Paula Huston

Award-winning writer Paula Huston offers a rich spiritual reflection on the origin and meaning of the Catholic Mass. For Catholics, the Mass is the "source and summit of the Christian life," as the documents of the Church put it. Yet many Catholics might confess to not understand in any depth what goes on in a typical celebration of the Eucharist. In One Ordinary Sunday Paula Huston guides us through a Mass at her home parish in a rural California town. Huston's personal and spiritual reflections offer fresh and often unexpected insights into the profound mystery at the heart of the Catholic faith. A natural storyteller, Huston deftly illuminates what might seem either mysterious to those unfamiliar with the Mass or overly familiar to those who have lost an appreciation of its mystery. In the Mass "we are healed and restored and spiritually fed," she writes. "We are unified and made whole as a people and as a Church. We get a little taste of heaven."

Between World War II and Vatican II, as Italy struggled to rebuild after decades of Mussolini’s fascism, an eleventh-century order of contemplative monks in the Apennines were urged by Thomas Merton to found a daughter house on the rugged coast of California. A brilliant but world-weary ex-Jesuit, who had recently withdrawn from a high-intensity public life to go into reclusion at the ancient Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli, was tapped for the job. Based on notes kept for over sixty years by an early American novice at New Camaldoli Hermitage, The Hermits of Big Sur tellsthe compelling story of what unfolds within this small and idealistic community when medievalism must finally come to terms with modernism. It traces the call toward fuga mundi in the young seekers who arrive to try their vocations, only to discover that the monastic life requires much more of them than a bare desire for solitude. And it describes the miraculous transformation that sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of lectio divina, silent meditation, liturgical faithfulness, and the communal bonds they have formed through the practice of the “privilege of love.”

Are you able to forgive those who have hurt you? If you find it difficult to forgive, this book is your encouragement. If you re having trouble accepting forgiveness for something you have done, this is your inspiration. With honesty, writing about her own failings, Paula Huston examines the intellectual, psychological, social, and spiritual meanings of forgiveness. She asks tough questions and then offers possible solutions, drawing a portrait of a truly forgiving person. One of Jesus most mind-boggling declarations is that we who hope to follow him must first be willing to forgive the people who have hurt us. Not only does this injunction show up at the heart of the prayer he offers to his disciples ( Give us this day our daily bread ) but he restates it as a requirement for salvation: If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. (Mt. 6:11-15) He also tells us that if we wish to live in relationship with God, we must first seek forgiveness from those we ve hurt: Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Mt. 5:23-24). Our damaged relationships with other people, especially when we are responsible for that damage, have a direct effect on our friendship with God. "

As revolutionary forces gather in the Lacandon jungle of southern Mexico in the fall of 1993, an idealistic American priest vanishes from his post in San Cristobal de Las Casas. The Church, immersed in trying to negotiate a peaceful solution to the escalating conflict between wealthy landowners and poverty-stricken indigenas, remains strangely silent in the face of his disappearance. When his sister, Eva, only thirty-four but already a hardened battlefield photojournalist, finds out what's going on, she flies to Central America to find him, taking a job assisting a taciturn Dutch Mayanist in order to provide herself with a cover. But as it turns out, he, too, is on a secret quest. From the great pyramids of Tikal and the graceful palaces of Palenque to the shadowy guerrilla camps of the vast Lacandon, A Land Without Sin is a modern-day journey into the heart of darkness.

As revolutionary forces gather in the Lacandon jungle of southern Mexico in the fall of 1993, an idealistic American priest vanishes from his post in San Cristobal de Las Casas. The Church, immersed in trying to negotiate a peaceful solution to the escalating conflict between wealthy landowners and poverty-stricken indigenas, remains strangely silent in the face of his disappearance. When his sister, Eva, only thirty-four but already a hardened battlefield photojournalist, finds out what's going on, she flies to Central America to find him, taking a job assisting a taciturn Dutch Mayanist in order to provide herself with a cover. But as it turns out, he, too, is on a secret quest. From the great pyramids of Tikal and the graceful palaces of Palenque to the shadowy guerrilla camps of the vast Lacandon, A Land Without Sin is a modern-day journey into the heart of darkness.

Is the call to spirituality embedded in human biology? Authors Nancy K. Morrison and Sally K. Severino draw on cutting-edge research, including the recent discovery of brain "mirror neurons" and the elucidation of the physiology of social affiliation and attachment, to make a bold case that we are, in fact, biologically wired to seek oneness with the divine. They have termed this innate urge "sacred Desire." In their new book on the subject, ,em>Sacred Desire: Growing in Compassionate Living, Morrison and Severino, both highly esteemed academic psychiatrists, draw on neurophysiology, relationship studies, research on spiritual development, and psychotherapy to show how spirituality is intimately connected with our physical being. The authors offer several clinical examples of how recognizing sacred Desire can advance a person's healing and they provide an action plan for using Desire to move from fear to love of self, others, and all creation. In addition to psychiatrists and neurophysiologists, who will undoubtedly welcome this significant contribution to their fields of study, Sacred Desire is sure to appeal as well to the much wider audience of spiritual seekers looking for intellectually and scientifically credible ways to understand spirituality in today's world.

God will always give us more than we ask forMillions have read and benefited from this book since it was first written nearly 500 years ago. St. Teresa's message of humility, simplicity, persistence, and faith is replete with language that is at times earthy, and full of self deprecating humor. Rendered here into contemporary English, St. Teresa's words, with their warm-hearted approach to Christian transformation, will help you look deeply into what it really means, sometimes in the smallest of details, to have a relationship with Jesus." Teresa lays out the time-tested path of Christian tranformation and union with God for those of us who will never be monastics, much less desert-dwelling hermits. Who among us does not need to know how to turn trouble into spiritual good, how to lovingly bear minor slights and major wounds, how to forgive and offer compassion?" Paula Huston, from the Foreword