Bishop Fulton Sheen

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As death approaches, the human heart speaks its greatest words of love to those it holds most dear. So it was with Jesus who in His final hours gave us seven last "words," rich with spiritual meaning for every human soul.

For the first time ever, Archbishop Fulton Sheen's complete writings and reflections on Christ's last words have been compiled into this one book. Sheen shows how the seven words are, in fact, a full catechism on the spiritual life. From them, you'll learn the secrets to living the Beatitudes, ways to avoid the deadly vices of anger, envy, lust, and pride, and how to cultivate the heavenly virtues of fortitude, prudence, justice, and charity.

Few books are such an inspiring call to sanctity, and few books are such a spiritual powerhouse. With Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as your guide, you'll also learn:

This book reveals the shocking truth you need to know in a world riddled by irrationality, emotionalism, and violence. Religion is under attack, whether from totalitarian governments or modern education. Our tacit submission to politics, "freedom," and science has made us slaves to a diabolical New Atheism and fear.

With his prescient wit, wisdom, and fervor, Archbishop Fulton Sheen provides clarity amid propagandist lies and pagan societies united in purpose to destroy. He reminds us why we must fear what kills the soul more than what kills the body. He exposes the false prophets and philosophies at work in the world and the many "believers" who no longer worship or act in accordance with their beliefs.

Archbishop Sheen masterfully decries the divisions and hatreds in America, explaining how we have turned from God and are on the precipice, that there is "too much tolerance of ev

Why is it, asks Bishop Fulton Sheen, that one hears so often the expression Go to hell! and almost never the expression Go to heaven! Here, at his most penetrating, challenging, and illuminating best is Bishop Sheen with his answer, in a book that breathes new meaning into the truths about heaven and hell, and new life into the concepts of faith, tolerance, love, prayer, suffering, and death.

Beginning with The First Faint Summons to Heaven, Sheen shows how unpopular it is today to be a true Christian, and describes the struggle for living our faith amid the disorders of our times. Keenly aware of evil in the myriad forms it takes in today's world, Bishop Sheen writes about the constant battle man faces with the seven pallbearers of character - pride, avarice, envy, lust, anger, gluttony and sloth - linking them with the corrosive forces that never cease in their attacks on the Church and those who earnestly desire to be serious Christians.

In Go to Heaven, a great spiritual teacher and writer, deeply aware of the human and spiritual conflicts being waged in the world, shows us the way to heaven in a most eloquent book, encouraging the reader to choose heaven now, and to understand the reality of hell.

This compendium, published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Sheen's death, is more than anything, a celebration of life: our life in Christ and our destiny in faith. If you're looking for a renewed understanding and appreciation of the Christian life and the promise of faith for the new millennium, this work offers strong and practical encouragement for growing closer to God through a deepened spirituality.

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Fulton J. Sheen-bishop, scholar, professor, radio and television personality, and writer-spent his life sharing the Word of God with millions of Christians across the world. One of his best-known works is The Life of Christ, written in 1954. This book explores the foretelling of Christ's birth, his life, temptations, death, and resurrection. But while Sheen himself was a scholar and academic, his recounting is both readable and accessible to the layperson.

Fulton J. Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895. Ordained in 1919, he went on to study at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum in Rome, where he received his Sacred Theology Doctorate.

In 1925, he began teaching philosophy and theology at Catholic University. His speaking talents were noted, and he was chosen to preach at the annual University Mass honoring St. Thomas Aquinas in 1927.

In 1930, then-Monsignor Sheen was added as a weekly speaker on the NBC radio broadcast The Catholic Hour on Sunday nights. He continued the broadcast for the next 20 years, and the show eventually reached a weekly audience of four million listeners. He appealed to the audience through his extensive knowledge of Catholicism and how the teaching of Christ applied to the moral and societal questions of modern life.

By 1950, Sheen had resigned his teaching position at Catholic University of America and became director of the Society for the Propagation of Faith, where he raised millions of dollars to support Catholic missionary work.

The following year, he was consecrated a bishop and began the well-known television series, Life is Worth Living. The program ran for the next five years and reached an estimated 30 million weekly viewers. Sheen won an Emmy for Most Outstanding Television Personality in 1952. In response, he said, "I feel it is time I pay tribute to my four writers-Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." He was also featured on the cover of Time magazine that year.

