Sacraments

Winner of a 2018 Catholic Press Association Award: Sacraments. (First Place).

How can Christians grow spiritually in the midst of our sinfulness? How can we transform our lives in a way that allows us to share in the resurrection of Jesus?

God has already given us the perfect solution--the sacraments.

Whether it is the wound of past hurts, the strain in our relationships, or the stress of daily life, we all need to be comforted and made whole by Christ. In this follow-up to his bestselling Be Healed, Bob Schuchts explains how the sacraments can fuel your emotional and spiritual healing and bring you closer to God.

Based on more than thirty-five years of experience as a therapist and decades spent in parish ministry, Schuchts demonstrates how each of the seven sacraments can be a life-changing encounter with Christ, communicated through the power of the Holy Spirit. He pairs each healing sacrament with one of the seven deadly wounds that emanated from original sin in the Garden of Eden. We perpetuate and deepen those wounds each time we sin, but the sacraments are God's remedy for sin. They give us a way to restore us to wholeness in Christ.

In Be Transformed, You'll discover how each sacrament can help you heal from wounds that can impede your relationships and sense of self-worth. With Schuchts's help, you'll learn how:

Baptism makes us beloved children of God, healing our wounds of rejection

Holy Communion heals our wounds of abandonment by inviting us to share in Jesus' abiding presence

Confirmation overcomes our powerlessness through the power of the Holy Spirit

Holy Orders heals wounds of confusion and disorder by re-establishing God's authority in our lives

In marriage, God's faithful love heals wounds of fear and mistrust

Reconciliation restores purity and releases us from shame

Anointing of the Sick provides enduring hope to overcome our hopelessness

Be Transformed offers all of the tools you need for a fresh understanding of the sacraments, including reflection questions, scripture meditations, prayers, and inspiring stories. You'll come away hungry for the sacraments in a way you never knew possible.

Winner of a first-place award in the future church category from the Catholic Media Association.

We can't just talk about Christ's presence in the Eucharist; we have to believe it, celebrate it, and live it both individually and as a community of the faithful. And we must cultivate a culture in our parishes that treats Real Presence not only as an important Catholic doctrine, but also as the most important part of parish identity.

In Becoming Eucharistic People, theologian Timothy P. O'Malley, author of Real Presence, outlines four essential dimensions of a Eucharistic culture in a parish--one that fosters reverence and unity among the faithful, includes every dimension of human life in the mystery of Christ's Body and Blood, and invites people back to parish life or to become Catholic for the first time.

O'Malley--director of education at the McGrath Institute of Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, academic director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, and a member of the executive planning team for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Eucharistic Revival--shows what it means to foster a parish culture where the Eucharist infuses the worldview, priorities, and practices of its members. O'Malley leads you through discovery and discernment about how to create a parish culture where each person is called to holiness and receives the spiritual, theological, and pastoral help they need to meet Christ fully present in the Eucharist and to become a witness to him in the world.

O'Malley will help you reflect on four essential facets of a Eucharistic parish culture:

liturgies of joyful reverence that celebrate the gifts of diversity;

formation that engages the mind, imagination, understanding, and will;

a rich life of popular piety and the vibrancy of the domestic Church; and

a commitment to solidarity with your neighbor.

O'Malley says that when we reflect Christ's Real Presence to others, our parishes will become sacred spaces in which every person is led to deeper communion with God and with their neighbors.

Online resources, including ideas for parish retreats, teaching resources, and videos based on this book and the US bishops Eucharistic Revival are available from the McGrath Institute for Church Life.

Books in the Engaging Catholicism series from the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame help readers discover the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith through a concise exploration of the Church's most important but often difficult-to-grasp doctrines as well as crucial pastoral and spiritual practices. Perfect for seekers and new Catholics, clergy and catechetical leaders, and everyone in between, the series expands the McGrath Institute's mission to connect the Catholic intellectual life at Notre Dame to the pastoral life of the Church and the spiritual needs of her people.

In this profoundly insightful and highly readable book, Thomas Nash brilliantly refutes the common charge that the Mass is "unbiblical." As you'll discover, the story of the Mass goes deeper than the Last Supper and Christ's Passion and Death. Indeed, it's part of an unbroken story that begins in the Garden of Eden and continues today in your local parish.

Working systematically through Scripture, Nash offers an authoritative explanation of salvation history, showing how the Old Testament prefigures -- and the New Testament wondrously records -- Jesus' one self-sacrifice of Calvary which is mysteriously made present at each and every Mass. Nash's meticulous, Scripture-packed analysis relies on hundreds of Bible passages to show that the story of the Mass is inextricably linked with the story of the Bible.

In this book, Father Gallagher shares this rich approach to praying the Mass. Chapter by chapter, he explores each biblical figure and how his or her heart reveals a way to pray the corresponding part of the Mass. Each chapter includes spiritual exercises that prepare the reader to pray that part of the Mass. Images from classic Catholic art provide a visual accompaniment to these exercises of prayer. This book help you pray the Mass from your heart-and no greater gift can be given in the spiritual life.

