Our Deepest Desire: Prayer, Fasting & Almsgiving in the Writings of Augustine of Hippo


Book Description

Fairacres Publication 193 This is a book about the practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving as we meet them in the teaching of St Augustine of Hippo. He is generally acclaimed as someone who has had enormous influence on Christian theology and much has been written about him by scholars. However, apart from a number of translations of the Confessions, few of his writings are accessible to the ordinary reader, even though, as Bishop of Hippo, he constantly wrote and preached for his people. The first part of this book presents Augustine’s teaching on three central practices of Christian living—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—with reference to his sermons and his commentaries on the Psalms. The second part places it alongside some recent authors who demonstrate how this triad continues to be of value to Christians today. Although it has been conceived as a Lent book, this text provides a reflective introduction to these ways of Christian living in whatever season of the Church’s year a reader picks it up.




A True Easter: The Synod of Whitby 664 AD


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 151 Sister Benedicta gives an illuminating account of the Synod of Whitby 664 AD, held to discuss the date on which Easter should be celebrated. The Synod has been presented as a clash between Irish and Roman missionaries representing two different kinds of Christianity, yet the two traditions mingled with no clear-cut nationalistic divisions. All participants were agreed upon the centrality of Easter as the feast of the Resurrection, and through looking together towards Jesus as the risen Lord, they resolved their difficulties.




Encountering the Depths


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 218 This is a book about the nature and practice of prayer for the serious Christian, lay and clerical, in which the problems of the spiritual life in the modern world are presented as a challenge. Mother Mary Clare, who was one of the Anglican Church’s leading spiritual directors, takes the major contemplative themes and brings to them her unique blend of spiritual realism, vision and authority. Prayer begins and ends in the inescapable necessity of a relationship with God; the dimension of silence reveals that praying is not only an action but a still contemplation; the path of spiritual progress is to discern in the union of action and contemplation a deeper listening which leads to an apostolate of prayer renewing the action of contemplation. It is all God’s Work. In his foreword, Bishop Michael Ramsey writes: ‘I hope this little book will have many readers, as I am sure it will help them as it has helped me … Christian lives which know contemplation will be lives nearer the love of God…’




Julian of Norwich


Book Description

Fairacres Publication 28 Julian of Norwich: Four Studies to Commemorate the Sixth Centenary of the Revelations of Divine Love This book of four essays, first published in 1973, provides an introduction and companion to the study of the fourteenth-century ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ by Julian of Norwich. The meaning of the Revelations for those who are living a contemplative life today is explored through reflections on Julian’s place in English literature and the tradition of Christian prayer.




Eight Chapters on Perfection & Angels’ Song


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 85 Eight Chapters on Perfection is Hilton’s translation of a Latin text by the Aragonese Friar Dom Lluis de Font, and is the only surviving record of that manuscript. It is a text of great humanity and wisdom about the possibilities of friendship and love between those drawn to prayer. In Angels’ Song Hilton’s own spirituality is revealed as he considers how, in the spiritual life, the action of grace can be distinguished from pious illusion.




Made All of Light


Book Description

Thomas Campion (1567–1620) was a composer of lute song and the author a significant body of Latin and English poetry and masques written for the Stuart court. This volume collects all of Campion’s sacred poetry in one place for the first time. Campion’s lyric style was influenced by Sir Philip Sidney, but also by the music to which it was most often set: the lines flow gracefully, with an elegant and direct communication of depth and sincerity. Campion’s faith is evident and his texts speak as vividly to us today as they did to those who copied and shared them during his lifetime and beyond.




Zeal for the Faith


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 221 In recent years relations between Christians and Muslims have been reduced, in much popular discourse, to a simple, and often polarized, opposition. Historically the relationship between these two Abrahamic faiths has been much more nuanced and complex. In this book, Tony Dickinson explores some of the complexities, both in Christian-Muslim relations and within Islam, from the earliest years of Muhammad’s prophetic activity until the controversies and conflicts of the present, and suggests some possible approaches to contemporary inter-faith dialogue.




The Desert of the Heart: Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 179 The way of life of the fourth-century Desert Fathers, with its emphasis on solitude, silence and unceasing prayer, has inspired many modern spiritual writers. Why do the Desert Fathers have so much to say to us? To answer this question, Sister Benedicta presents some of the best and most illuminating stories and sayings from the desert. Readers will find spiritual wisdom, along with sharp humour and startling insight into human nature.




The Road to Emmaus: A Sculptor’s Journey through Time


Book Description

The sculptor Rodney Munday examines the impact of the art works that have influenced his thinking and the evolution of his artistic style on his Christian faith, as well as the way in which his faith has shaped his own sculpture. This is an examination of the ways in which the context and reception of religious art through the centuries poses questions about Christianity and how both individuals and the establishment respond to new works of art. In this book we journey with him along his personal ‘road to Emmaus’, recounted with engaging warmth and honesty.




Mixed Life


Book Description

Fairacres Publications 136 The English mystic Walter Hilton was born c. 1340–5 and died at the Priory of St Peter at Thurgarton, Nottinghamshire in 1396. Little is known of his life, but after beginning a legal and administrative career he attempted the solitary life, but finally discovered his true vocation as an Augustinian Canon. His spiritual writings in English and Latin are ranked alongside those of the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing and Julian of Norwich, and include Angels’ Song (also translated by Rosemary Dorward and published by SLG Press in 1983), commentaries on Psalm texts, and a number of letters of spiritual guidance. Mixed Life was originally intended to be read as the third part of Hilton’s best-known work, The Scale of Perfection, and is a set of instructions for a ‘worldly lord’ on balancing the spiritual and practical aspects of leading a godly life. This new edition includes the first full print publication of a diplomatic transcription of the ‘Vernon MS’ text from which this translation was made.




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