Knowledge Of The Holy by A W Tozer

Paperback: "The message of this book does not grow out of these times but it is appropriate to them. It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge: and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.

Were Christians today reading such works as those of Augustine or Anselm, a book like this would have no reason for being. But such illuminated masters are known to modern Christians only by name. Publishers dutifully reprint their books and in due time these appear on the shelves of our studies. But the whole trouble lies right there: they remain on the shelves. The current religious mood makes the reading of them virtually impossible even for educated Christians.

For that reason, an effort such as this may be not without some beneficial effect. Since this book is neither esoteric nor technical, and since it is written in the language of worship with no pretension to elegant literary style, perhaps some persons may be drawn to read it. While I believe that nothing will be found here contrary to sound Christian theology, I yet write not for professional theologians but for plain persons whose hearts stir them up to seek God Himself. 

It is my hope that this small book, Knowledge of the Holy War (2016), may contribute somewhat to the promotion of personal heart religion among us; and should a few persons by reading it be encouraged to begin the practice of reverent meditation on the being of God, that will more than repay the labour required to produce it."

By A W Tozer

The present edition is a reproduction of 1920 publication of this work. Minor typographical errors may have been corrected without note, however, for an authentic reading experience. The spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been retained from the original text. 

In 2006, Knowledge of the Holy was named in “The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.

About the author: Born in rural Pennsylvania, Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897-1963) - American Christian pastor, author, magazine editor, and spiritual mentor - began his lifelong pursuit of God at age seventeen.

He was born again or converted to Christianity as a teenager in Akron, Ohio. Walking home from work one day, he heard a street preacher say: "If you don't know how to be saved, just call on God." When young Tozer got home, he climbed into his attic and did just that. In many ways, that simple act would characterize Tozer's entire life and ministry. In his early 20s, just after his ordination ceremony, he retreated to a quiet place in the woods and prayed what he later wrote down and titled, The Prayer of a Minor Prophet. It seems God granted his request, for Tozer gave himself to three main tasks: prayer, study, and proclamation. He was known to arrive at his office in the early morning, change into a pair of old pants so he wouldn't wrinkle his slacks and pray for up to three hours at a time - beginning on the couch, but soon moving to the floor, face buried in the carpet.

He made time for sustained study as well, mostly meditating on Scripture, but also reading deeply of many authors - early church fathers, mystics, writers of the Middle Ages, Reformers, Puritans, philosophers, and even his contemporaries – impressive, considering his formal education ended at the sixth grade.

What Tozer heard from God through prayer and study he spoke to men through books and sermons. Tozer wrote The Pursuit of God, perhaps his most popular work, on an overnight train, equipped with just a Bible, notebook, and pencil. His books and sermons cut to the heart and healed many spiritual ills. In 2000, The Pursuit of God was named to Christianity Today’s list of 100 “Books of the Century.” 

His countenance was stern but his sense of humour was warm. His mind was steel and his rhetoric sharp. But these only made him a gifted man. It was his deep devotion, his abiding dependence on the Spirit - his painstaking attention to the beauty of Christ - that made him a servant of God. A W Tozer ministered until his death in May 1963. His body rests in Akron, OH, under and epitath that simply reads: "A W TOZER - A MAN OF GOD". Fitting words for a minor prophet. For his accomplishments, he received honorary doctorates from Wheaton and Houghton Colleges. 

His official publisher, Christian Publications, released many titles after his death, based on his magazine articles and sermon transcriptions. These continue in print with Moody Publishers. Several other publishers have released his public domain works.

Seen In Bayswater, London

 

Gossip

 

Blonde Ambition by Samantha Phillips

Paperback: Charlie Christie, blonde, beautiful career girl, enters the old school network of Lloyd's, determined to scale the City's highest realms of power but she soon discovers that its foundations are rotten to the core.

Charlotte Christie is under no illusion about her job: at Fitzgerald Denton, greed is good and you watch your back. But as she learns to handle the jokes and the backstabbing and prove her worth as a broker, Charlie unearths a scam. Almost untraceable, it could strike a deathblow to Lloyd's of London and bring the government to its knees. By avoiding Charlie, her opponents have made their single mistake. She has one chance to strike back.