Are you BORED? Not likely, given the endless opportunities today to see, share, post, watch, and like. So are you bored? No way!

(Except maybe at Mass.)

We want the Mass to entertain, make us laugh, give us foot tapping music and sound-bite theology, and get it done in under an hour. Yet every Sunday many of us tune out.

Author Tim O'Malley, in a series of reflections on every part of the Mass, challenges us to turn the idea of boredom on its head, calling boredom--the "good" boredom that opens us to the quiet interior space where we can encounter God--a "sweet gift."

It is there that full participation in the Mass becomes possible--the potential to be transfixed by a ritual, to contemplate the readings, to savor the Eucharist. To be fruitfully "bored again."

Become a Bored Again Catholic and rediscover the power of the Mass to change your life - and the entire world.

Audiobook Availableon christianaudio.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Timothy P. O'Malley, Ph.D. is director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. He teaches in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He researches in the areas of liturgy, catechesis, and Christian spirituality. He is the author of Liturgy and the New Evangelization: Practicing the Art of Self-Giving Love (Liturgical Press, 2014). He and his wife Kara live in South Bend and have one son.

"The Catholic Church saved my marriage
and, quite possibly, my life."

So begins David Anders in this remarkably forthright book. In it, David reports that by the early 2000s, his marriage was so painful he actually longed for death. It wasn't simple incompatibility; he and his wife had just one thing in common: contempt for each other.

Today, David and his wife are happy together - not because of marriage therapy, but because they came to know and fully embraced the Catholic Church's teachings on marriage.

Many people who encounter such teachings are shocked by their rigor. Yet the Church offers much more than rules about sexual restraint; she offers a way to make marriage into something supernatural, even mystical.

Here Dr. Anders shares his personal discovery of the Church's teaching on marriage and offers a robust defense of the Church's most controversial teachings, including divorce,

At last, a complete ceremonial manual for the celebration of the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours. Faithful to the renewal of worship authorized by the Second Vatican Council, Ceremonies combines precise guidance to these rites with a pastoral and spiritual approach. A high ideal of noble Catholic worship is consistently maintained, respecting the "continuity of our tradition".

Ceremonies sets out the liturgical duties of bishops, priests and deacons, acolytes and servers, lectors and eucharistic ministers etc., hence it is invaluable for clergy and seminarians and all who teach or study the liturgy. Ceremonies includes a wide range of guidance on such useful themes as: vessels and vestments, how to carry out ceremonial actions, the deacon, ministering the Eucharist to the sick, children's liturgy, Eucharistic adoration, Eucharistic processions, celebrating vespers in a parish, eucharistic ministries and the laity, the location of the tabernacle, etc.

However, Ceremonies is primarily a book to be used; a practical manual for clergy, MC's, sacristans, liturgical committees and all planning worship in parishes.

Doors to the Sacred has endured as an indispensable account of the sacraments of the Catholic Church. Used in hundreds of university and seminary courses and full of critical acclaim, it details their historical and cultural evolution and the rituals and practices associated with them. This Vatican II Golden Anniversary Edition explains the liturgical changes found in The Roman Missal, Third Edition, and provides extensive resources for students and seekers alike, including:

A visual timeline of people, events, and sacramental changes in Church history,

A glossary of philosophical and theological terms

An updated annotated bibliography for further reading

An improved design for easier reading and reference.

For many Catholics today, the Eucharist is merely a symbol of Christ, and the Mass is merely a collectivity of like-minded individuals gathering to remember his life. But the truth of what is made present on the altar, and what the faithful dare to receive into their bodies and souls, is far more strange and beautiful. In this engaging theological treatise, Bishop Robert Barron offers a reintroduction to the ancient meaning and power of the Eucharist. Through a threefold analysis of the Eucharist as sacred meal, sacrifice, and Real Presence--distinct but tightly interwoven motifs grounded in Scripture--Bishop Barron draws readers into the profound truth flowing out of Jesus' words at the Last Supper: "Take, eat; this is my body. . . . Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant." We are not merely invited to remember Jesus or imitate his moral example; we are invited to the grace of communion--and ultimately, to the realm of God--by eating and drinking the very self that he offers in sacrifice.

"The perfect guidebook for curious parents, enthusiastic newcomers, and confused cradle Catholics. Frankly, this is the best book on baptism I've ever read." --James Martin, S.J. author of the New York Times Bestseller, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

Baptism is the beginning of one's life in the community of the church, and the "gateway" to the rest of the sacraments.
- Isn't it better to get baptized when you're older, and can understand what you're doing?
- Does my baby have to be baptized immediately?
- Will my child go to hell, limbo or purgatory if--God forbid--he or she dies before baptism?
- Why are so many baptisms done during the Mass these days?
- What's the role of the godparents? Do they have to be Catholics? Christians? Believers?

These are questions from good Catholics that deserve good answers. If people remain confused about baptism, they will be confused about the sacramental life of the church, and, by extension, their faith.

