Mostrando resultados por autor "Benedicta Ward" en Todas las categorías

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 28 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. A. M. Allchin (1930–2010) first gained recognition as a writer with The Silent Rebellion, a study of the nineteenth-century recovery of the monastic life in the Anglican Church. He wrote on...

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 137 From the earliest times pilgrimage has provided an image of the inner life of Christians. In its external aspect it became an ever more popular form of devotion throughout the Middle Ages. The two concepts were not simple alternatives, for the several strands within each were constantly interwoven. With a wealth of illustration, Sister Benedicta demonstrates that while countless Christians sought to improve their material lot by undertaking pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints, they could also find in the monastic ideal the pattern for their own inner journey ...

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 176 These essays were first published to mark the revival of the hermit life in the Church. Prepared for a meeting of solitaries at St David’s in Wales in 1975, both their historical and contemporary content continue to speak to and encourage those called to the eremitic life. For anyone who doubts its validity, they give a compelling and lucid explanation of this way of following Christ. The love of God shines through them; all readers may sense something of the attractive power of that love, whether or not they aspire to such a life. The contributors include Canon...

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 106 The message of optimism and hope of the fourteenth-century writer Julian of Norwich is sometimes understood rather superficially. These two essays, originally lectures given at her Shrine in Norwich, can assist our understanding of her theology. Sister Benedicta Ward reconsiders Julian in the light of the solitary tradition and contemporary medieval documents, suggesting that she may have been a widow who had borne a child. Kenneth Leech shows how Julian can help us to recover a sense of the goodness of creation, challenging superficial interpretations of her ...

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 141 Anyone who has been in the habit of attending monastic Offices, or their equivalents, will be aware of the central place of the psalter in Christian worship. Sister Benedicta sheds a revealing light on the scholarship and piety of the Venerable Bede, showing how with the Abbreviated Psalter (which is included in her text) he made his own innovative contribution to the devotional use of the psalms. Bede knew the psalms as a religious, bound to the daily, weekly and seasonal observance of the liturgical year; as a scholar and historian of European renown; and as a ...

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 178 The heart of monastic prayer is based in the psalms. In these essays, Sister Benedicta Ward examines the origin and development of the use of the Psalter in the daily worship of monks. She demonstrates that the traditional description of this activity as Opus Dei should be understood as God’s work in us, not our ‘work’ of prayer. The Psalter offers both monk and non-monk prayers of great intimacy and, in the context of the Offices, a way to reorder our understanding of time. She presents ‘an example of the possibility of a unity of life and prayer here and...

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 180 Through the processions traditionally associated with Holy Week and Easter, Sister Benedicta explores the power, the theology and the spirituality of procession and pilgrimage. She investigates how the simple human act of walking, whether alone or in company, reveals the truth that Christ is available to all. Processions are a tangible expression of our progress with Jesus towards the Father, of savouring the journey and our time with him and with our fellow travellers.

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 62 An examination of the relationship between Anselm’s scholarship and life as a monk. Simplicity, love, compassion and gentleness combined with a disciplined mind. Saint Anselm (1033-1109), Abbot of the Monastery of Bec in northern France, became Archbishop of Canterbury under William Rufus and Henry I. In her short study of one of the most original thinkers of the early Middle Ages, Sister Benedicta discusses the relationship between Anselm’s scholarship and his life as a monk. He combines a disciplined mind with simplicity, love, compassion and gentleness. His ...

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 217 In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Venerable Bede (673–735) recorded not simply the biographies of the early saints of Britain, but the stories and myths about them, deliberately passed down from those who knew them, describing the impact they had on those close to them. Bede gave a very full account of Alban, despite the chronological distance separating them, but his sources for information about St Cuthbert were those who had known the saint personally, giving Bede’s account considerable authority. His texts are first-rate ...

The Our Father, or Lord’s Prayer, is Jesus’ own teaching on prayer. Many commentaries have been written on this central prayer of Christianity, from the early Church to the present day. Sister Benedicta Ward chooses five writers from the third to the sixteenth centuries: Origen, John Cassian, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin of York and Teresa of Avila. She allows them to shed light on the Our Father in their own words, in a scholarly, yet accessible, book which affirms the Christian journey as one of pilgrimage, of being and becoming. Although our humanity is redeemed through the death and ...

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.

For those who study St Anselm, his prayers provide an intimate personal introduction to his thinking and his spirituality. For Anselm, who never considered himself a teacher of prayer, his prayers were simply personal devotions that he occasionally shared with others to encourage them to develop their own devotional style. Anselm would probably have been surprised to discover not only how widely his words were disseminated, but also the ways in which their translation and interpretation changed over the centuries. This brief study, by one of the leading scholars of early monastic life and ...