Blonde Ambition (1996) is Samantha Phillip's debut and sole novel.

About the author: Samantha Phillips was born in Derbyshire, is a graduate of the University of London and has a Masters from the Sorbonne in Paris. Following a background in ship broking and advertising in Paris she joined Lloyd's in 1989, employed by Willis Faber & Dumas as a broker in their aviation division. In November 1992 she left Willis Faber and began legal action against the company. Two weeks later she published the first edition of Inside Eye, a magazine that revealed what went on behind the scenes at Lloyd's. After a two-year struggle she won a highly publicised court case against her former employers. Samantha Phillips lives in London.

Rating: 4/5

Seen Near Lancaster Gate, London

 

Is It Even Possible?

 

The Unquiet Dead (A Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak Mystery Series) by Ausma Zehanat Khan

Paperback: Despite their many differences, Detective Rachel Getty trusts her boss, Esa Khattak, implicitly. But she's still uneasy at Khattak's tight-lipped secrecy when he asks her to look into Christopher Drayton's death. Drayton's apparently accidental fall from a cliff doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, particularly not from Rachel and Khattak's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But when she learns that Drayton may have been living under an assumed name, Rachel begins to understand why Khattak is tip-toeing around this case. It soon comes to light that Drayton may have been a war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.

If that's true, any number of people might have had reason to help Drayton to his death, and a murder investigation could have far-reaching ripples throughout the community. But as Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, with no easy answers. Had the specters of Srebrenica returned to haunt Drayton at the end, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death from the Bluffs?

In her spellbinding debut, Ausma Zehanat Khan has written a complex and provocative story of loss, redemption, and the cost of justice that will linger with readers long after turning the final page. While The Unquiet Dead is a crime novel, its contents focus around the history of the Bosnian war and genocide with the Srebenica Genocide forming the background for the crime investigation.

The Unquiet Dead (2015) is the first instalment in the refreshingly original Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak mystery series set in Toronto, Canada. Currently, there are five books in this mystery series.

The Unquiet Dead was awarded the Arthur Ellis Award and Barry Award for Best First Novel in 2016, and was nominated for a Macavity Award for Best First Book and an Edgar Award for First Mystery. 

About the author: Ausma Zehanat Khan is a British-born (Leicester, UK) Canadian living in the United States, whose own parents are heirs to a complex story of migration to and from three different continents. A former adjunct professor at American and Canadian universities, she holds a PhD in International Human Rights Law, with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre as the main subject of her dissertation. She has practiced immigration law and taught human rights law at Northwestern University and York University. Previously the Editor in Chief of Muslim Girl Magazine - the first magazine targeted to young Muslim women - Ausma Zehanat Khan has moved frequently, traveled extensively, and written compulsively. In a 2018 interview with Nick Douglas, published in Life Hacker magazine, Khan described how she devoted more time to her writing as a novelist when she and her husband began moving more often, when it did not seem worthwhile to get the qualification to practice law in a short-term home. In 2020, Khan's nonfiction essay Origins and Destinations was published by Seal Press in the crime fiction writers' anthology, Private Investigations. Khan currently lives in Colorado with her husband. The Unquiet Dead was her first novel. Khan is also the author of of the Khorasan Archives epic fantasy series.

Rating: 5/5

To Give Life Shape

 

Honesty, Truth And Compassion

 

Out Of The Silent Planet

 

Sean Lock (1963-2021), English Comedian and Actor

 

You've Heard It Said

 

Monday Quote No 23821

Apparitions In Late Medieval And Renaissance Spain by William A Christian Jr

Paperback: Apparitions in late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (1981) investigates the world of images in the minds of the people of rural Castile and Catalonia in the fifteenth century. 

Like most other peoples, Spaniards have long wondered about God and the saints - what they want from mortals, how they affect human affairs, even what they look like. The most direct evidence has come from face to face meetings with the holy ones. These meetings are the subject of this book.

For this purpose, it comprises a series of verbatim reports of celestial visions of common people, children, farmers, shepherd's wives and servants. They, too, sought to represent the world of images, what they saw and heard, in words, like the poets; at times they seemed characters in a public sacred play; and their descriptions became the basis for paintings and statues. 

