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This edition of Catholic is, as usual, packed with pious information. Dedicated to the end of the Pauline year you will find several pages through which you will be able to take a journey through the Acts of the Apostles with the Saint. Lavishly illustrated with photographs of the places he visited and pictures of the scenes evoked in Holy Scripture you will be able to approach that book of the Bible in a way you have probably never encountered before.We journey to Spain where we learn about the Saint of the Eucharist who has knocked on his tomb for centuries in answer to prayer, and we hear about Rev. Fr (and also Lord) Archibald Douglas and his marvellous, to the point of the miraculous, work for orphaned children. In the light of the recent media abuse of the Holy Father – which we speak about in the news – we hear from the children of Ireland who wrote to Pope Pius XII in 1954 about everything from their pet hens to the most moving sentiments. The letters are beautiful.
The news pages are packed with positive happenings in the Church and the world.
One of the most uplifting of these items of news concerns the Franciscan Nuns of the Immaculate in Lanherne, Cornwall (England). Very Providentially, and unplanned, was the choice of the book we have begun to republished with this edition.Entitled God’s Sparrows, the work was originally published in French in 1882 as the Auréole Séraphique — with the approbation of the highest Superiors of the Order — and the series was translated, slightly re-arranged and re-printed in 4 volumes, by the Franciscans of Taunton (Devon), England, in 1885, and prefaced by His Eminence, Cardinal Manning.
The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer have, over the years, gained much from these books and it has been our long-standing desire to re-print them. We are very pleased that our first attempts coincide with this wonderful news from this vibrant young community of contemplative nuns who have come to the south-west of England more than century after our books were first translated by their fellow Franciscans in the same part of the world.
The handsomely bound English edition seems to have been printed privately, and judging by the library classifications, i.e. one set only in the possession of Oxford University, National Library of Scotland, Cambridge University — in the ‘rare books’ department, and the British Library, (neither Cambridge nor the British Library will allow the books off their premises), they have all but disappeared from circulation.
Coincidentally and not without significance, the re-printing of these books by us in this year of Our Lord 2009, coincides with the 8th centenary of the events surrounding the founding of this great and holy Order of St Francis, whose rich spiritual tradition is so needed in the world today.
May these beautiful lives, profusely illustrated for the first time, edify you the reader, and serve to inspire others to offer themselves generously to the Renaissance of the Monastic Life, so willed and supported, as in our own case, by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.
Happy reading to you all!