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Book Announcement: "Not of This World: 20 Lessons on Following Christ without Compromise" by St. Claude La Colombière

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My most recent book is now available for pre-order : Not of the World: 20 Lessons on Following Christ Without Compromise , by St. Claude La Colombière (1641-1682).  See the publisher's blurb below: "Discover the wisdom of St. Claude La Colombière (1641–1682), the Jesuit saint who served as confessor to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and ardently promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In Not of the World: 20 Lessons on Following Christ without Compromise , readers encounter a treasury of spiritual reflections drawn from his sermons, offering clarity, conviction, and pastoral depth for Christians seeking holiness amid a fallen culture. With charity and precision, St. Claude explains the sacrifice demanded by authentic love of Christ. He addresses the realities of Christian life in the world without surrendering to it, calling believers to humility, courage, and fidelity. Topics include love of neighbor, human respect, humility, the education of children, and the ...
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A Drop of Pascha to Sweeten the Fast: The Canon of the Third Sunday of the Great Fast (Veneration of the Cross)

The Canon for the Third Sunday of the Great Fast , the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, comes as a shock.  We know Sundays are always mini-Paschas, celebrations of the Resurrection, even in the depths of the Fast. (So they always have full canons, rather than the penitential three-ode canons found during weekdays, for which the  Triodion  is named.)  We have continued to sing the resurrectional hymns from the Octoechos throughout the Fast.  Yet the Canon for this week hits us with unbridled Paschal joy, for the ikoi come from the great Paschal Canon that we gloriously shout out during Paschal Matins. The Cross is the great reverser: through the Cross, a Person bearing the deathless divine nature dies; through the Cross, we deathbound men gain deathlessness. So perhaps we should not be surprised that the Cross brings a burst of joy in the middle of the somber Fast, just as its feast on September 14 is a day of fasting n the midst of the year's longest gap b...
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New Publication: "Christ Our Fellow-Pilgrim"

Along with the announcement of my new book translation, Not of This World  by St. Claude La Colombière, I'm also proud to announce a new article publication: "Christ Our Fellow-Pilgrim," published today at the Homiletic & Pastoral Review .  It is a reflection on a sermon by St. John of Ávila, whose full text can be found in my book of translations,  My Burden Is Light: Suffering and Consolation in the Christian Life .
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Edith Stein: "The Role of Convent Schools in the Religious Education of the Youth"

Below is an anonymous translation of a 1929 lecture by Edith Stein; I found the text in a collection of handouts for a class given by Sr. Johanna Paruch.  Possibly she is the translator, though no information was given in the text itself.  I reformatted the text into a more readable form and added a few editor's notes of my own.   The original German text is “Die Mitwirkung der klösterlicken Bildungsanstalten an der religiösen Bildung der Jugend,” Ganzheitliches Leben: Schriften zur religiösen Bildung , Edith Steins Werke, Vol. 12 (Freiburg: Herder, 1990), 95-108.    
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Blog Cited in Recent Book: "The Prayer Rule of the Theotokos"

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  I have had little time to work on translation or writing projects recently, though I do have a few in progress, including a new Bérulle volume and a translation that I aim to have published in an academic journal.  However, I wanted to share some information I recently discovered. Over a decade ago, on the former home of my blog, θησαυρος της εκκλησιας , I posted a discussion of the Prayer Rule of the Theotokos, popularized by St. Seraphim Zevzdinsky.  Drawing from various sources, I put together a couple variants of the Prayer Rule in a PDF booklet ( available from my website ).   It has always been one of the more popular pages on my blogs, and it still lists high in searches for "prayer rule of the Theotokos."  (Even higher, at least on Google, are the Internet Archive and Scribd mirrors of the PDF.)  So I was pleased, though not too surprised, to see it cited as a source in a recent book on the Prayer Rule, published by Eastern Christian P...
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Jean Gerson: "How the Child Jesus Is Born and Cared For in the Devoted Mind"

 Introduction I translated a few other writings by Jean Gerson (1363-1429), including a section of a sermon on St. Nicholas and a series of texts relating to the Feast of the Espousals of Mary and Joseph .  The below text is an odd allegorical one, considering various virtues as handmaidens ministering to the Child Jesus in the mind.  The original title reads "How, in the Devoted Mind, the Child Jesus Is Conceived, Bathed, Born, Nourished, etc."; I slightly renamed it for catchiness.  The text, as found in Gerson's collected writings, ends with a bit at first discussing the "wise man" asking what he must do to be saved (Mt 19:16-24), before seguing into a discussion of Lk 17:9-10.  The text, however, cuts off mid-sentence, and this passage seems to have little connection, if any, with the allegorical text.  Therefore, I have not included this final paragraph.  The original text also only had a single paragraph break; I have included many more for eas...
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Jean de La Ceppède: "Love Made HIm From High Olympus Come Down"

 Introduction Jean de La Ceppède (c. 1550-1623) was a French nobleman, judge, and poet, best-known for his sonnet series  Theorems on the Sacred Mystery of Our Redemption , sometimes known as the  Spiritual Theorems  for short.  Below, I have given a translation of one of the best-known of these sonnets. My translation is a poetic one, which matches La Ceppède's rhyme scheme (ABAB BABA CCD EDE); for a more literal translation, see Christopher O. Blum's article on La Ceppède, "A Poet of the Passion of Christ."  To keep a rhythm and to keep the rhyme, I sometimes had to reword some of La Ceppède's lines, or omit phrases.  The last tercet is the oddest in translation, particularly the first line: "Beauty for whom this Beauty dies alove."  A literal translation of the French is "Beautiful woman for whom this beautiful man dies while loving you well."  This is far too wordy for my rhythm, hence my compression.  For the final phrase, and to ma...
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