Rather than explaining away the visions, or even explaining them, the author has tried to learn from them how people experienced both the world they knew and the world they had to imagine. These were extraordinary moments when the two intersected, and Mary and the saints were with them.

The author has included complete texts wherever feasible, and has placed them in the forefront with a minimum of introduction for each, so readers can form their own opinions and make their own discoveries before reading the author's glosses. The author hopes you will experience in some measure the excitement felt by the villages and townspeople of Castile and Catalonia when these epiphanies took place.

About the author: William A Christian Jr (b 1944) is an American religious historian and independent scholar who lives in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. He was the JE and Lillian Byrne Tipton Distinguished Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. Christian is a graduate of the University of Michigan (PhD 1971).

His books include Augustine on the Creation of the World (1953), Person and God in a Spanish Valley (1972), Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (1981), Moving crucifixes in modern Spain (1992), Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ (1996) and Divine Presence in Spain and Western Europe 1500-1960: Visions, Religious Images and Photographs (2012).

Family Trust by Kathy Wang

Paperback: Meet Stanley Huang: Father, husband, ex-husband, man of unpredictable temper, aficionado of bargain luxury goods. He has just been diagnosed with cancer, and his family are dealing with the fall-out.

Meet Stanley's family: Son Fred, a banker who never has enough money; daughter Kate, juggling a difficult boss and her two small children; ex-wife Linda, suspicious of Stanley's grand gestures; and second wife Mary, giver of foot rubs and ego massages.

Meet Stanley's fortune: As the Huangs come to terms with Stanley's approaching death, they are starting to fear that there is a lot less in the pot than they thought. And that is a problem when you are living in one of the wealthiest parts of California.

As Stanley’s death approaches, the Huangs are faced with unexpected challenges that upend them and eventually lead them to discover what they most value.

Family Trust (2018) is a compelling tale of cultural expectations, career ambitions and our relationships with the people who know us best. Family Trust skewers the ambition and desires that drive Silicon Valley and draws a sharply loving portrait of modern American family life. Spanning themes of culture, ambition, love and most of all, family, this sparkling debut is a sharp, funny and loving portrait of a Chinese-American family's attempts (or not) to fulfil its dying patriarch's final bequest.

About the author: Kathy Wang is the author of Family Trust (2018) and Impostor Syndrome (2021). She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, and lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two children.

Rating: 5/5

Between Being A Writer And Being A Translator

City Of Secrets: The Truth Behind The Murders At The Vatican by John Follain

Hardback: On 4 May 1998, Colonel Alois Estermann, commander of the Swiss Guards, the Vatican force that protects the pope, was found shot dead in his apartment inside Vatican City, along with his wife. Also shot dead in the room was a young Swiss guardsman, Cédric Tornay. 

Three hours after the bodies were discovered, the Vatican released a statement naming Tornay as the killer, his motive a "fit of madness" brought on by frustration with the unit's discipline - a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry. 

Not so fast, thought John Follain, author of City of Secrets (2003) and Rome-based correspondent for the Sunday Times of London, who also figured that investigating the story would allow him insight into Vatican ways. 

Follain's book presents his findings, written as a first-person investigation. This technique generates moderate suspense, as Follain follows up leads, interviews tangential figures in the case (the man who succeeded Estermann as head of the Swiss Guards, assorted clerics, the accused killer's mother et al), and it allows for vivid firsthand accounts of the Vatican and its officials, as well as of London, Paris and Switzerland, where Follain's digging also took him. 

As Follain turns up evidence - mostly circumstantial and anecdotal - that the murders were more complicated than the Vatican opined, including apparent ties between Estermann and the conservative group Opus Dei and a possible homosexual affair between Estermann and Tornay, and as his outrage grows, his writing turns more lurid: his portrait of Monsignor Alois Jehle, chaplain to the Swiss Guards, which closes this account, drips with personal distaste. 

While by no means an objective account, then, the book does provide unusual access to inner Vatican circles and demonstrates that even those busy in pursuit of the divine can be human, perhaps all too human.

