LENT AND EASTER

Embark on a spiritual journey into God's Heart and experience some of the most powerful and time-tested expressions of prayer. You will find, together in this one book, all the tools you need to form the daily habit of communing with God, to develop a steady prayer life, and to receive the life-giving water that God offers you at every moment.

This book is an invaluable resource for use as a Lenten or year-round devotional, a do-it-yourself parish mission, or a guide for families and parishioners in sacramental preparation and faith-formation programs. It is ideal for ongoing personal prayer and small-group discussions.

Perfect for all who desire to advance in their prayer life, this volume introduces readers to a myriad of devotions, spiritualities, and methods for encountering God in prayer to cultivate a truly personal relationship with Jesus.

Just as no two human relationships are the same, everyone's friendship with God is unique and unrepeatable, so Jonah Soucy presents you with:

In addition, you will identify the most common tactics of the enemy and the temptations and traps to look out for as you journey closer to God. And best of all, you will discover the ways in which God speaks to you and how you can lovingly respond to Him.

No matter what time of year you embark on this journey, 40 Days, 40 Ways to Pray promises to enrich your spiritual life with its profound insights and practical wisdom.

Excerpt:

"Jesus has returned to His place of prayer, and another picture, more terrible than the first, presents itself to Him. All our sins with their entire ugliness parade before Him in every detail. He must clothe Himself with this entire unclean mass of human corruption and present Himself before the sanctity of His Father, to expiate everything with individual pains, to render Him all that glory of which they have robbed Him, to cleanse that human cesspool in which man wallows with contemptible indifference.

And all this does not make Him retreat. As a raging sea this mass inundates Him, enfolds Him, oppresses Him. Behold Him before His Father the God of Justice, facing the full penalty of divine justice. He, the essence of purity, sanctity by nature, in contact with sin, indeed, as if He Himself had become a sinner! Who can fathom the disgust that He feels in His innermost spirit? The horror He feels? The nausea, the contempt He senses so vividly? And having taken all upon Himself, nothing excepted, He is crushed by this immense weight, oppressed, thrown down, prostrated. Exhausted, He groans beneath the weight of Divine Justice, before His Father, Who has permitted His Son to offer Himself as a Victim for sin, as one accursed."

It's Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Arthur the Clumsy Altar Server makes a promise in his heart to be perfect, just like Jesus. For Lent this year, Arthur is giving up mistakes!

But no matter how hard he tries, Arthur still makes mistakes. His attempts at being perfect all fall short. Arthur fears that his mistakes mean he will never be good enough to be with Jesus.

In this third installment of the Arthur the Clumsy Altar Server series, Arthur discovers that Jesus is always with us, including and especially in our weakest moments. Readers will learn with Arthur through this endearing story that God is with us all the time to help us because he loves us -- even when we aren't perfect.

When we pray the Stations of the Cross, we walk alongside Jesus to Calvary. In Behold Your Mother: Marian Stations of the Cross, we walk alongside the Mother of the Redeemer as she accompanies him during his Passion and death. Written from the unique perspective of a child who is witnessing Mary's unspeakable anguish, this booklet helps us to grow in devotion to the Blessed Mother as she leads us closer to her Son.

Just before he died on the Cross for the salvation of the world, Jesus entrusted Mary to Saint John and Saint John to Mary. In that moment, Mary also became our mother forever - a beautiful, loving gift from the Redeemer himself. Behold your mother!

St. Alphonsus Liguori's Stations of the Cross are the most popular and best loved in our Catholic tradition. Here is the guide that you need to bestow this powerful and essential devotion on children, faithfully, using the time-tested method of this great saint.

Charming Catholic friends Fulton and Cynthia return in this enthralling comic book to take children back in time to walk the way of our Lord's Cross. The glorious and endearing Lego-set photos will help readers of all ages to enter into these classic meditations on Jesus' Passion and death in an entirely new way.

Every time you pray these Stations, you will truly understand the abundant love that Jesus has for you. Through the sacred scenes, full-color illustrations, and revealing dialogue, children will draw ever closer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Features include:

This handy, pocket-size companion will help you and your family meditate on the sufferings of our Lord more often and be more willing to unite your struggles with His for the salvation of souls. A Pocket Guide to the Stations of the Cross is an ideal gift for classes and all the children in your life.

"The merciful Lord has given us one more year. Let us take it seriously as the last chance. We should not take the risk of delaying." -- Joseph Cardinal Zen

Lent is a time of preparation and renewal through prayer, mortification, and charity. With candor and compassion, Joseph Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong explains how you can open your heart to grow in love of God to make this your most fruitful Lent ever. These eighteen Lenten meditations, collected from His Eminence's homilies and pastoral letters during a time of social and political tension, will fortify you to face the temptations that beset you so as to choose consistently the light of life.

