We tend to think of Advent as the season of anticipation before Christmas—and while it is that, it's also much more. Throughout its history, the church has observed Advent as a preparation not only for the first coming of Christ in his incarnation but also for his second coming at the last day. It's also about a third coming: the coming of Christ to meet us in our present moment, to make us holy by his Word and Sacrament. Priest and writer Tish Harrison Warren explores all three of these "comings" of Christ and invites us into a deeper experience of the first season of the Christian year.

The activist, nun, and esteemed spiritual voice who has twice appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday sounds the call to create a monastery within ourselves - to cultivate wisdom and resilience so that we may join God in the work of renewal, restoration, and justice right where we are.

A beloved nun and social activist offers a soul-stirring guide for all who feel disillusioned and dissatisfied with the power-hungry institutions and systems of this world. In The Time Is Now, Sister Joan Chittister - a rabble-rousing force of nature for social justice and fervent proponent of personal faith and spiritual fulfillment - draws on the wisdom of prophets, both ancient and modern, to help us confront the societal forces that oppress and silence the sacred voices among us.

In a society where raging narcissism dominates the moral landscape, the virtue of humility is often dismissed as irrelevant. Not only is humility vanishing from contemporary culture, but we are also witnessing how destructive a lack of humility has become among our churches and ministry leaders. And yet, Richard Foster, the founder of Renovare, insists that humility is central to the journey toward character formation and spiritual transformation. For this reason he decided to spend a year studying the virtue of humility.

Compassionate, biblical, and thought-provoking, Embodied is an accessible guide for Christians who want help navigating issues related to transgenderism.

Richard Rohr Rohr goes through the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, explaining the historical and cultural context of each verse and offering guidance for what it means for Christians today.

We lead our spiritual lives in relationship with others. A faithful community gives us opportunities for worship, sharing burdens, confessing faults, offering forgiveness, and celebrating life. Wherever he went, Henri Nouwen created such communities, and within them, he offered spiritual direction. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith is part of “The Nouwen Trilogy.” These convenient audio sessions let you adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual director.

This popular and best-selling book from a renowned Franciscan challenges people to move beyond the comfort of a settled life toward an understanding of themselves that is rooted in their connection to God. Only when they rest in God can they find the certainty and the freedom to become all that they can be.

Many Christians are disconnected from the past or imagine they are "above" history, immune to it, as if self-starters from clean slates in every generation. They suffer from a lack of awareness of time and the effects of history—both personal and collective—and thus are naive about current issues and fixated on the end times. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that awakening to the spiritual significance of time is crucial for orienting faith in the twenty-first century.

What is a monastery? A monastery is a place set apart - a place to learn the blessings of powerlessness, and that time is not ours but God’s. Our home and our duties can, just like a monastery, teach us those things. The vocation of monastic men and women is to physically withdraw from the world. But the principle is equally valid for those of us who cannot go off to monasteries. Certain vocations offer the same kind of opportunity for contemplation, and provide a desert for reflection.

We all suffer from unhealthy dependencies that we continually return to in hopes of having a better life. But after yet another TV show is streamed or another drink is swallowed, we find we once again feel worse, not better, than we did before. Where is the hope for that fully awakened life we long to live?

This runaway best seller shows both the basic logic of the Enneagram and its harmony with the core truths of Christian thought from the time of the early Church forward. Experience author Richard Rohr's expertise and advanced thought on the subject, easily laid out for all audiences.

In The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1, Justo L. González, author of the highly praised three-volume History of Christian Thought, presents a narrative history of Christianity from the early church to the dawn of the Protestant reformation. From Jesus' faithful apostles to the early reformist John Wycliffe, González skillfully traces core theological issues and developments within the various traditions of the church, including major events outside of Europe, such as the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the New World.

In this wise and compassionate book, Father James Martin, SJ explores the story of Jesus’s greatest miracle—the raising of Lazarus from the dead—and what Jesus means when he calls each of us to “come forth.” Meditatively and carefully, Martin leads us verse by verse, offering profound reflections on Jesus’s lessons on love, family, sadness, frustration, fear, anger, freedom, and joy.

The Story of a Soul conveys St. Therese of Lisieux's "Little Way" of spiritual childhood - her "elevator" to Heaven, as she called it. This method was approved by Pope Pius XI as a way for all to grow in holiness through unfailing confidence and childlike delight in God's merciful love. Again and again in this audiobook, St. Therese shows us how her "Little Way" of love and trust comes straight from Sacred Scripture.

In his acclaimed books, renowned writer, speaker, and philosophy professor Dallas Willard explored the nature of Christian life in God's Kingdom. Yet one topic remained undisclosed: Willard's understanding of heaven and eternal life. In the months before his death, Willard engaged in moving and insightful conversations about the meaning of life and the life to come with close friend and theologian Gary Black, Jr. These inspiring dialogues were steeped in biblical theology as well as practical wisdom grounded in the here-and-now.