City of Secrets (2003) is an explosive exposé of murder, corruption and a still-unsolved crime committed on holy territory. It is the story of a systematic attempt to hide the fatal failings of a security force charged with protecting one of the most influential leaders in the highest reaches of the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world.

About the author: John Follain writes on Italian politics and European affairs. He has covered Italy for The Sunday Times since 1998. His previous books include A Death in Italy: The Definitive Account of the Amanda Knox Case, The Last Godfathers and the international bestseller, Zoya's Story, on an Afghan resistance fighter, which was translated into fourteen languages. He was voted runner-up for the 2006 Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism, and nominated for the 2008 Magazine Journalism Awards for his interview with the Knox family.

The Taliban At War: 2001 - 2018 by Antonio Giustozzi

Hardback: How does the Taliban wage war? How has its war changed over time? 

Firstly, the movement’s extraordinary military operation relies on financial backing. This volume analyses such funding. The Taliban’s external sources of support include foreign governments and non-state groups, both of which have affected the Taliban’s military campaigns and internal politics. 

Secondly, this is the first full-length study of the Taliban to acknowledge and discuss in detail the movement’s polycentric character. Here not only the Quetta Shura, but also the Haqqani Network and the Taliban’s other centres of power, are afforded the attention they deserve.

The Taliban at War: 2001-2018 (2019) is based on extensive field research, including hundreds of interviews with Taliban members at all levels of the organisation, community elders in Taliban-controlled areas, and other sources. It covers the Taliban insurgency from its first manifestations in 2002 up to the end of 2015. The five-month Battle of Kunduz epitomised the ongoing transition of the Taliban from an insurgent group to a more conventional military force, intent on fighting a protracted civil war.

In this latest book, renowned Afghanistan expert Antonio Giustozzi rounds off his twenty years of studying the Taliban with an authoritative sitrep detailing the evolution of its formidable military machine.

Fundamentally, the book is about how fighting a sixteen-year-long war has affected the Taliban, by the world’s leading expert on the movement.

About the author: Antonio Giustozzi is Visiting Professor at King’s College London and Fellow at RUSI, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics. He has written or edited eleven books, all published by Hurst, the most recent - before The Taliban at War - being The Islamic State in Khorasan: Afghanistan, Pakistan and the New Central Asian Jihad (2018).

Why Are We Always In A Hurry?

Book Series

History Of Antichrist by Rev P Huchedé

Paperback: And none of the wicked shall understand, but the learned shall understand. - Daniel 12:10

History of Antichrist (1884) is an exposition of certain and probable events which concern the "man of sin," his reign, his time, and end, according to Holy Scripture and Tradition.

History of Antichrist was reprinted by TAN in 1968, 1969 and 1971. It is translated from the French by J D B.

About the author: The Rev Father P Huchedé was Professor of Theology at the Grand Seminary of Laval, France in the 1800s. His comprehensive History of Antichrist was originally published in 1884 from Nicholas Bray, New York, having received the Imprimatur from the Bishop of Montreal, Edward Charles Fabre. Father Huchedé's literary style is lucidly clear, and he cites sources frequently, rendering his work still worth reading today.

Sacred Betrayals by Martha Alegría Reichmann de Valladeres

Paperback: For almost forty years, Honduran ambassador Alejandro Valladares was among the closest friends of the man who would become Pope Francis' "vice pope," Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga. 

In this important work, Valladares' widowed spouse reveals the troubling web of financial and moral corruption that she uncovered after their family's life savings disappeared in a bogus investment scheme recommended by Maradiaga, one that led ultimately to the highest reaches of the Vatican, and to Pope Francis himself. 

In this important work, Martha Alegría Reichmann de Valladares reveals the naked impunity and abuses committed by Maradiaga under the protection of the pope himself, and cries out for justice. 

No concerned Catholic can ignore her testimony.

Sacred Betrayals: A Widow Raises Her Voice Against The Corruption of the Francis Papacy (2019) is translated from the Spanish entitled Traiciones Sagradas, edited and adapted in close cooperation with the author by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman. 

