything worth doing is going to be hard. Putting your faith in God isn't like having a nice sweet daddy/mommy who will kiss your boos boos any make everything better. Nope. Faith makes demands on you. Everything from not spouting off expletives when some ahole cuts you off in traffic to living chastely to putting other people and Christ first in your life. Anyone who tells you this is easy is lying. Selfishness and self-centeredness is always easier and will always tempt you.

That doesn't mean faith isn't worth having or worth doing. Your conscience convicts you long enough until you die and Christ will. The sooner you get started the better off you'll be.

Start here:
1 Read this to know God exists.

2. Read this to know sin is real and virtue is possible.

3. Read this to learn about truth and the authentic courageous intellectual life.

4. Read this to learn how one of the greatest Saints came into faith.

5. Read this for a little bit of everything.

I'm currently in discernment with my parish's Secular Franciscan fraternity (although I'll most likely be discerning out soon as I think God is calling me somewhere different). I've been going to their meetings since the beginning of March and have been getting their e-mails, participating in their Facebook group, sitting with them at Morning Prayer and Mass, going out for coffee, hanging out with them, I went to a profession for a few of their members, etc.

I'd say don't worry about waiting a year before trying it out. If it's something you're interested in, I'd suggested finding a local fraternity and attending a few of their meetings. It's very common for people to go in not knowing all that much about Francis and the Franciscans and what Secular Franciscans are and what they do. That's what their long formation process is for.

The first three or more months are just "checking it out". You're a visitor just trying to see what it's all about. They'll give you the details of what being a Secular Franciscan actually entails. They've also been giving me a ton of books to read-- two biographies on Francis, a biography on Clare, a book about the Secular Franciscans, their Rule, etc. If I decide I want to enter formation (and I don't think I will be doing so right now), I would start having formation classes once a week on a week night. The group that was just professed average about five years from entering to making their profession and they're considered still discerning right up until they profess. So it's a LONG process. Don't feel you need to be sure to check it out.

If you google around, you can find some good websites on what the Secular Franciscans do. The book they gave me to read, which is supposed to be read over the course of a year (but I just read the whole thing at once) is To Live as Francis Lived. I'd encourage you to read up on it for a bit, but I'd also encourage you to go and actually check out a local fraternity. Again, it's a LONG discernment/formation process and there's no commitment just to check it out (just like we'd tell someone to jump right into RCIA rather than sitting around thinking about it for a year).

Also, if you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer to the best of my very limited ability.

My impression is that the most prominent objection of an orthodox Marxist to characterising what they believe as "religion" would be that they are operating with objective, materialist, ontological naturalist, scientific criteria, and that reject revelation, faith, spirit, supernaturalism and mysticism. Under orthodox Marxism, the concept of science encompasses a much broader definition than most modern philosophers of science or scientists accept, particularly those working in the analytic tradition. Here's non-Marxist radical socialist Noam Chomsky on the concept of "Marxism".

The various definitions and connotations that terms like "religious" hold are situated in a social and cultural context which changes over time. It's matter of semantics, and comes across from the Latin root of the word "religion" in "religio" meaning "obligation, bond, reverence" and "religare" meaning "to bind" . For example, existentially speaking, committing oneself wholly to the revolutionary cause would be considered religious form of life in Kierkegaardian terms. If you aren't already familiar with what I mean, I suggest looking up Kierkegaard. Sartre was attacked by many orthodox Marxists for trying defining the purity of Marxist philosophy with his existentialist philosophy.

Some Christian philosophers, like John Macmurray, endorse Marx's critique of religion as a valid critique of institutional and established religion as false-religion, much in the same way that Kierkegaard rejected the established church. Atheist Marxists like Zizek and Badiou claim that Christianity is the foundation of the only true form of atheism, that Calvinist soteriology provides the model for earthly salvation, and that the Saint Paul the apostle is the founder of universalism and the left tradition. Terry Eagleton is another prominent Christian Marxist who emphasises the political revolutionary character of Jesus. I'd recommend his Reason, Faith, Revolution and Why Marx Was Right as better introduction to Marxism for where you are coming from than simply diving into Capital etc.

It's often pointed out that Marx was an eschatological thinker. However, these tend to gloss over Marx's view of theory of praxis as dynamic. Even so, many Marxists and anti-Marxists alike take their cues from Carl Schmitt in viewing all political traditions as being historically derived from theological traditions.

When speaking of Marx and "Marxists", it always pays to remember Marx's famous quote: "what is certain is that I myself am not a 'Marxist' ".