Although he was now one of the most recognized Catholics in the country, Sheen still made time to write. He wrote 73 books during his life, including The Life of Christ in 1954.

Life of Christ is considered a classic work of Christian faith. It is unique in its readability, which is perhaps to unsurprising from a theologian with decades of experience bringing religion to the masses on radio and television.

Broken into five parts, the book explores the early life of Christ, his temptations, the beatitudes, his public life and Passion, and his death and resurrection. Sheen explains the meaning of Christ's words, as well as the significance of the trials and temptations he overcame. Through careful scholarship, he connects the events of Christ's life, showing how even the humble location of his birth on Earth shared an important lesson: "Divinity is always where we least expect to find it."

In his explanation of the beatitudes-the eight blessings given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount-Sheen shares their value to the modern world. He dismisses the words of Marx, Lenin, Nietschze and Freud. And he reminds us that the words of Christ are not "from another time." Christ is timeless and His Word is eternal.

Shortly before his death in 1979, Archbishop Sheen encountered Pope John Paul II in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. The Pope told Sheen that he had "...written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus. You are a loyal son of the Church!" Two months later, Archbishop Sheen passed away in his private chapel. He is a candidate for beatification, which may pave the way for future canonization.

Over the course of Archbishop Fulton Sheen's storied career, thousands approached him with a simple request: "Teach us to pray." Now, for the first time ever, his wise teachings on prayer have been collected into a single volume to help you perfect your prayers and make them what they must become: a daily, holy habit.

First come Bishop Sheen's insightful reflections on the Our Father and its indispensable connection to the Seven Last Words of Christ. Then Bishop Sheen unveils smoldering, oft-overlooked riches in other everyday Catholic prayers, transforming them from rote recitations into powerful moments of communion with God.

With his help, you'll then journey through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, learning how to bring peace to your soul and grow more receptive to God's grace. You'll also discover how to make your Holy Hours more efficacious and master a variety of other techniques that Bishop Sheen employed in his own fruitful quest for

Here are Bishop Sheen's thoughts on such subjects as the relationship between God and man, the quest for holiness, the pain of the human condition.

Here are the fruits of lifelong meditation jon love, reason, the family, charity, freedom, education -- in short, upon the world as we live in it.

Here is practical advice on how to deal with sex, with egotism, even with the atomic bomb.

Here, above all, is the luminescence of belief in and commitment to humanity in all its many manifestations.

Sheen brilliantly examines the vast differences between the benefits of psychotherapy and true confession that leads to conversion. While one may help the patient gain some peace of mind, the Christian gains something far greater through the grace of Confession: peace of soul.

"Sheen has...analyze[d] the inner troubles of frustrated post-war man...to make religion up-to-date, attractive, and necessary to the unhappy, God-repelling souls of the present." (Library Journal)

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Amidst the backdrop of World War II, the great Fulton Sheen wrote Preface to Religion, his first book published after the war ended. As the world was recovering from death, destruction, and despair, Sheen's timely work tackles the most salient questions pertaining to happiness and sanity. With simplicity and frankness, Sheen declares, "If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. If there is no God, then you are a god." Throughout this work, Sheen addresses the perennial subjects of fallen nature, forgiveness, the four last things, how God remakes us, the role of religion in the process, and the gift of second chances.

Contrary to the modern world, God does not give us what "we want for our pleasure" but "what we need for our perfection." Preface to Religion reminds us of education's primary purpose, which is to train the mind to use freedom rightly. God chose to make a moral universe, but morality is impossible without freedom. And therefore, the reader will see that the body must always serve the soul.

Finally, Sheen writes on faith, that "the modern man who is not living according to his conscience wants a religion without a Cross, a Christ without a Calvary, a Kingdom without Justice," and a pastor "who never mentions hell to ears polite." For anyone seeking to find true happiness and true freedom, Preface to Religion will be your guide.

When asked, What's wrong with the world?, G.K. Chesterton famously replied simply, I am. People who reflect on life's problems find many of them of to be of their own making. We want to be happy and yet we often seem to be the source of our own unhappiness--as well as that of others. Even when that is not the case, our lives, as blessed as they may be, have their share of disappointments, shocks, and disillusionments. How do we respond? Do we become cynical and try at all costs to get as much pleasure as we can? Or do we recognize we were made for more?