About the author: Martha Alegría Reichmann de Valladares is the widow of the former ambassador to the Holy See for Honduras and Dean of the Vatican Diplomatic Corps, Alejandro Emilio Valladares Lanza. She has lived in Rome since 1991. In addition to Sacred Betrayals, she has written two books of spiritual poetry and narrative, one of which, Yo te encontré (I Found You) was published by the Vatican in 2013.

About the author/translator: Matthew Cullinan Hoffman is a Catholic essayist and journalist, and the author and translator of The Book of Gomorrah and St Peter Damian's Struggle Against Ecclesiastical Corruption (2015). His award-winning articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, London Sunday Times, Catholic World Report, LifeSite News, Crisis, the National Catholic Register, and many other publications. He holds an MA in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary, with a focus on Thomism. He has attended the usus antiquior for a quarter century. He lives in Mexico.

The Acta Pilati (Forgotten Books) by George Sluter

Paperback: The Acta Pilati: Important Testimony of Pontius Pilate, Recently Discovered, Being His Official Report to the Emperor Tiberius, Concerning the Crucifixion of Christ (2012) is the estimation in which the Acta Pilati was held by the Apostolic Fathers and Early Defenders of Christianity. It is supposedly Pontius Pilate's official report to the Emperor Tiberius, concerning the crucifixion of Christ.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. 

A Tall Order

 

Erects Bridges

 

Relentless Pursuit: Our Battle With Jeffrey Epstein by Bradley J Edwards with Brittany Henderson

Paperback: Relentless Pursuit (24 June 2021) is the definitive story of the case against Jeffrey Epstein and the corrupt system that supported him, told in thrilling detail by the lawyer who has represented Epstein's victims for more than a decade.

In June 2008, Florida-based victims' rights attorney Bradley J Edwards was thirty-two years old and had just started his own law firm when a young woman named Courtney Wild came to see him. She told a shocking story of having been sexually coerced at the age of fourteen by a wealthy man in Palm Beach named Jeffrey Epstein. Edwards, who had never heard of Epstein, had no idea that this moment would change the course of his life. Over the next ten years, Edwards devoted himself to bringing Epstein to justice, and came close to losing everything in the process. Edwards tracked down and represented more than twenty of Epstein's victims, and shined a light on his network of contacts and friends, among them Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew.

Edwards gives his riveting, blow-by-blow account of battling Epstein on behalf of his clients, and provides stunning details never shared before. He explains how he followed Epstein's criminal enterprise from Florida, to New York, to Europe, to a Caribbean island, and, in the process, became the one person Epstein most feared could take him down. Epstein and his cadre of high-priced lawyers were able to manipulate the FBI and the Justice Department, but, despite making threats and attempting schemes straight out of a spy movie, Epstein couldn't stop Edwards, his small team of committed lawyers and, most of all, the victims, who were dead-set on seeing their abuser finally put behind bars.

Relentless Pursuit is the definitive account of the Epstein saga, personally told by the gutsy lawyer who took on one of the most brazen sexual criminals in the history of the US, and exposed the corrupt system that let him get away with it for far too long.

About the authors: Bradley J Edwards is a prominent board-certified civil trial lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who specialises in representing victims of violent and sexual crimes. In addition to obtaining some of America's largest jury verdicts, he prosecuted the landmark Crime Victims' Rights case, Doe v United States of America, pro bono for more than ten years. He has published on the topic of crime victims' rights in nationally recognised journals and speaks across the USA on the representation of victims and survivors.

Brittany Henderson is a trial lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who is committed to making a difference both in the courtroom and in the community. She has obtained nearly $100 million in jury verdicts and settlements in her short career as an advocate for crime victims. Additionally, she is the cofounder of two nonprofit organizations for sexual abuse survivors.  

Children Through Imitation Show Us What We Really Are

Face Mask Summer 2021

 

Happiness No 9821

 

Vocation To Love: Biography Of Venerable Consolata Betrone by Paulo Risso

Paperback: The Children of Mary Sisters published this book after reading Jesus' messages to Sister Consolata Betrone, which pierced their hearts! 

Jesus gave the messages for the world, such as, "I will think of everything, you think only of loving Me." "The more that you love Me, the happier you will be." "Every act of love will save a soul." 