I second the suggestion of Story of a Soul. I’m halfway through it, and it is wonderful. My life isn’t at all like hers, and that’s okay: her overwhelming love for Jesus is something anyone can strive to emulate. (Here’s an Amazon link to a nice paperback copy. If money is tight, send me a PM.)

Read the Gospels. Your time is far better spent there—with our Savior’s own loving, encouraging, admonishing words and actions—than worrying over malicious comments on the Internet.

Bart Ehrman is a pretty widely recognized New Testament scholar/historian deeply involved in analysis of the oldest existing source manuscripts for the NT. He's a secular scholar, so his interpretation is less likely to be skewed by any kind of predetermined conclusion.

In a book of his called Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus, he says that there isn't any historic material, or anything in the earliest surviving NT manuscripts, that reveals anything about Jesus' sexuality. He speculates that Jesus was celibate based on Mark 12:25 and some other sort of tangential stuff, but his bottom line is that any answer is little more than a guess based on possible contextual indicators like Paul's celibacy.

IMO, that's about as straight an answer as you can get without changing professions to become a NT scholar or finding the spirit willing to whisper the answer in your ear. AFAIK everything on it is tenuously speculative and/or dogma based.

As to why I was ever interested enough to have looked into it, my background is in a tradition that believes Jesus was married. Then The Da Vinci Code told that same story, and its popularity resulted in people who cared, including Ehrman, jumping on that train. Ehrman wrote a whole book about setting The Da Vinci Code straight.

Brother, I see the Catholic flair and let me suggest that you seek guidance from the priest at your local parish. He will likely advise you to also seek professional help.

But here is something I would highly suggest: Read the lives of the saints. They will be an inspiration. Here is the Amazon link

If you need me to buy it for you then just ask me via PM. I'll send it to you.

Also, this quote:
>“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our lord's living garden.”
― Thérèse de Lisieux

In other words, as a image bearer of God you have a specific purpose here and you are meant to do something. This can be found through prayer, but I would honestly spend time doing good works like feeding the poor and see if that doesn't help you realize how valuable you are.

We remind ourselves of our weakness to keep us from being prideful, because the weaker we are, the more God can work in us. Mary is humblest of all, and see what God has wrought through her.

But we also have St Paul, who writes in 1 Corinthians 1:31
>Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

The confidence and pride we have is in God - we are like a small child who freely runs around in the world with absolute faith that his parents are there to take care of him. We don't say, "I can do this because I am great" we say "I can do this if God wills it, because God is great" or "I can do God's will no matter how hard because God is working through me." This confidence lets us literally attempt the impossible because we know God's Will will be done even if we die.

I would recommend reading something like The Story of a Soul. We say how weak we are and how great God is because it's the truth. The awesomeness and strengths and power of all the Saints and Angels combined is like nothing compared to God. And He sees that, and says, "Awesome! Here, have Me!" At that point, we can do nothing but accept and offer ourselves to Him Who made us.

Happy to help!

John Meyendorff is the author you'd want to read first if you do do so.

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Gregory-Palamas-John-Meyendorff/dp/0913836141

Although learning about his life and the Hesychast Controversy would be a good idea before reading a book in my view.

https://youtu.be/FLmw_8FKR8w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychast_controversy?wprov=sfla1

Palamas' own writting can be difficult to access. Ive mostly only read the text I'm recommending, I'm spending a few years to prepare for his primary material with other writers to be honest.

But his sermons/homilies will be much more accesible as they are written for a general audience.

Palamas is enjoyed as a great regurgitator of Ortyhodoxy who is living in late Byzantium after 1,000 years of the development of the Orthodox tradition into a cohesive image written into text. In some sense he's the cap stone of Orthodoxy, or at least until the 20th century. He's drawing of people like Maximus the Confessor, Dionysus the Areopagate, Symeon the New Theologian, Cappodocian Fathers, Origen and Clement of Alexandria, and countless monastic teachings that are too many to be told.

It's a difficult term, yeah

I use it as I believe most people do from a gut level these days. Usually elements of control - generally centralised - teaching people to obey and not to question, teaching admiration or following a human person or persons at the top, and often some sort of practice that deviates from the more common, garden-variety religious practice.

So arguably Scientology is a cult, whereas most Baptist churches (who generally don't do those things) are not.

Open Brethren are generally taught to test whatever they hear against the Bible, and not to necessarily trust what they hear from the pulpit. Note this is not to be literalist - they tend to encourage Biblical research and theological learning. (The Laidlaw College in Lincoln Road is where a lot of them study, and they get visiting lecturers from around the world.) So they're more interested in what the latest research suggests about the Bible and what was meant by the original author and what the original audience would have understood - as well as whether that then has relevance today.

