Get Ready for Next Lent, and the One After That . . .

Now that Lent is over, I'll reveal what I read during Lent (as spiritual reading). One of the books I read I also reviewed for Homiletic & Pastoral Review and the review was just posted:

Among my annual preparations for Lent, amidst planning menus for Fridays, searching out schedules for Stations of the Cross (preferably with Exposition, Adoration, and Benediction) and other devotional opportunities, and deciding what charitable causes to support, selecting spiritual reading for the season is essential. Catholic publishers provide a wide array of choices from classic to contemporary, for different age groups or other demographics, with reflections, prayers, activities, and suggested penances, etc.

Father Thomas Hoisington’s new Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy from In Hoc Est Caritas Press offers readers an excellent alternative not just because of its focus on the lectionary readings for every day of Lent, but also because he includes all three Sunday reading cycles (A, B, and C). This one book will be beneficial for reflection and meditation from 2019 through 2032: I should live so long! It’s also a useful volume for priests preparing Sunday homilies or daily feverinos and for RCIA catechists in preparing catechumens and candidates for the Scrutinies and Holy Week.

With passing references to outside authorities (St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More, Bl. John Henry Newman, the Catechism of the Catholic Church) Father Hoisington heeds his own counsel that “we should never underestimate the depth of Sacred Scripture” (45) when seeing how the readings at Mass connect with each other and with our lives as Catholic Christians. Each reflection makes connections within the lectionary readings for the day, or between those readings and common Lenten devotions like the Stations of the Cross, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, or between the readings and the Sacraments, especially of Baptism, Confession, and Holy Communion. The entire book is suffused with Catholic doctrine, devotion, and morality. For example, when describing how God can bring great good out of evil, he tells us, “If you find it hard to acknowledge this, pray an entire rosary without taking your eyes of the crucifix” (39), thus reminding us that God responded to the “happy fault of Adam” with the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery. . . .

Father Hoisington's book is available here in both Kindle and paperback.

I joined a study group in another parish at the invitation of a friend to read Dom Lorenzo Scupoli's The Spiritual Combat:

Salvation and spiritual perfection should not be sought haphazardly; a strategy is needed to win the battle for our souls.

The Spiritual Combat, first published in 1589, provides timeless guidance in spiritual discipline. St Francis de Sales (1576-1622) read from it himself every day and recommended it to everyone under his direction. 

Vigorous, realistic and full of keen insight into human nature, The Spiritual Combat consists of short chapters based on the maxim that in the spiritual life one must either "fight or die". Fr. Scupoli shows the Christian how to combat his passions and vices, especially impurity and sloth, in order to arrive at victory. 

This is the original TAN edition now with updated typesetting, fresh new cover, new size and quality binding, and the same trusted content.

This was a challenging book because Dom Scupoli does not make any room for mediocrity in the spiritual life. You can't be a little bit holy, obeying God's will only when it conforms to your will!

Martyrs and Spirituality

From The Catholic Thing, Fr. Bevil Bramwell, OMI, writes about the martyrs and compares and contrasts them to celebrities:

Martyrs represent more than just names or dates on a calendar. As Saint John Paul II explained – take note – in his encyclical On Faith & Reason, not in a merely devotional context:

The martyrs know that they have found the truth about life in the encounter with Jesus Christ, and nothing and no-one could ever take this certainty from them. Neither suffering nor violent death could ever lead them to abandon the truth that they have discovered in the encounter with Christ. This is why to this day the witness of the martyrs continues to arouse such interest, to draw agreement, to win such a hearing and to invite emulation. This is why their word inspires such confidence: from the moment they speak to us of what we perceive deep down as the truth we have sought for so long, the martyrs provide evidence of a love that has no need of lengthy arguments in order to convince. The martyrs stir in us a profound trust because they give voice to what we already feel and they declare what we would like to have the strength to express.

They are the standard for understanding people – all people – who arise in human history, not just on a gut level, but according to the truth that they express, the truth of Jesus Christ, to which we have committed ourselves by baptism.

Now, we all hunger to see genuine humanity played out in front of us. We see it in the lives of the martyrs. They live out something of the deepest truth of Jesus Christ. So, far from being abstractly pious or merely edifying examples, the martyrs really relate to real people in real time.

Please read the rest there. 

I did not post any list of best books read in 2016 earlier this year--it's March already!--but if I had done so, Father Servais Pinckaers' book, The Spirituality of Martyrdom . . .  To the Limits of Love would have topped the list. As I said when I read it:

Pinckaers demonstrates that martyrdom is not merely an event: there's a spirituality that is essential to the Christian life, imitating Jesus in His Passion and Death completely. Even if we are not called to martyrdom--that's a line we often hear in modern Western culture--we are called to that imitation of and identification with Christ.

He begins his discussion with the Beatitudes from the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke. The eighth Beatitude from Matthew: "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you" and the fourth Beatitude from Luke: "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake." Then Pinckaers demonstrates how the early Church and subsequent theologians from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas have applied those Beatitudes to martyrdom. Soul-stirring and amazing!

I'd recommend it for Lenten reading and I might dip back into myself. It is a marvelous and important book!