They practiced what Jesus taught, then wrote the book, I Will Think of Everything, You Think Only of Loving Me, about the life-changing and peace-bringing messages. This biography of Sister Consolata gives more insight about living a ceaseless act of love.

Vocation To Love (2020) is edited by the Sisters of Children of Mary and translated from the Italian by Robin Lees.

About Venerable Consolata Betrone: Venerable Maria Consolata Betrone (1903-1946), baptised as Pierina Maria Betrone, commonly known as Consolata Betrone, was a Catholic mystic and nun of the Franciscan Capuchine order. Betrone was born in Saluzzo, Piedmont, Italy, in a middle-class family. She died at the convent of Moriondo, Testona, Italy.

Pierina Betrone was the daughter of Pietro Betrone and Giuseppina Nirino, the owners of a bakery in Saluzzo (Cuneo) and then managers of a restaurant in Airasco (Turin). Pierina was the second of six daughters born of her father's second marriage. She joined the association of the Company of the Daughters of Mary in parish of San Massimo in Turin. She also became involved in the local Catholic Action group. After a visit to the tomb of Don Bosco in Valsalice, Pierina decided it was time to embark on a religious vocation. Her reading of The Story of a Soul attracts her to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux's "little way".

On 26 January 1925, she joined the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, but after a little over a year, she became convinced that this was not her calling. She the tried a community founded by Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo, but returned to her family in August 1928 and continues her work with the Catholic Action. The superior of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of Angers suggested that she might join the Franciscans.

On 28 February 1930, Betrone joined the Capuchins in Turin, taking the name Maria Consolata. (The Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated in Turin under the name of Consolata, ie, Consoler of the Afflicted.) There, she served, among other duties, as cook and concierge. She purportedly experienced interior locutions with Christ.

In 1938, Sister Consolata was assigned to the new monastery of Moriondo (Testona-Turin) not far from the Turin-Genoa railway, which the Capuchins have just opened. In November 1945, Sister Consolata was hospitalized in a sanatorium; her condition being diagnosed as terminal, she returned to the monastery of Moriondo on 3 July 1946.

Consolata Betrone died at the age of forty-three on 18 July 1946. After her death, Father Lorenzo Sales wrote the book Jesus Appeals to the World based on her reported messages. Betrone is known for her prayer: "Jesus, Mary, I love you: Save souls". Betrone spent her life attempting to bring to perfection this Tiny Way of Love. She used to fight every thought, every word, every emotion, to keep unceasing her "Jesus, Mary, save souls" all day long.

In 1995, Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini started the canonical process of beatification for Sister Maria Consolata Betrone. On 6 April 2019, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the decree recognising the heroic virtues of Sister Consolata giving her the title Venerable. Significantly, 6 April is also the date of her birth.

Consolata Betrone was known for the intense propagation of the rosary, along with reputed apparitions by the Sacred Heart of Jesus and her guardian angel in 1916 during the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The reputed messages asked for the recitation of: "Jesus, Mary, I love you! Save Souls!", a prayer which Betrone said to release souls from Purgatory and to pardon 1000 blasphemies against the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The pious devotion is very popular among Filipino and Portuguese Catholics, who include invocations in their recitation of the rosary along with the Fatima Prayer. (Wikipedia)

Black Box (Non-Fiction) by Shiori Ito

Paperback: Silence does not bring peace. - Shiori Ito

Black Box (2021) is the internationally recognized sexual assault memoir that sparked a movement against rape, stigma, and silence in Japan. Black Box is the winner of an English PEN Award.

In 2015, an aspiring young journalist named Shiori Ito charged prominent reporter Noriyuki Yamaguchi with rape. After meeting up for drinks and networking, Ito remembers regaining consciousness in a hotel room while being assaulted. But when she went to the police, Ito was told that her case was a “black box” - untouchable and unprosecutable.

Upon publication in 2017, Ito’s searing account foregrounded the #MeToo movement in Japan and became the center of an urgent cultural and legal shift around recognizing sexual assault and gender-based violence. As international outlets covered every step of her story - even documenting it in the BBC film Japan’s Secret Shame - this book launched a societal reckoning. 

