Born in the silence and simplicity of rural New-England, this book gathers some brief reflections and sermons of a parish Priest. The sermons fix their attention upon the Mother of God, and the author's approach is essentially liturgical. Side-stepping the language of apologetics and controversy, he studies the texts of the Roman liturgy and shares what he finds there. The meditations-concentrated and pithy-consider, beneath the light of inspired human reason and Sacred Scripture, such topics as:
- Humility and cheerfulness
- Anxiety and truth
- Modernism and Mary
- The Law and the Little Way of St Therese
- Scandal, hope, and the Divine Gardener
- The cloister's unlikely lessons on Patriotism
- Courage, pharisaism, and a fate worse than death
- The peace of the wounded Christ
Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Fr Sliwa enriches his meditations by engaging with saints, writers, and philosophers from Augustine and Aquinas to Evelyn Waugh and Georges Bernanos. In a phrase of the priest-poet Hopkins, the grace of Christ's Incarnation 'Makes, O marvelous! New Nazareths in us.' Thus the aim of this book can be summed up as preparing human lives for the visits of divine grace.
Autorentext
Father Ryan T Sliwa is a diocesan priest and Benedictine oblate. Ordained to the holy priesthood in 2015, he currently serves a parish in rural Massachusetts.