This popular and best-selling book from a renowned Franciscan challenges people to move beyond the comfort of a settled life toward an understanding of themselves that is rooted in their connection to God. Only when they rest in God can they find the certainty and the freedom to become all that they can be.

Boys become men in much the same way across cultures, by integrating, through experience, each of five messages: Life is hard; You are not that important; Your life is not about you; You are not in control; You are going to die. Our culture has done everything in its power, it seems, to move away from this ancient wisdom. Men are lured away to dominate through money, sex, power, consumerism—and never really become men.

Listeners will be fully engaged in a unique and altogether fascinating discussion of Christian spirituality. Rolheiser seeks to reconcile the rift between a smorgasbord of spiritual voices and an authentic Christian discipleship by the use of anecdotes, personal examples and a wide range of literary and cultural references. His starting point is the desire within us that longs irresistibly for fulfillment.

Is God a wrathful judge? A gentle healer? A father? Brother? Friend? In The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus, Brennan Manning brings you to a deeper understanding of the true nature of God. Through poignant and unforgettable stories and challenging observations, Manning helps you stretch your mind and reject simplistic explanations of who God really is.

Every generation faces the temptation to wander from orthodoxy—to seek out the jolt that comes with false teaching, and to drift with cultural currents. And so every generation must be awakened again to the thrill of orthodoxy, and experience the astonishment that comes from stumbling afresh upon the electrifying paradoxes at the heart of the Christian faith. In The Thrill of Orthodoxy, Trevin Wax turns the tables on those who believe Christian teaching is narrow and outdated.

With a balance of wisdom, candor, and scholarly rigor, the beloved archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, traces the human experience from ancient times to today to find threads of connection in our yearning for God, love, honor, beauty, truth, and immortality. He looks at our modern appetite for consumption and individualism and offers a penetrating analysis of how we got here and how we can look to our roots and our faith to find purpose each day amid the noise of competing desires.

A master theologian offers inspiring insights into the mystery of Christ's presence in our lives. As festive as the film Babette's Feast and as profound as the work of Ronald Knox, this fresh look at the Eucharist brings to light the spiritual meaning of meal, sacrifice, and real presence in our lives.

Modern pastors and their flocks have long considered N. T. Wright a role model for being a thoughtful Christian in today’s world. His bestselling books, including Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, Simply Jesus, and After You Believe, have guided Christians in their belief and practice of the faith. Now, Christians can rely on his wisdom to guide them through each day of their lives with this thoughtful book of daily meditations, featuring short selections from his classic works.

Significant events such as birth, marriage, and death are milestones in our lives in which we experience our greatest happiness and our deepest grief. And so it is profoundly important to understand how to approach and experience these occasions with grace, endurance, and joy. In On Birth, Timothy Keller - theologian and best-selling author - helps us understand both physical and spiritual birth, as well as how baptism connects the two. Keller draws on 45 years as a pastor and a parent to consider what it means to receive a new birth as well as to be reborn.

Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and that the faith was only later recovered by the 16th-century Reformers or even the 18th-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants.

“Leadership” has become a runaway obsession for those who are called to equip the body of Christ for service in the Kingdom of God. The concept of “followership” is all but lost in the wake of this leadership fetish, a near hypnotic obsession. Jesus’ clear call, and the pattern of New Testament leadership, are actually found in a pattern of followership. We’ve been told otherwise but when it comes to a movement in our churches, our families, or the workplace, everything rises or falls on followership. Sweet proposes an intentional shift from leadership cults to followership cultures.

The life of Jesus offers each one of us a map to the direct realization of our eternal and divine nature. On Resurrecting Jesus, Adyashanti excavates the deep, mythic underpinnings of the Gospels to show how we can all find in the story of Jesus the spark for our own spiritual unfolding. Jesus crossed all of the boundary lines that separated the people of his time because he viewed the world from the perspective of what unites us, not what divides us.

This series of reflections reveals the importance of gratitude in helping us see beyond the immediate to a broader and deeper reality. The discovery of this perpetual alleluia will help you discover what you are, become who you are, and grow with gratitude into the unknown.

In Wrestling with God, Ronald Rolheiser offers a steady and inspiring voice to help us avow and understand our faith in a world where nothing seems solid or permanent. Drawing from his own life experience, as well as a storehouse of literary, psychological, and theological insights, the beloved author of Sacred Fire examines the fears and doubts that challenge us. It is in these struggles to find meaning, that Rolheiser lays out a path for faith in a world struggling to find faith, but perhaps more important, he helps us find our own rhythm within which to walk that path.