In this classic work, Fulton Sheen explains the secret of authentic happiness: being spiritually remade. A genuinely spiritual life, Sheen contends, consists in more than obeying a set of commands, submitting to certain laws, reading the Bible, or even following the example of Jesus. Before all else, it consists in being re-created and incorporated into a new, higher kind of life--the supernatural life of grace--and brought into a new kind of spiritual relationship--as a child of God through Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to be a Christian? Christianity is not a system of ethics; it is a life. It is not good advice; it is Divine adoption. Being a Christian does not consist in being kind to the poor, going to Church, reading the Bible, singing hymns, being generous to relief agencies ... serving on Church committees, though it includes all of these. It is first and foremost a love relationship.

Brimming with rich and life-changing words of wisdom from one of this century's most beloved Catholic writers, this book touches on virtually every aspect of the human condition.

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n the face of a world crisis, which is manifestly deeper than one can imagine, many are inclined to ask: "Has Christianity failed?" Fulton Sheen's Thinking Life Through seeks to answer this critical question. The conclusions the author proposes are far-reaching and touch upon subjects as diverse as the truth and meaning of human sexuality, the purpose of life, discordant marriages, angels, alcoholism, the vocation of the soldier, materialism, parenting, and even the question of spanking children.

On the critical subject of freedom, Sheen writes, "The true definition of freedom is the right to do whatever one ought, and oughtness implies law, goals, purposes, and perfection. Freedom is a moral power and not a physical one. It revolves around what man is rather than what man does. We are more free within the law than outside of it."

Thinking Life Through also addresses the world's political climate, something that in many ways mirrors the present political discourse. Focusing on the tragic decline of post-Christian society, Sheen gives special attention to both the threat of communism and the dangers of socialism. Sheen also gives clarity to the role of the individual and the family while living in a time of moral and political uncertainty. Finally, Sheen addresses good manners and politeness as he states in his quintessential style, "Another effect of materialism is to be seen in the decline of courtesy. There is politeness and decorum and a desire to please others when it is generally recognized that every person bears within himself an image of the Divine." For anyone seeking to grow in wisdom, Thinking Life Through will be your guide.

Fulton Sheen shows you how to win a lasting victory over vice.

Fulton Sheen claims that since all seven deadly sins led Christ's enemies to nail Him to the Cross, we can find in the example of His suffering and death sure means to overcome each of those sins, plus the key to understanding -- and to nurturing in our own soul -- each corresponding virtue.

So, for example, in these pages filled with wisdom and hope, Blessed Sheen teaches us not only how to conquer our gluttony; he shows us how to satisfy our spiritual hunger. We learn not merely how to overcome pride; we discover what we must do to grow humble. From Christ's holy response to each of the seven deadly sins that led to His Crucifixion, Blessed Sheen draws a lesson in how you and I must deal with those same sins, whether we meet them in others or in ourselves.

Day after day, Christians struggle to do good, to avoid evil, and to take up with patience and love the crosses that thr

Every human person seeks happiness, but few find it, because they have not discovered the source of all happiness: God. In the Way to Happiness, Futon Sheen reflects on the most fundamental aspects of our lives: love, politics, motherhood, work, teens, forgiveness, rest, meditation, and more.

In a culture stricken with anxiety, boredom, despair, and fear, Sheen desires to reignite healing, hope, and contentment in the reader. While the secular world holds the mistaken belief that hunger for infinity can be satisfied by an infinity of material things, Sheen warns that they really wish for the infinity of divine love. Addressing the philosophy of pleasure, Sheen reminds the reader of the centrality of self-discipline and detachment.

At the heart of Way to Happiness is heroically living out the spirit of charity: love of God and love of neighbor. To achieve a spirit of service and self-donation, a strong interior life is a perquisite. True peace is born in meditation.

Lastly, Sheen provides a blueprint to overcome bad habits through introspection, avoiding the occasion of sin, willing the good, and a right philosophy of life. In an age when so few people have time to make a retreat, allow the retreat master, Sheen, to take you on a spiritual journey that will spurn you on to holiness. For anyone seeking a clear path to a happy and saintly life, The Way to Happiness will be your guide.