Fr Simon Cuff’s new book Only God will Save Us: The Nature of God and the Christian Life is released at the end of June and is now available to pre-order.
All tagged five books
Prayer: Five Books
Prayer is a universal marker and practice of the Christian life. Yet it causes some of the greatest anxiety among faithful believers who feel that they do not know how to pray, do not pray “well” (whatever that means), or have ceased to be able to pray. As a result there are probably more books on prayer than on any other aspect of the Christian life. But such books are potentially dangerous, for several reasons.
For children: Five Books
If you are lucky, you were read to as a child. Some books will have sunk without trace in your memory, though a parent may tell you resentfully that you insisted on the same one every evening, and they can still remember all the words. Sometimes forgotten impressions surface years later: my non-sporty husband’s identification with the hero of The King who Couldn’t Kick’ or my own love of sleeper trains, which I trace back to T. S. Eliot’s Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. […]
Death and Dying: Five Books
I can’t seem to get away from death, which is probably a lesson for us all. But I mean something more specific than that. When I started graduate school a decade ago, I decided to write my PhD. on the psychological effects of death anxiety on religiosity. Try as I might to pivot to something else, I am still compelled toward the topic. I’m not sure why, but I can guess. In the course of my work on the topic, I have tried to read as much as I can about death and dying, about the ancient rituals and the modern industries that surround them, about accounts of death both real and imaginary. These are the books I return to the most, from which I have gained the most in different ways. […]
Christian Spiritual Practice: Five Books
“Say to yourself very often about everything that happens, ‘God loves me! What joy! And reply boldly, ‘And I truly love Him too!’ Then go quite simply about all that you have to do and do not philosophize any more. For these two phrases are beyond all thought and do more for us than any thought could do; they are all-sufficing.” […]
Catholic Social Teaching: Five Books
Catholic Social Teaching has been described as the Roman Catholic Church’s best kept secret. It is a rich body of thought, the fruit of the Roman Catholic Church carefully applying the demands of the Gospel in the midst of ever-changing social and political contexts. It finds its origins in Europe at the end of the 19th Century and continues to be worked out today, with recent interventions by Pope Francis developing this body of teaching and reflection on how the Gospel is to be preached in an increasingly globalised world. […]
Discerning a Vocation: Five Books
Vocation is a tricky word. Firstly, we tend to think that when discernment and vocation are placed together, the only thing being discerned is a call to ordained ministry. Second, such a view not only suggests that discernment which leads to different path is “failure” in some sense, but it also sets the vocation to ordained ministry above all other places and professions to which we might be called. Thirdly, such a narrow focus is accompanied by an equally narrow understanding of the gifts we have been given by God and the work of the Holy Spirit.