"Thomas Scirghi has written a fine book on baptism for the 21st century church. Rooted deeply in Scripture, the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church, and the living tradition of sacramental practice, Scirghi's book is laced with literary, cultural, and everyday examples that allow readers to grasp (or grasp anew) the continuing significance of baptism in the life of the Church and in their own lives." -Timothy Brunk, Assistant Professor of Theology, Villanova University

From the foreword by James Martin, SJ:

Frankly, this is the best book on baptism I've ever read. It's wise without being overly academic; inviting without being overly informal; and concise without being slapdash. Fr.
Scirghi, a distinguished scholar, compassionate pastor, and popular teacher at Fordham University, is the perfect guide to the history, theology, and application of the sacrament.

Father Scirghi's book could easily become a standard introduction to the sacrament, and is the perfect guidebook for curious parents, enthusiastic newcomers, and confused cradle Catholics. After reading it, you'll understand why we invite parents to have their children baptized, and also why we baptize adults at the Easter Vigil Mass. You'll know the significance of the oil (and the candle) in the rite. And the next time you see a priest or deacon pour water over a child's head and pronounce the ancient baptismal formula, you'll have a richer appreciation for his words and his actions.

The teaching of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist began with Jesus sharing with his apostles, followed by their education of early Church leaders, which extends to our priests and the Church of today. Throughout all of this time the baton never drops. The teaching has never changed from the original presentation of Jesus himself to the apostles gathered with him for the Last Supper.

A cradle Catholic and former skeptic himself, Deacon Dennis Lambert presents evidence to radically change, affirm, or deepen your belief in the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The book also provides a thought-provoking way to share the truth with others.

From the bestselling author of The Lamb's Supper comes an illuminating work on the Catholic Eucharist and its link to the Jewish Passover meal.

"Read this book. And don't just read it. Pray about it. Reflect on it. And share it with others."--Brant Pitre, author of The Case for Jesus

In this brilliant book--part memoir, part detective story, and part biblical study--Scott Hahn opens up new vistas on ancient landscapes while shedding light on his own enduring faith journey. The Fourth Cup not only tracks the author's gradual conversion along the path of Evangelicalism to the doorsteps of the Catholic faith, but also explores the often obscure and misunderstood rituals of Passover and their importance in foreshadowing salvation in Jesus Christ.

Revealing the story of his formative years as an often hot-headed student and earnest seeker in search of answers to great biblical mysteries, Hahn shows how his ardent exploration of the Bible's Old Testament turned up intriguing clues connecting the Last Supper and Christ's death on Calvary. As Hahn tells the story of his discovery of the supreme importance of the Passover in God's plan of salvation, we too experience often-overlooked relationships between Abel, Abraham, and the Hebrews' liberation from slavery in Egypt. Along the way, Hahn reveals how the traditional fourth cup of wine used in the concluding celebration of Passover explains in astonishing ways Christ's paschal sacrifice.

Rooted in Scripture and ingrained with lively history, The Fourth Cup delivers a fascinating view of the bridges that span old and new covenants, and celebrates the importance of the Jewish faith in understanding more fully Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

This is the book you need to discover the significant advantages of frequent Confession and the keys to making each Confession more fruitful. Spiritual master Fr. Benedict Baur quells criticisms of frequent Confession and shares why it is more efficacious for vanquishing sin and repairing the damage due to sin.

In this exceptional book, Fr. Baur shows you how to develop a well-formed conscience, properly confess your sins, and develop a firm, practical purpose of amendment. He also shares how to make a meticulous examination of conscience and daily examen, and offers methods for compiling a detailed inventory of your sins. Moreover, Father provides a reflection on the most common sins of omission that lead many to fall into dangerous self-righteous dispositions.

Most importantly of all, Fr. Baur reveals what is really meant by "Christian perfection" and how to attain it in this life. He describes concrete ways to grow in knowledge of self, acquire the strength to uproot

More is at stake in the music we listen to or perform than most people are aware. In this vivacious and challenging work, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski--a philosopher, theologian, composer, conductor, and singer--explains why the great classical music of Western civilization is morally and intellectually good for us, as well as why certain other forms of music can actually be harmful.

Kwasniewski then offers a defense of the magnificent treasury of sacred music in the Latin-rite Catholic Church and shows how well-suited it is to divine worship, especially the incomparable art form known as Gregorian chant. Questioned and abandoned in recent tumultuous decades, this outstanding heritage of beauty deserves to be restored for profound theological and spiritual reasons, a restoration our times are at last beginning to see as old prejudices fade away. Kwasniewski issues a poignant crie de coeur in favor of giving the glorious sacred music of our tradition its rightful place in every Roman Catholic church on earth. No genuine liturgical renewal or deep Eucharistic revival can occur until this happens: music is that important.

Finally, Kwasniewski shows how silence is as valuable as--indeed, at times, more valuable than--even the greatest music, precisely because music at its best opens the way to encountering a reality that transcends all we can say or sing.
Written to be accessible to the non-specialist, Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life will benefit all Catholics, other Christians, and even aesthetically curious nonbelievers who wish to explore the art of music in general, its role in human life, its effects on morality, and its inspired and inspiring function in religion. Kwasniewski's wide-ranging erudition and sound argumentation provide essential musical guidance for clergy, musicians, teachers, and parents.