At the end of 2019, Ito won a civil case against Yamaguchi.

Ito's personal story is the kernel of a searing journalistic exposé, exposing how Japan’s relatively low official rates of sexual assault mask a culture of victim-shaming and institutional failure on the part of the police, law and media to bring perpetrators to justice.

Black Box is translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell.

About the author: Shiori Ito (born 1989) is a freelance journalist who contributes news footage and documentaries to the Economist, Al Jazeera, Reuters, and other primarily non-Japanese media outlets. In 2017, she published Black Box about her own experiences as a rape survivor, making her one of the few women in Japan to speak out against sexual assault. In 2020, she was named one of TIME's Most Influential People of the year.

About the translator: Allison Markin Powell has been awarded grants from English PEN and the NEA, and the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. Her other translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Kanako Nishi, and Kaoru Takamura. She was the co-organizer and co-host of the Translating the Future conference, served as co-chair of the PEN America Translation Committee and currently represents the committee on PEN’s Board of Trustees, and as part of the collective, Strong Women, Soft Power, is curating JFNY's online literary series. She lives in New York.

Weekend Plans

 

The Cellist (Gabriel Allon Series) by Daniel Silva

Paperback: Viktor Orlov had a longstanding appointment with death. Once Russia’s richest man, he now resides in splendid exile in London, where he has waged a tireless crusade against the authoritarian kleptocrats who have seized control of the Kremlin. His mansion in Chelsea’s exclusive Cheyne Walk is one of the most heavily protected private dwellings in London. Yet somehow, on a rainy summer evening, in the midst of a global pandemic, Russia’s vengeful president finally manages to cross Orlov’s name off his kill list.

Before him was the receiver from his landline telephone, a half-drunk glass of red wine, and a stack of documents.

The documents are contaminated with a deadly nerve agent. The Metropolitan Police determine that they were delivered to Orlov’s home by one of his employees, a prominent investigative reporter from the anti-Kremlin Moskovskaya Gazeta. And when the reporter slips from London hours after the killing, MI6 concludes she is a Moscow Center assassin who has cunningly penetrated Orlov’s formidable defenses.

But Gabriel Allon, who owes his very life to Viktor Orlov, believes his friends in British intelligence are dangerously mistaken. His desperate search for the truth will take him from London to Amsterdam and eventually to Geneva, where a private intelligence service controlled by a childhood friend of the Russian president is using KGB-style “active measures” to undermine the West from within. Known as the Haydn Group, the unit is plotting an unspeakable act of violence that will plunge an already divided America into chaos and leave Russia unchallenged. Only Gabriel Allon, with the help of a brilliant young woman employed by the world’s dirtiest bank, can stop it.

Elegant and sophisticated, provocative and daring, The Cellist explores one of the preeminent threats facing the West today - the corrupting influence of dirty money wielded by a revanchist and reckless Russia. It is at once a novel of hope and a stark warning about the fragile state of democracy. And it proves once again why Daniel Silva is regarded as his generation’s finest writer of suspense and international intrigue.

The Cellist (2021) is the latest and twenty-first instalment in the awesome and extensive Gabriel Allon spy series.

About the author: Daniel Silva has been called his generation’s finest writer of international intrigue and one of the greatest American spy novelists ever. Compelling, passionate, haunting, brilliant: these are the words that have been used to describe the work of award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva.

Silva burst onto the scene in 1997 with his electrifying bestselling debut, The Unlikely Spy, a novel of love and deception set around the Allied invasion of France in World War II. His second and third novels, The Mark of the Assassin and The Marching Season, were also instant New York Times bestsellers and starred two of Silva’s most memorable characters: CIA officer Michael Osbourne and international hit man Jean-Paul Delaroche. But it was Silva’s fourth novel, The Kill Artist, which would alter the course of his career. The novel featured a character described as one of the most memorable and compelling in contemporary fiction, the art restorer and sometime Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon, and though Silva did not realize it at the time, Gabriel’s adventures had only just begun. Gabriel Allon appears in Silva’s next twenty novels, each one more successful than the last.

