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How did earliest Christians receive and understand the teaching of Jesus and the apostles? These writings, among the earliest used in training new disciples, show a clear, vibrant, practical faith concerned with all aspects of discipleship in daily life—vocation, morality, family life, social justice, the sacraments, prophesy, citizenship, and leadership. For the most part, these writings have remained buried in academia, analyzed by scholars but seldom used for building up the church community. Now, at a time when Christians of every persuasion are seeking clarity by returning to the roots of their faith, these simple, direct teachings shed light on what it means to be a follower of Christ in any time or place. The Didache, an anonymous work composed in the late first century AD, was lost for centuries before being rediscovered in 1873. The Shepherd was written by a former slave named Hermas in the second century AD or possibly even earlier.

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Why has God not answered my prayers? What should I be praying for? If everything I prayed for came true, would I be ready? In this spiritual classic, Eberhard Arnold mines the riches of biblical teaching on prayer and the example of Jesus, the Hebrew prophets, and the early Christians to point us back to the prayer that pleases God most – prayer that has the power to transform our lives and our world. In a new reflective response, much-loved author Richard J. Foster relates Arnold’s words to our contemporary reality.

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Simone Weil, the great mystic and philosopher for our age, shows where anyone can find God. Why is it that Simone Weil, with her short, troubled life and confounding insights into faith and doubt, continues to speak to today’s spiritual seekers? Was it her social radicalism, which led her to renounce privilege? Her ambivalence toward institutional religion? Her combination of philosophical rigor with the ardor of a mystic? Albert Camus called Simone Weil “the only great spirit of our time.” André Gide found her “the most truly spiritual writer of this century.” Her intense life and profound writings have influenced people as diverse as T. S. Eliot, Charles De Gaulle, Pope Paul VI, and Adrienne Rich. The body of work she left —most of it published posthumously—is the fruit of an anguished but ultimately luminous spiritual journey. After her untimely death at age thirty-four, Simone Weil quickly achieved legendary status among a whole generation of thinkers. Her radical idealism offered a corrective to consumer culture. But more importantly, she pointed the way, especially for those outside institutional religion, to encounter the love of God – in love to neighbor, love of beauty, and even in suffering.

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To find out why Pope Francis is making Oscar Romero a saint, read the words that cost him his life. ”A church that does not provoke crisis, a gospel that does not disturb, a word of God that does not touch the concrete sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed – what kind of gospel is that?” Three short years transformed El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero from a defender of the status quo into one of the most outspoken voices of the oppressed. An assassin’s bullet ended his life, but his message lives on. In March 2018 Pope Francis announced that the Catholic Church would canonize Oscar Romero, acknowledging that he is indeed a saint who was martyred for proclaiming the gospel, and that the political and social implications of that message, which so scandalized the powerful, flowed directly from Romero’s faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus. These selections from Romero’s diaries and radio broadcasts invite each of us to align our own lives with the way of Jesus that lifts up the poor, welcomes the broken, wins over enemies, and transforms the history of entire nations.

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How do you follow Jesus without burning out? Gold Medal Winner, 2018 Illumination Book Awards, Enduring Light "This thoughtful collection of Day’s reflections incorporates abundant material for contemplation, all drawn from her extensive writings … [which] reveal Day’s signature honesty and frequent humor in addressing her hopes and fears and the sources of her inspiration…. This welcome compilation provides a window into the fundamental beliefs that undergirded Day’s life of faith." –Publishers Weekly, starred review In this guidebook Dorothy Day offers hard-earned wisdom and practical advice gained through decades of seeking to know Jesus and to follow his example and teachings in her own life.Unlike larger collections and biographies, which cover her radical views, exceptional deeds, and amazing life story, this book focuses on a more personal dimension of her life: Where did she receive strength to stay true to her God-given calling despite her own doubts and inadequacies and the demands of an activist life? What was the unquenchable wellspring of her deep faith and her love for humanity?

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One of the most articulate and biblically grounded voices of the Radical Reformation, Peter Riedemann was only twenty-three when he penned this impassioned confession of faith in the gloom of a sixteenth-century Austrian dungeon. Already a noted Anabaptist leader, Riedemann called fellow persecuted Christians to witness to a love that, “when it really burns, having kindled our eagerness for God, the more temptations and tribulations meet it, the more it flares, until it overcomes and consumes all injustice and wickedness.” A classic testament to religious liberty with a timely message for modern believers, Love Is Like Fire serves as a striking reminder of the spirit that fired the hearts of early “heretics” during the Reformation. A first translation into English, this book is an important addition to the small but growing number of primary sources on early Anabaptism.

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