Spirituality

Do you attend Mass out of love rather than obligation?
Are you closer to God now than you were a year ago?
Are you able to keep a consistent prayer life?

If you answered "no" to any of these questions, your spiritual life needs a jump-start. In Humdrum to Holy, popular priest and radio host, Fr. Ed Broom, will stir in you a holy reverence and spiritual joy that'll point your soul to heaven.

By following the wise counsel of this experienced spiritual advisor and confessor, you'll first learn how to identify your "kryptonite" those hidden sins in your life that keep God from working in your soul.

Fr. Ed will walk you through the simple steps to creating a plan of life your roadmap to the heights of holiness. In a clear, methodical, and practical way, you'll learn how to cultivate virtues like patience and purity virtues that are difficult to attain but essential for happiness in this life and getting into heaven in the next!

Our own culture is deeply infected, choosing a destructive freedom rather than the good work for which God created us. Acedia and Its Discontents resists despair, calling us to reconfigure our imaginations and practices in deep love of the life and work given by God. By feasting, keeping sabbath, and working well, we learn to see the world as enchanting, beautiful, and good--just as God sees it.

"In the arid wasteland that is academic writing, amid the wider desert that is modern secular thought, R. J. Snell's book on acedia is an oasis of flowers and fruit and fresh water. Professor Snell reminds us that man must never be made subordinate to work, nor even to the empty 'vacations' that are but interruptions in work. Like his great predecessors Josef Pieper, Jacques Maritain, Max Picard, Romano Guardini, and Pope John Paul II, he diagnoses the besetting disease of our time--spiritual torpor--and prescribes as a remedy the joyful celebration of the Sabbath. A stupendous book, filled with the happiness of wonder."--ANTHONY ESOLEN, author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

"A whole book about just one vice, 'sloth'? Ah, but this book is different-and devastating. It exposes a deeply hidden and deeply destructive fundamental attitude that pervades our culture, an attitude that comes not just from the flesh (laziness) or from the world (world-weariness, cynicism), but from the Devil: disgust and rebellion toward Being itself, natural as well as supernatural. This is the 'noonday devil' that great saints have labelled 'sloth.' Know your enemy. Read this book!"--PETER KREEFT, author of Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas

"Acedia--the sin of sloth, so often confused with laziness--is the most overlooked but widespread illness of the modern age; the emptiness under the mask of the world's frantic activity. R.J. Snell helps us see why this is so and what Christians can do about it with elegant, penetrating insight. This is a terrific book about a badly misunderstood 'deadly sin' and its antidotes."--CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia

"Our modern Empire of Desire manufactures endless appetite while simultaneously denying that anything is objectively good, beautiful, or desirable. The result is not great yearning or passion, but acedia or sloth, a pervasive 'noonday demon' which prowls about our culture like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. In this learned study, R.J. Snell draws on the vast spiritual and intellectual resources of the Christian tradition to diagnose the deep structure of our contemporary nihilism, exposing this demon and its far-reaching effects with elegance and profundity and thereby providing the weapons necessary to slay it. This is a timely and important book."--MICHAEL HANBY, author of No God, No Science: Theology, Cosmology, Biology

R. J. SNELL is professor of philosophy at Eastern University in St. Davids, PA, and executive director of the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good. His recent books include Authentic Cosmopolitanism (with Steve Cone) and The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode. He and his wife have four young children.

Angels and saints. Catholics tend to think of them as different from the rest of us. They're cast in plaster or simpering on a holy card, performing miracles with superhero strength, or playing a harp in highest heaven.

Yet they are very near to us in every way. In this lively book, Scott Hahn dispels the false notions and urban legends people use to keep the saints at a safe distance. The truth is that Jesus Christ has united heaven and earth in a close communion. Drawing deeply from Scripture, Dr. Hahn shows that the hosts of heaven surround the earthly Church as a "great cloud of witnesses." The martyrs cry out from heaven's altar begging for justice on the earth. The prayers of the saints and angels rise to God, in the Book of Revelation, like the sweet aroma of incense.

Dr. Hahn tells the stories of several saints (and several angels too) in a way that's fresh and new. The saints are spiritual giants but with flesh-and-blood reality. They have strong, holy ambitions--and powerful temptations and opposition that must be overcome. Their stories are amazing and yet familiar enough to motivate us to live more beautiful lives. In this telling of their story, the saints are neither otherworldly nor this-worldly. They exemplify the integrated life that every Christian is called to live.

Still, their lives are as different from one another as human lives can be. Dr. Hahn shows the heavenly Church in all its kaleidoscopic diversity--from Moses to Mary, Augustine to Therese, and the first century to the last century.

Only saints will live in heaven. We need to be more like the saints if we want to live in heaven someday. Dr. Hahn shows us that our heavenly life can begin now.

It must.

In these pages, EWTN host and Franciscan Friar Fr Andrew Apostoli reflects on each of the questions asked by Jesus and gently guides you into a deeper understanding of the wisdom of who He is and what He is asking of you. Among the many questions you'll explore are . . .