Category: Book Reflections
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The Strange Freedom of Surrender
Reading Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain Some books are interesting. Others make you uncomfortable in exactly the way a good spiritual book should. Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain did that for me. I expected a conversion story. And, of course, that is what the book is: Merton’s account of his restless early life,…
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The Catholic Gentleman: Manhood Is Not a Costume
A CatholicG33k Reflection on Sam Guzman’s The Catholic Gentleman: Living Authentic Manhood Today There is a way to read The Catholic Gentleman badly. You could read it as a Catholicized masculinity manual: dress like an adult, drink like an adult, work hard, protect your family, develop some discipline, stop looking at pornography, learn some manners,…
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The Holiness of the Given Moment
A Reflection on St. Alphonsus de Liguori’s Uniformity with God’s Will There are spiritual books that give us new ideas, and there are spiritual books that quietly take away our excuses. St. Alphonsus de Liguori’s Uniformity with God’s Will belongs unmistakably to the second category. It is astonishingly small. In the edition before us, the…
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The Courage to Become the Man God Created You to Be
What does it truly mean to be a man? In Be a Man! Becoming the Man God Created You to Be, Fr. Larry Richards challenges the world’s definition of masculinity and points readers toward the only perfect example Jesus Christ. This reflection explores authentic manhood through the lens of Scripture, repentance, sacrificial love, and holiness,…