Also included are thirteen stirring Easter themed reflections. With Cardinal Zen journeying with you, you will find the path to healing amid suffering and discover as never before the glory of resurrected love.

In this volume, you will discover:

These beautifully crafted reflections will give you renewed fervor in your devotion to Jesus, our Savior, who wants to take you to a higher level. You will find out how to live in true imitation of the Good Shepherd and how to love your neighbor with a mother's heart. Through Cardinal Zen's wisdom, thought-provoking questions, and unique perspective, you will see as never before how Jesus' messages in the Gospels affirm the dignity of the human person.

As His Eminence reveals the mystery of the cross, you will learn what it means to have the faith of a child and experience the comfort and tenderness of the Holy Spirit, especially in times of persecution and suffering. You will also perceive the steps to take to follow God's call, and, with the man healed of blindness, come to say, "I went, I washed, I was able to see."

A saintly person from her youth and a great mystic and victim soul, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich was privileged by God with nearly a lifetime of ecstatic visions revealing all the events of Our Lord's suffering and death; visions that we understand in hindsight were a great gift from God to the world. Her account of the passion and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ is faithful to the Bible, heart-rending, edifying, and surprising because of its intimate detail. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ recounts with incredible precision the horrendous sufferings undergone by our Savior in His sacrificial act of Redemption. Its illuminative description of Mary's participation in the sufferings of her Son gives the reader a poignant understanding of why Our Lady is often called our "Co-Redemptrix" and "Queen of Martyrs." The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is a singular book that leaves a lasting impression of the terrible agony of Our Lord, of His infinite love for us that motivated His suffering, and how His passion and death were brought on by each person's sins. Here is a book that gives one a holy conviction just by reading it. Here is a book that will melt a heart of stone!

Winner of a third-place award in the backlist beauty category from the Catholic Media Association.

Catholic author and self-described "recovering worrier" Gary Zimak combines practical spirituality, daily scripture readings, and simple action steps to help you kick the worry habit as part of your Lenten renewal. He shows you how to let go of the anxiety-producing areas of life in order to find the lasting peace that comes from trusting God.

During the season of Lent, Catholics and other Christians frequently give up something they enjoy as a measure of penance or self-discipline--and often fall back into old habits at the first "Alleluia!" In Give Up Worry for Lent!, Zimak offers fellow worriers practical, scripture-centered advice on how to relinquish the need to control the uncontrollable--not just for Lent but for good--and how to find peace in Christ.

From Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, Zimak guides you to ponder a scripture passage and to apply it to your own life by following four simple steps:

As you continue to meditate on scripture and practice the simple action steps at the end of each reflection, you will find it easier to replace old worries with new messages of hope and to change your life forever.

In this simple but profound book, Father Stinissen distinguishes three degrees or stages in abandonment. The first stage consists of accepting and assenting to God's will as it manifests itself in all circumstances of life. The second is actively doing God's will at every moment of one's life. In the third stage, abandonment to God is so complete that one has become a tool in God's hands. At this stage it is no longer I who do God's will, but God who accomplishes his will through me.

"This book is . . . my personal search 'for the face of the Lord.'"--Benedict XVI

In this bold, momentous work, the Pope seeks to salvage the person of Jesus from today's "popular" depictions and to restore his true identity as discovered in the Gospels. Through his brilliance as a theologian and his personal conviction as a believer, the Pope incites us to encounter Jesus face to face.

From Jesus of Nazareth ". . . the great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: But what has Jesus really brought, then, if he has not brought world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God! He has brought the God who once gradually unveiled his countenance first to Abraham, then to Moses and the prophets, and then in the wisdom literature--the God who showed his face only in Israel, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the true God, whom he has brought to the peoples of the earth. He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about where we are going and where we come from: faith, hope, and love."

Here for the ordinary reader is an unforgettable moment-by-moment account that brings to vivid life the powerful events that transpired between Jesus' Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and His death on the Cross at Golgotha.

Fr. Ralph Gorman has here crafted for us a single detailed narrative out of the four Gospels, weaving into his narrative relevant Old Testament passages and prophecies, and facts from Jewish and Roman history, laws, beliefs, traditions, and practices, plus helpful first century military, political, geographical, and archaeological information.

You can read this book straight through, or one chapter a day as spiritual reading before Mass or during Lent. Either way, you'll come to grasp anew the depths of Christ's love for you, awakening in you greater devotion to Him than ever before.