The book Reframing Paul is a great example of this - it's all about the Greco-Roman culture at the time and therefore what Paul's letters would have meant in the context of culture and events. E.g. the talk of "head coverings" in church originally came from Paul's discussion with the people of Corinth, in a political climate where the Roman governor's daughter was rebelling by shaving her head to look like a prostitute (because prostitutes then, there, had shaved heads). So Paul's admonition for women to have long hair as a covering was basically "Try to look respectable and not draw unwanted political attention to your religious community lest the Romans crack down on you" - not a general command that women should wear head coverings in church, something it only came to be interpreted as centuries later.

Here is a documentary on the environmental work of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFpXuwmLiBE

Salvation isn't about saving people from legal punishments. Salvation is pascha, deliverance, and Exodus out of Egypt with all of the donkeys, and material things. John 3:16 famously says

>"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
>
>John 3:16

The Greek term used for world is kosmos. There are Greek words that just mean humanity, but the word used in scripture is that God so loved the cosmos, the gave his his only Son....

Heaven isn't a place we go, but rather the transfiguration of the cosmos through the deification of man gowned in Christ. Creation is saved, being saved, and will be saved. The question is humanity will participate in that work (liturgy) of God or not.

The notion that we shouldn't care for the environment is fundamentally a theological, doctrinal, and exegetical problem with Christians who don't see the material body and the cosmos as part of our spiritual practice and God's salvation.

Here are a few books to consider

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Environment-Study-Symeon-Theologian/dp/088141221X

https://www.amazon.com/Re-Imagining-Nature-Environmental-Humanities-Ecosemiotics/dp/1611487161

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Cosmos-Lars-Thunberg/dp/088141865X/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_0/137-7422368-2630447?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=088141865X&pd_rd_r=4d9e53aa-38d2-454d-be6e-c05fb235e686&pd_rd_w=vDjwg&pd_rd_wg=kPVnB&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=7V00JABKJ4GG7G84X344&psc=1&refRID=7V00JABKJ4GG7G84X344

The problem is also exasperated by certain views of ecology, the body, and the relationship between the two. A non-religious environmental historian like Linda Nash is a good resource on analyzing that type of thinking that is common in the anti-environmentalism crowd.

I have a four-way tie for best mariology.

In no particular order:

Marian Mystery by Denis Farkasfalvy

Queen Mother by Ted Sri

Daughter Zion by Joseph Ratzinger

Mariology by Matthias Joseph Scheeben



If you're looking for books directed at a more popular audience (i.e. if you're not a theologian), then the following are very good:

Behold your Mother by Tim Staples

Hail Holy Queen by Scott Hahn




EDIT: Here's a great bibliography my professor made for a mariology course.


EDIT: Just as a caveat, my interest in mariology is mostly biblical. Apparitions aren't a huge interest of mine. So the above reflects that. Though there's plenty on dogmatic/systematic mariology there too.

Awesome book recommended by The Catholic Gentleman blog:

Love is a Radiant Light: The Life... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1621384322?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

My senior year of undergrad I did a fair amount of work on medieval and early modern women, so I can recommend a couple of works here. Caroline Walker Bynum is basically the pioneer in the field and has written some really great studies, like [Holy Feast and Holy Fast] (http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Feast-Fast-Significance-Historicism/dp/0520063295/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335016290&sr=8-2) and [Jesus as Mother] (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Mother-Spirituality-Medieval-Renaissance/dp/0520052226/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1335016290&sr=8-8). These both deal with women and feminine imagery in the context of the medieval church, and specifically within monasticism. If you're looking for something a little closer to the Reformation and perhaps a bit more accessible, I'd recommend [The Burgermeister's Daughter] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Burgermeisters-Daughter-Scandal-Sixteenth-Century/dp/0060977213/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1335016083&sr=8-4) by Ozment.

The following works are pretty nerdy, I would say. They were assigned throughout the course of my undergraduate studies in theology and think that they serve as excellent primers to the intellectual side of Catholicism.

Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ. Highly recommended as a beautiful exposition of the Catholic concept of God.

Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity.

Ratzinger, In the Beginning...: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall.

Ratzinger, God and the World. A fantastic survey of essential Catholic doctrines and beliefs.

Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation. A genius work that reminds us that God is on the side of the poor, that he casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Life Out of Death. A short but beautiful meditation on what it means to die and rise with Christ.

