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A Novena Of Holy Communions: According To The Effects Of Holy Communion And The Eight Beatitudes by Fr Lawrence G Lovasik SVD

Paperback: A Novena Of Holy Communions: According To The Effects Of Holy Communion And The Eight Beatitudes (1995) is a famous devotional booklet of nine consecutive Communion exercises. 

Each exercise consists of a novena prayer, an intimate talk with Our Lord, and a brief self-examination.

Rich in doctrine, the novena is ideal to make over and over throughout life to grow in holiness and grace.

 

About the author: Father Lawrence G Lovasik SVD was born in 1913 at Tarentum, Pennsylvania. Born to Slovak parents, he was the oldest of eight children, and became a student of the Sacred Heart Mission Seminary at the age of twelve. 

In 1938, he was ordained a priest and subsequently began missionary work in the coal and steel regions of the United States. He was drawn to writing as a result of his desire to represent Christ among the people he served as a missionary. Father Lovasik is the author of A Novena of Holy Communions, What Catholics Believe, and Clean Love in Courtship.

Life Is A Quest

Not A Real Society

A True Leader

Saint Anthony The Great (251AD - 356AD)

Crown Of The Virgin: An Ancient Meditation On Mary's Beauty, Virtue, And Sanctity by St Ildephonsus of Toledo

Hardback: In Crown of the Virgin: An Ancient Meditation on Mary's Beauty, Virtue, and Sanctity, St Ildephonsus of Toledo provides a powerful, imaginative, and lyrical set of meditations on the Immaculate Mother of God, reflecting on her splendour, beauty, and sanctity.

 

This publication is the first translation into English of a Latin work, entitled Libellus de Corona Virginis, or The Little Book on the Crown of the Virgin. 

Traditionally, it has been ascribed to St Ildephonsus of Toledo, a great monk, abbot, and bishop of the 7th century. St Ildephonsus contributed powerfully to the dissemination of the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady in Western Europe, and to the popularization of fervent Marian devotion in Spain. 

In this beautiful, moving and ornate literary portrait, the author imaginatively and lyrically fashions a magnificent crown for the Blessed Virgin Mary, decorated with twelve radiant jewels, six brilliant stars, and six fragrant flower blossoms. Each of these is interpreted as representing a particular aspect of the beauty, beneficence, virtue, or sanctity of the Blessed Virgin.

 

A perfect companion for guiding daily devotion to the Mother of Mercy and the Queen of Heaven, each chapter reveals a new and scintillating glimpse into the glories of Mary, sure to inspire the heart of the reader with ever more ardent devotion to the Mother of God, the vessel of all graces and the paradigm and perfection of every virtue. 

As a guide to meditation and a catalyst for prayer, the Crown of the Virgin is an illuminating mirror of the beauty and splendour of the one who is herself the refulgent and immaculate image of her Divine Son.

Crown of the Virgin: An Ancient Meditation on Mary's Beauty, Virtue, and Sanctity (2020) is attributed to St Ildephonsus of Toledo and translated from the Latin by Fr Robert Nixon OSB from the Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity, New Norcia, Western Australia.

The cover image is The Madonna of the Magnificat (1482, tempera on panel). 

Lily of love, pure and inviolate!

Tower of ivory! red rose of fire!

Thou hast come down our darkness to illume:

For we, close-caught in the wide nets of Fate,

Wearied with waiting for the World's Desire,

Aimlessly wandered in the house of gloom,

Aimlessly sought some slumberous anodyne

For wasted lives, for lingering wretchedness, 

Till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine,

And the white glory of thy loveliness.

Oscar Wilde, 1879

Juvenile Policies

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Martin Luther: His Life And Work by Hartmann Grisar SJ

Paperback: Martin Luther: His Life and Work (1930) is adapted from the Second German Edition by Frank J Eble and edited by Arthur Preuss.

The present volume is chiefly concerned with a lucid presentation of the development of Luther, of his mental constitution and the interior impulses which moved him throughout his life. His many frank communications concerning himself as well as his unbridled language about and against others, almost spontaneously lead to a true characterization of him. May the present volume be perused by unprejudiced readers. - The Author, Innsbruck, 3 December 1925

About the author: Hartmann Grisar SJ (1845-1932) was a German-Austrian Jesuit and church historian. Grisar was the son of a court baker. He studied from 1862 to 1863 at the Royal Theological and Philosophical Academy in Münster and from 1863 to 1868 at the theological faculty of the University of Innsbruck. In 1868, he was ordained a priest and entered the Jesuit order in Rome.

In 1870, he escaped from occupied Rome to St Andrae in Carinthia. In 1871, he was appointed professor for church history at the University of Innsbruck and from 1873, he was full professor. He became an Austrian citizen and lived in Thaur. In 1876, he was one of the co-founders of the magazine for Catholic theology in Innsbruck, which had been published since 1877, and of which he was editor from 1883 to 1886.

From 1895 Hartmann Grisar worked mainly in Rome, but remained associated with the University of Innsbruck as an honorary professor. In Rome he found unique reliquaries and relics from the early days of Christianity in the Papal Chapel Sancta Sanctorum in the former Lateran Palace. In 1900, Hartmann Grisar became a member of the advisory board of the Görres Society .

From 1902 to 1911, Hartmann Grisar was engaged in church history studies in Germany, especially Luther research. From 1911 to 1925, he was a private scholar in Munich. At the age of 80, he retired to the Jesuit College in Innsbruck in 1925. He died there in 1932.

P/S In 1883, on the anniversary of Martin Luther's birthday, there were denominational attacks on the papacy and the Catholic Church, including by Protestant theologians and historians. In order to defend Catholicism, Grisar wrote the text Reformatorenbilder. In it, he judged Luther as follows: “Luther was not a herald of truth. Our Catholic reformers have a completely different character. "

The preoccupation with Luther never let go of him. At first, Grisar took a radical Catholic stand that betrayed the influence of Johannes Janssen. His Luther biography, which is considered to be his main work, was also harshly criticized. Later on, Grisar's anti-Lutheran standpoint remained largely unchanged, but the radicalism of his judgment declined significantly. The later writings of Grisar on Luther that appeared after the First World War are therefore the most valuable.

Grisar also researched the Christian archeology of the city of Rome and early papal history. The Analecta Romana offer a collection of material on the early history of the Pope.

When Your Liberty Is Gone

Pascendi Dominici Gregis: Encyclical on The Doctrine Of The Modernists by Pope St Pius X

Paperback: Pascendi Dominici Gregis (English: Feeding the Lord's Flock) is a papal encyclical letter, subtitled "On the Doctrine of the Modernists", promulgated by Pope Pius X on 8 September 1907.

Pascendi Dominici Gregis is a powerful and prophetic encyclical offered by Pope St Pius X at a critical time in the Catholic Church. 

In it, the Holy Father diagnoses and details the burgeoning of Modernism in the Church. 

He goes on to condemn Modernism and prescribe measures to prevent, retard, and extirpate it from the Church. 

Read in the light of the ecclesiastical chaos that would emerge in the 1960s and flourish in the decades thereafter, it becomes clear that Pope St Pius X was correct in his concern about (and desire to destroy) the plague of Modernism.

About the author: Pope St Pius X was head of the Catholic Church from August 1903 to his death in 1914. Pope St Pius X is known for vigorously opposing modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting liturgical reforms and scholastic philosophy and theology.