Silva knew from a very early age that he wanted to become a writer, but his first profession would be journalism. Born in Michigan, raised and educated in California, he was pursuing a master’s degree in international relations when he received a temporary job offer from United Press International to help cover the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Later that year Silva abandoned his studies and joined UPI full time, working first in San Francisco, then on the foreign desk in Washington, and finally as Middle East correspondent in Cairo and the Persian Gulf. In 1987, while covering the Iran-Iraq war, he met NBC Today National Correspondent Jamie Gangel and they were married later that year. Silva returned to Washington and went to work for CNN and became Executive Producer of its talk show unit including shows like Crossfire, Capital Gang and Reliable Sources.

In 1995 he confessed to Jamie that his true ambition was to be a novelist. With her support and encouragement he secretly began work on the manuscript that would eventually become the instant bestseller The Unlikely Spy. He left CNN in 1997 after the book’s successful publication and began writing full time. Since then all of Silva’s books have been New York Times and international bestsellers. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages and are published around the world. He is currently at work on a new novel and warmly thanks all those friends and loyal readers who have helped to make his books such an amazing success.

Rating: 5/5

Never Go Without

 

For Mind and Heart: St Nektarios as Teacher (Greek Philosophy)

Paperback: It is often observed that St Nektarios’ well-earned reputation as a wonderworker has largely overshadowed his other feats and accomplishments, as well as the other gifts he has bestowed upon the Church. 

Numbered among these oft-forgotten contributions is the bequest he has made to the sphere of education, a bequest under-girded by a rare, insurmountable desire to both learn and teach. 

From the time the Saint could read the 50th Psalm, he began repeating and emphasizing the line, I shall teach transgressors Thy ways, and the ungodly shall turn back unto Thee. From the time his little hands could manage, be began sewing together little booklets in order to disseminate God’s words. From the time he could clamour, he would ascend the stool in his mother’s kitchen and preach the homily he had heard that morning in church for the benefit of any who might hear. 

These youthful expressions of that desire to teach are interpreted by the Saint’s modern encomiasts as foreshadowing the significant educational work which would occupy a central, albeit oft-overlooked, place in his life and spiritual legacy.

For Mind and Heart: St Nektarios as Teacher (2020) is translated from the Greek by Reverend Dr Father John Palmer.

About the author: St Nektarios of Pentapolis (1846-1920) was both a careful student of the art of teaching and a tireless teacher. The present work aims to present and analyze his labours with the sphere of education as well as furnish translations of his core writings on the topic. By these means he is shown a strong proponent of the view that education is properly understood as formation of the whole person, rather than the simple imparting of information.

Writings of Elder Cleopas Volumes 1 -5 by St George Monastery

Paperback: Writings of Elder Cleopas Volumes 1 -5 (2020) is made up of five volumes in a question and answer format. 

Volume 1 - On the Types of Witchcraft

Volume 2 - About Creation, the Fall of Man and Heaven and Hell

Volume 3 - About Faith, Hope, Love and Grace

Volume 4 - About Prayer and the Divine Liturgy

Volume 5 - About Sin, Confession and Holy Communion 

It is set down by St George Monastery, Jerusalem, translated by Anna Skoubourdis and Monaxi Agapi and published by Virgin Mary of Australia and Oceania. 

Elder Cleopas (1912-1998) was an abbot of the Sihastria Monastery. He was a well-known spiritual representative of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

On the Divine Liturgy and Worthy and Unworthy Communion By Elder Cleopas by St George Monastery

Paperback: On The Divine Liturgy and Worthy and Unworthy Communion (2020) is a question and answer format between Elder Cleopas and Brother John. Brother John searches for knowledge on these necessary knowledge and Elder Cleopas the Romanian patiently guides and answers his questions.

This book contains two books:

Book One on Holy Liturgy and Holy Communion   

Book Two on worthy and unworthy reception of Holy Communion. 

It is set down by St George Monastery, Jerusalem, translated by Anna Skoubourdis and Monaxi Agapi and published by Virgin Mary of Australia and Oceania. 

Elder Cleopas (1912-1998) was an abbot of the Sihastria Monastery. He was a well-known spiritual representative of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Love