And then, of course, there are the classics. Augustine's Confessions, Aqunas' Summa, Athanasius' On the Incarnation, Benedict's Rule, Anselm's Proslogion, Bonaventure's Mind's Road to God, etc.

I don't know if these are the best and more important books I've read, but they're ones I heartily recommend:

• In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early Modern American Life, in which the author (James Deetz) asks his readers to consider the small things forgotten (fancy that) in the archaeological and historical record. Buttons, cups, doorways, gravestones. What do these tell us about people and the everyday?
  
  
• I was quite impressed by Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity, by Reviel Netz. He discusses the invention of barbed wire and its use in and effects on agriculture, warfare, and concentration camp. It's rather theoretical, but it's easy to read and really well done. I am partial to history books that focus on one seemingly mundane object (such as salt, as on your list; cod; the clock; or the cat).
  
  
• Holy Fast, Holy Feast, by Caroline Walker Bynum, is required reading for any medievalist. She discusses the significance of food and fasting to medieval religious women.

The inspiration we used was from the catacomb saints from the book Heavenly Bodies. The skeletons ordained in jewels were pulled from the catacombs, so as you can imagine they're old and jacked.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0500251959

I recommend Fr. Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, which is also available for free from project Gutenberg, in ebook form, as a way to learn more about the saints.

Magnificat and (I assume) other daily missals have the lives of saints.

It's basically the loss of faithful and knowledgeable cultural Catholicism.

Even through I grew up Anglican, my mom got a book written by Maria von Trapp (of Sound of Music fame) at a tag sale when I was little, and we tried to incorporate a few of their traditions into our spiritual life as a family.

For instance,

>One of the old customs is to choose a patron saint for the
new year of the Church. The family meets on Saturday evening, and with
the help of the missal and a book called "The Martyrology," which lists
thousands of saints as they are celebrated throughout the year, they
choose as many new saints as there are members of the household. We
always choose them according to a special theme. One year, for instance,
we had all the different Church Fathers; another year we chose only
martyrs; then again, only saints of the new world....During the war we
chose one saint of every country at war...

>The newly chosen names are handed over to the calligrapher of the family... She writes
the names of the saints in gothic lettering on little cards. Then she
writes the name of every member of the household on an individual card
and hands the two sets over to the mother...

>Everybody draws a card
and puts it in his missal. This saint will be invoked every morning after
morning prayer. Everyone is supposed to look up and study the life story
of his new friend, and some time during the coming year he will tell the
family all about it. As there are so many of us, we come to know about
different saints every year. Sometimes this calls for considerable
research on the part of the unfortunate one who has drawn St. Eustachius,
for instance, or St. Bibiana. But the custom has become very dear to us,
and every year it seems as if the family circle were enlarged by all
those new brothers and sisters entering in and becoming known and loved by all.

I don't know how common these things were in families, but the fact that even the idea of really following the liturgical year in this fashion is unfathomable to a lot of people now shows us how far we've drifted in the last 60 years. (And I'm not necessarily blaming V2.)

This is a liberal evangelical example, but will give you more of an idea of how they combine language research and historical context research if you're interested. It's a very good example of this type of scholarship and demonstrates incredibly well how modern-context readings of basic English translations miss the mark so easily.

Supposedly Christopher West's "Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing" is supposed to be solid. As I understand it, it's just Pope John Paul II's theology of the body distilled and popularized to be more accessible.

The best part about the Catholic religion is that we've been thinking about these things for two thousand years; and we've written down a tremendous amount of things.

I Burned for Your Peace: Augustine's Confessions Unpacked is an example; worth the read as Augustine went through similar times.

St. Innocent: Apostle to America is a detailed but very readable book about this wonderful saint. It's only about $5 used at Amazon :-) I recommend it!

Do you happen to be catholic? Franciscan spirituality seems to be exactly what your looking for and they have a secular Franciscan third order that's an extension if the monastic order. https://www.amazon.com/Live-Francis-Lived-Franciscans-Spirituality/dp/0867163968

That book is used in their formation and is a program of developing yourself spiritually and cabn be used for people looking to live and embody the gospels.

Sometimes we aren't called to renounce everything, sometimes the Lord gIves us a lot as an instrument of his will, we should use the gifts he gave us to advance his kingdom. Theres plenty of people already in poverty, sometimes it's best to use our ability to gain resources to give to those who don't have that ability. As Americans or Europeans we've been given a gift. But Franciscans emphasize deep spiritual reflection, embodying christ and poverty/humility.

That book transformed my life

St. Innocent, Apostle To America is a great book. I loved reading his letters to his daughter. He struggled so much to spread the gospel.

