Elizabeth Klein

We often pray with the saints in our Catholic practice or see paintings of angels by famous artists, but who are they really? What do they do? Can they really intercede for us? Elizabeth Klein, assistant professor of theology at the Augustine Institute, leads us through a soul-inspiring exploration of Catholic teaching on angels and saints and why they matter to us as individuals and to the Church. Throughout the book, Klein answers common questions about the angels and saints in order to give us a deeper understanding and appreciation of the role they play in our lives, the Mass, and in the life of the Church. She also equips us to better discuss with non-Catholics what we believe about angels and saints. In Angels and Saints, Klein explains that these heavenly companions are gifts from God. They are our friends and are joined to us in the mystical Body of Christ. They invite us to love God and each other perfectly as they do. In this book, you also will learn that Angels appear throughout the Bible in many forms. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that angels are perfect, immortal, have souls, and are as individual as humans. Both the Old and New Testaments provide strong evidence that each one of us has a guardian angel. The Communion of Saints refers to the Church, the Body of Christ of which we are a part. This means we have true contact and unity with all members of the Church, both living and dead. No matter your state in life, you can find a canonized saint very like you. When we pray to saints, we are really asking them to pray to God on our behalf. Relics are the remains of saints, including their body or parts of it, clothing or items they have used, or something put into contact with the saint's body or one of its parts. Relics are mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments. A saint's feast day is the day of their death--the day they entered eternal 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.

A collection of short stories with a range of topics: a girl who discovers she is an alien, a boy whose inventions just aren't what they're cracked up to be, a fairy tale retelling, a spooky dare involving a scarecrow, a boy trying to evade a bully, a mouse trying to publish his book just to name a few.

This story can be summed up as a boy's adventure in all its quirky day-dreaminess and fascination with spies, flamboyant villains who own islands and wear white suits and a mutinous, but very dead pirate. When half of a treasure map ends up in a box of books at the local fete, Jock McLock decides to visit the donator. He's heard plenty of strange tales about her from the kids at school, but it's nothing like meeting Mrs Trelawney in the flesh. It's all connected to his mother winning a holiday to the Bahamas, which turns out to be full of perils for poor Jock, a wild treasure hunt with gunmen bent on finding the pirate's treasure before Jock does.

Series SummaryThe new What Every Catholic Should Know series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic readership. Book SummaryWho is God? If we want to love God and make him the center of our lives, we would do well to settle this question at least in some small way. This book serves as a starting point for understanding what Christians mean when they say God, and to whom they are referring when they use this name. Part of the What Every Catholic Should Know series, God: What Every Catholic Should Know is born out of the recognition that God is central to the Faith, but we encounter misconceptions about God all the time. In an effort to clear up these misconceptions, this book addresses three major concepts--the nature of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation--so that we may strengthen our faith and our ability to communicate it to other people. Some of us might protest that we are not smart enough to do theology and that less is more when it comes to contemplating the divine. But if God is perfect, wonderful, all goodness, love itself--as the Bible tells us in 1 John 4:8--it would be strange indeed if we did not want to give our whole selves to God, including our minds. After all, the Lord himself tells us: you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).

References to the good angels in the works of Augustine are legion, and angels also play a central role in some of his major works, such as City of God and the opening of On the Trinity. Despite Augustine's interest in angels, however, little scholarly work has appeared on the topic. In this book, Elizabeth Klein gives the first comprehensive account of Augustine's theology of the angels and its importance for his thought more generally. Offering a close textual analysis of the reference to angels in Augustine's corpus, the volume explores Augustine's angelology in relationship with his understanding of creation, of community, of salvation history and of spiritual warfare. By examining Augustine's angelology, we glimpse his understanding of time and eternity, as well as the meaning and perfection of created life. Klein's book is foundational for a proper understanding of Augustine's angelology and has far-reaching implications not only for Augustinian studies, but also the broader history of Christian angelology.