RCIA teams often struggle with getting catechumens and candidates to participate regularly in the church's liturgy. Those who do often feel bored or confused, or they see it as a nice tradition or an inconvenient obligation rather than the heart of our Catholic faith. So we fill the gap with more catechesis that explains the liturgy to seekers, and we pray they will have a better personal experience on Sunday. Yet neither causes them to love the liturgy as we do. In Divine Blessing: Liturgical Formation in the RCIA, Timothy P. O'Malley shows us how we can break out of a classroom model about liturgy and instead invite seekers to be formed by the Risen Christ through the liturgy. This book will give you a process for preparing your catechumens and candidates to learn the liturgy's symbolic language of self-giving love that will sustain them with divine blessing and train them to be Christ's disciples in the world.

Is the Abrahamic blessing of Genesis 12:1-3 still active in the world today? Does God still extend his blessing to the nations through his people? The author found the answer to these questions in one of the most isolated regions of the world, Papua New Guinea. In this book Sarita D. Gallagher compares the missional nature of the Abrahamic blessing motif in Scripture to a national revival that took place in Papua New Guinea. By identifying the shared missional patterns, she illustrates the continued fulfillment of the Abrahamic blessing through the Old and New Testaments and the contemporary Papua New Guinean Church. The significance of this research is multifaceted: the text contributes new insights to the global Church's understanding of the missio Dei, records an unexplored chapter of Melanesian indigenous mission history, and impacts the foundational motivations and methodology of contemporary mission praxis.

The Bible teaches us', Russ Parker writes, 'that blessing is a unique ministry resource gifted to believers to effect the purposes of God in peoples' lives.' In this enthralling book, the author tells of situations of family estrangement, depression and chronic illness; of times of hopelessness and helplessness where miraculous transformation has been wrought through calling on God to bless someone with the richest blessing they are able to receive. As he has travelled the country teaching on the ministry of blessing, Russ has seen an enthusiastic response and uptake, especially amongst those involved in prayer ministry. He believes it is time for all who want to be part of God's renewal - both in church and through reaching out to the wider community - to consider how we might help others to flourish as the people God has called them to be. 'Russ Parker's ground breaking work on healing community history will be so helpful to churches. It has greatly helped me.' The Rt Revd Graeme Dow, former Bishop of Carlisle

The stories of this book are about the permanent interaction between God and humankind. These narratives invite us to witness the manner in which God enters human community in all of its complexities, struggles, challenges, fears, and ultimately hope. Hemchand Gossai not just discussed the large variety of themes within this texts, but also kept an eye on the implications for the Church and contemporary readers. Some experiences, like the barrenness, wilderness and the wrestling with God are described asmetaphors. The richness and texture of these metaphors allow the reader to embrace these stories in a way that makes them our stories.

Jeremy Smoak presents a synthesis of recent discoveries bearing upon the early history and function of the biblical priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24-26. The book gives special focus to the importance of the discovery of the blessing on two silver amulets from Jerusalem dating to the late Iron Age and several other Iron Age inscriptions containing parallels to the blessing. The analysis of the inscriptions provides a new way to approach the meaning and significance of the instructions for the blessing in the biblical book of Numbers.

The "magical power of the spoken word" is a topic that often comes up in a discussion of biblical blessings and curses. What is the source of social and linguistic power behind these blessings and curses? Many theologians would agree that God can and does bless, but does God also curse? If so, what does that mean to the biblical theology of the Old Testament and the Christian church? Anderson's The Blessing and the Curse applies speech act theory as one way to understand the performative function of blessings and curses. The concept of speech acts provides a method of recognizing the potent social power of language to accomplish certain ends, without drawing a hard line of distinction between word-magic and religion. Even though the chief concepts and practices of blessings and curses are deeply rooted in the broad cultural environment of the ancient Near East, tracing specific trajectories of Old Testament blessings and curses as theological themes conveys broad, inescapable implications for the biblical narrative and the Christian church.