Tolkien's Sacramental Vision: Discerning the Holy in Middle Earth

One of Tolkien's great appeals to readers is that he offers a world replete with meaning at every level. To read and reread Tolkien is to share his sense of wonder and holiness, to be invited into the presence of a “beauty beyond the circles of the world.” It is to fall in love with a universe that has a beginning and an end, where good and bad are not subjective choices, but objective realities; a created order full of grace, though damaged by sin, in which friendship is the seedbed of the virtues, and where the greatest warriors finally become the greatest healers. A correspondent once told J. R. R. Tolkien that his work seemed illumined “by an invisible lamp.” That lamp is the Church, and its light is the imaginative sensibility that we live in a sacramental world. This new book by the author of The Trial of Man examines in depth the influence of Catholic sacramentality on the thought and work of Tolkien, with major emphasis on The Lord of the Rings, but including his literary essays, epistolary poem “Mythopoeia,” short story “Leaf by Niggle,” and The Silmarillion. Here is a signal contribution to a deeper understanding of Tolkien, whose mythological world is meant to “recover” the meaning of our own as a grace-filled place, pointing toward its Creator.

Literature & Fiction

Bernthal, Craig

History & Criticism

Second Spring Books

This is the time for a new politics, a new economics. Not As the World Gives, drawing on the Church's two millennia of reflection on the Gospel, especially in the encyclicals from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus, shows us the nature of society by showing us ourselves. We are beings created to give and receive -- called to "walk towards the true freedom that Christ taught us in the Beatitudes," as Pope Francis expressed it.  There is no peace without justice, but neither can there be justice without love. Far from being an impractical dream, Catholic social doctrine can transform the way we work, the way we govern, and the way we treat the natural world. What emerges from this sequel to the author's The Radiance of Being is a vision of integration and wholeness, a society both divine and human, and a "humanism open to the absolute."

Not As the World Gives: The Way of Creative Justice

Religion & Spirituality

Caldecott, Stratford

Christian Books & Bibles

The Meaning of Blue: Recovering a Contemplative Spirit

In his first Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis wrote: “We need to recover a contemplative spirit.” The Meaning of Blue is about just such a recovery. Blue is the color of heaven, of purity and truth. Its rarity in naturally occurring substances on earth and its abundance shining in the sky speak of the same thing: a celestial light to which our culture is increasingly blind. With examples drawn from both the inspired ambiguity of poetry and the depths of the Bible, Fr. Luke Bell shows the reader a way of knowing creation and language as manifesting divine truth, and then leads further—into the mystical tradition of direct contemplation of God. “To read Luke Bell's The Meaning of Blue is to see with new eyes, to love the world afresh. This very Benedictine book, written by a monk, with its roots sunk in prayer, liturgy, poetry, and the sacraments, aims at nothing less than transformation of the self, so that we encounter life as it really is, bright with the splendor of God. An invaluable guide to the spiritual life, by one who knows whereof he speaks.”--Philip Zaleski, editor of The Best Spiritual Writing series and co-author of Prayer: A History

Bell OSB, Luke

Treasure in Heaven: A Study of the Sermon on the Mount Using the Four Senses of Scripture

"A literary and spiritual gift of immense beauty and value."--PHILIP ZALESKI The Sermon on the Mount is central to the teaching of Jesus. In this fresh study of the sermon, Barry Pearlman revives its traditional biblical interpretation, which acknowledges all four senses of scripture: the literal, moral, allegorical, and mystical. The first chapter begins by tracing these four senses to their origin in the haggadic teaching of Jesus, then follows their development in the allegories of St. Paul up to their blossoming in the Middle Ages. After critically reviewing the rise and demise of the historical critical method, there follows a brief account of the return to the four senses within the ressourcement movement in contemporary theology.

Pearlman, Barry R.

Asked about the dialogue between Asian and Christian mysticisms, Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote: “The dialogue is possible. The question is: ‘does selflessness mean emptiness, or (trinitarian) love.’” Word and Silence is an ascent to the fullness of the Christian vision, from the depths of natural and Christian wisdom and under the guidance of this great master of contemplative theology of our time. It offers an overview of the human condition, and then broadens to explore the fullness of God’s revelation, which overflows the deepest longings of the human heart, fully embracing the human as human, and leading it into the heart of God. “What one of the greatest theologians of our century--Hans Urs von Balthasar--says about what the world’s religions mean for one another as pluralism intensifies their interaction--no other study comes close to the depth with which Word and Silence addresses that subject.”--Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions “In this luminous book, Father Raymond Gawronski demonstrates the fruitfulness of Balthasar’s distinctive Christology, Mariology, and nuptial mysticism for a genuine Catholic theology of world religions; and in the process, he sheds much-needed light upon the mysteries of sexuality and gender, the spirituality of obedience, and the beauty of holiness.”--Carol Zaleski, Professor of World Religions, Smith College; co-author of Prayer: A History “The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that while ‘in many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers,’ in ‘these days he has spoken to us by a Son.’ Meanwhile, at the heart of that word, spoken in and through the Son, sits the ‘wordless word’ of Christ’s death and descent into hell. This paradox--that in revealing himself to us in both word and deed God makes His final word a wordless deed--lies at the center of this spellbinding and beautifully written book. As Raymond Gawronski succinctly puts it, ‘The Word weds silence, as it were.’ This book is no less relevant now than when it was first published in 1995. Indeed, not only is this one of the best books on Balthasar to date, it should also be required reading for anyone interested in the important dialogue between Christianity and the East.”--Rodney Howsare, Professor of Theology, DeSales University; author of Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed

Word and Silence: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter Between East and West (3rd edition)

Gawronski, Raymond