Um, no. Whether one thinks they were "made up" or not, the four gospels of the New Testament were written well before then. So were some of the ones that didn't make it.

The words "Da Vinci Code" and "historians" should never be used in the same sentence, unless that sentence is something like, "Historians laugh at the claims of The Da Vinci Code to historical accuracy."

That man is the first among equals in the second largest Christian Church/denomination. Granted, Orthodoxy is not as well known in western circles.

Catholicism actually has a pretty strong enivromentalist lens as well. Here is an article on the papal document I mentioned with a free download link.

https://earthministry.org/advocacy/pope-francis-encyclical-on-the-environment/

Most Mainline protestants churches will also have an even stronger environmental focus.

Really the only anti environmental view is coming from Evangelical Christians and not even all of them, but it might be the majority.

Here are some books to consider for very intersting enivromentalist Christian thought.

Man and the Environment: A Study of St. Symeon the New Theologian https://www.amazon.com/dp/088141221X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_SLLhDbRK1E3C1


Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881410195/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_PRLhDbYKYXTZ1

https://www.amazon.com/Re-Imagining-Nature-Environmental-Humanities-Ecosemiotics/dp/1611487161

Apologia pro Vita Sua is what you'll want to look at. (That's an amazon US link, btw. I assume you'd use amazon UK)

I'm glad you have an understanding of the Eucharist. It can be a hard thing for non-catholics to overcome in their conversion.

Are you familiar with Catholic Answers Live? They have a video discussing just about any question one could ask. They have several about the Pope if you're interested.

I'd highly recommend Love is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of Saint Charbel. It's a great book I haven't finished (though short). I've really enjoyed his homilies--they're so simple but profound and timeless.

I don't know who Toby de Silva is, but I do know that Paul Koudounaris published an amazing book on this: Heavenly Bodies.

I have a better source for you which is in keeping with Catholic Doctrine: Check this out: Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones by Dr. Scott Hahn

Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0307987159/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_4oZWDb9PMRV31

Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1631466720/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_aNmUDbFFFZWKZ

> All of these claims really throw me off from praying the Rosary

I would probably consider shelving the book, if it's not working for you right now and if you have no specific need to read this book, and (a) just pray the rosary on your previous schedule without worrying about whether it is better or worse than other prayers, and (b) find a different book written by a different saint to read.

It could even still be a Marian sort of book, as long as it is a different author... they all have different writing styles. https://www.amazon.com/Daughter-Zion-Meditations-Churchs-Marian/dp/0898700264
would be a very different experience, for example
(author is not a saint but I think we all like him anyway).

I'm going to add an extra day of fasting to each week. Gluttony has bedeviled me for years, so I'm hoping and praying God will use this to help me.

I also want to follow The School of Jesus Crucified for my added prayer/devotional time. It's only 31 days, so I'll offer up a novena for the last nine days.

That's my plan for now.

I'm glad you asked that. I have a couple of wonderful books with photos.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heavenly-Bodies-Treasures-Spectacular-Catacombs/dp/0500251959/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Empire-Death-Cultural-Ossuaries/dp/0500251789/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

The best ones I have seen myself were in Italy and The Czech Republic.

Excuse the shitty site, but it has some detail about the purported history of the skull, which is venerated as that of Mary Magdalene:

http://www.magdalenepublishing.org/about/

Relic Theft

Medieval Memory/Cognition Techniques

Women in the MA

Woman and Food

Asceticism

The Cult of the Saints

Monastic Culture

Medieval Origins of Modern Thought

If there's anything specific you're interested in, let me know and I'll try to think of some more recs.

For those interested, there was a book published a little while ago with full-colour photos of these skeletons. http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Bodies-Treasures-Spectacular-Catacombs/dp/0500251959

St Innocent, Apostle to America

Newman expresses this opinion in his most famous work, the Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

> 5. And thus again I was led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long before, viz. the concatenation of argument by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea; and I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other. (Norton, p. 156; Penguin, p. 182)

He reiterates later in the book that "there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the way to Atheism", and "Anglicanism is the halfway house on the one side, and Liberalism is the halfway house on the other."

Is this it?

http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Bodies-Treasures-Spectacular-Catacombs/dp/0500251959/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416811907&sr=8-1&keywords=heavenly+bodies

Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine

Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine by Bart D. Ehrman.

>The body is sinful, dirty, foul, tainted, etc. Could that not lead to self-loathing, depression, extreme ascetic attitudes entrenched in a desire to get control of the body, attitudes that might translate well into disordered eating?

See: Holy Feast and Holy Fast