RESOURCES FOR EVANGELIZING

Love of God and neighbor: Jesus says this is the greatest commandment . . . which means that it's also your personal mission -- a mission these pages will help you to fulfill.

Praying through just one of its 60 short, singularly potent chapters each day will usher you through a two-month-long spiritual retreat. It's guaranteed to increase your knowledge of God, to intensify your love for Him, and to cultivate within you the steadfast virtues of a missionary disciple, able and eager to lead others to that same knowledge and love.

Are there greater gifts you can receive? And then pass on to your neighbors?

Masterfully combining Bible passages and Church teachings with practical directions, Fr. John Bartunek, author of the best-selling book The Better Part, here serves as your personal 60-day retreat mas

We are living through the greatest catastrophe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Western civilization isn't dying: it's already dead. Christendom is no more. What we see around us now isn't Christian. It's not even a civilization. It's a walking corpse.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the West can be reborn someday. We know this because it died once before. Who brought it back? The mystics, the martyrs, and the missionaries. Now they must save the West once again.

In this prescient work, Michael Warren Davis examines just how bad the situation is and how much worse it's going to get. He weaves together examples from history and literature to illustrate how societies fell and how various saints helped them rise again. Throughout, he reflects on the transformative power and benefits of persecution and suffering to show how Christians can survive ― and indeed flourish ― in the new Dark Age that's descending.

These penetrating pages will help you move from a "Culture War" mindset to one of answering the Great Commission. You will learn how to form intentional Christian communities to ward off spiritual isolation and come to understand what St. Augustine, the chief architect of Christendom's first renaissance, taught about why God allows the City of Man to fall in the first place. Additionally, you will discover:

- The only weapon in your arsenal (can you guess?)

- What role laughter played in the early Church's victory

- How to attain xenitia, the first stage of spiritual development

- Methods to grow in union with Christ through meditative prayer

- The fruits of street evangelization and your call to go into the vineyard

- How drawing from Eastern Christianity can help renew our culture again

Above all, you will find out how you can respond to the crisis of the early twenty-first century with the wisdom of the ages -- to testify to your Faith, help restore beauty, and cultivate authentic love in the modern world. For, according to Davis, every Christian has a role to play. All are called to share their faith person-to-person to help rebuild the Church, and once again the tears of mystics, the sweat of missionaries, and the blood of martyrs will become the seed of the Church. Despite the darkness, by imitating their witness, you will find unshakable peace and joy in the face of what is to come.

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:

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.

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.

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.

2025 Association of Catholic Publishers Second Place Award, Resources for Ministry

Over half of self-identified Catholics are regularly absent from the pews on Sunday. How do these cultural Catholics practice their faith and how can we better minister to them?

Who are "cultural Catholics" and how do we connect with them? Written by award-winning sociologist and professor of religion Maureen K. Day, Cultural Catholics tells the story of those who consider themselves Catholic, but infrequently attend Mass. This accessible book examines cultural Catholics on a range of topics, allowing readers to come to a better understanding of this group, and offers ministerial insights for connecting with and accompanying them on their spiritual journeys.

Cultural Catholics comprise just over half of self-identified Catholics in the United States. Typical efforts or questions of outreach come from parishes, but because most cultural Catholics are loosely tethered to parish life, the standard avenues of Catholic ministry do not reach them in any reliable way. Using a nationally representative survey of more than 1,500 American Catholics as well as insights from ministry leaders, this book allows readers to see the differences and similarities in how cultural Catholics relate to their faith compared to Catholics in the pews. It also explores cultural Catholics' religious beliefs and practices, political and civic commitments, parish experiences, and concludes with concrete, evidence-based pastoral approaches.

The Catholic family is a domestic church, rooted in God's love and challenged to hope. Yet Catholic families today are beset with attacks from within and without, as were early Christian house churches. The latter faced persecution and rejection from society and even their own family members. Today's domestic churches face challenges of materialism, individualism, and secularism, coming through technology, media, and the contemporary culture.

The Church must respond to these challenges by seeking new ways to minister directly to families. The future of parish life will depend largely on how a parish supports family life. Drawing on the experience of the early Church, Evangelizing Today's Domestic Churches invites pastors and those engaged in pastoral ministry to take the lead in helping families recognize their responsibility before God to become vibrant domestic churches.

Converts often bring to the Catholic Church an evangelical zeal that can renew and energize even the most tired and battle weary among us.

The Church is hurting for enthusiastic voices to proclaim her teachings on truth and morals. In these pages, Shaun McAfee, a convert from Evangelical Protestantism shows how we can take the best tools of evangelization and use them to reach countless souls with the fullness of the Christian Faith.

With Shaun's help, you'll learn simple ways you can make the visitor in your parish more at home, how to speak compellingly about the Faith, simple ways to integrate daily Scripture reading into your life, why small groups are important for spiritual enrichment, and how to communicate with souls who have never considered joining the Catholic Church.

The simple steps Shaun outlines in these pages will also show priests and lay leaders how to more effectively engage modern society with our Catholic Faith.

Our society is awash in se

How can we transmit a living, personal Catholic faith to future generations? By coming to know Jesus Christ, and following him as his disciples.

As we emerge from a pandemic into a post-Christian world, these are times of immense challenge and enormous opportunity for the Catholic Church in the United States. Consider these statistics:

If the Church is to reverse these trends, the evangelizers must first be evangelized. In other words, Catholics in the pew must make a conscious choice to know and follow Jesus before they can draw others to him.

Ten years after it was first published, Forming Intentional Disciples is still helping scores of Church leaders, parish staff, and all Catholics transform parish life from within. World-renowned author and speaker Sherry Weddell leads you through the steps that will help Catholics enter more deeply into a relationship with God and the river of apostolic creativity, charisms, and vocation that flow from that relationship for the sake of the Church and the world.

Posing the hard questions about love that rankle the heart, Peter Kreeft never settles for easy answers. He exposes today's superficial attitudes about love to lead people to a deeper understanding of what it means to be loved by God, addressing these issues and many more.