This volume of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner on Ecclesiology and the Franciscan Charism contains some of the most practical of all of Fehlner’s writings. This volume is divided into three parts. In the first, we are treated to Fehlner’s first reflections on ecclesiology in the wake of Vatican II and his own earlier research into Bonaventure’s ecclesiology and Duns Scotus’s teachings on grace and personhood. To Fehlner, these studies, along with his Tractatus de gratia and teaching notes on the mission of the Holy Spirit, all from the 1960s, contain the rationes seminales of the entirety of his later thought. In part two, we find writings mainly from the following two decades on the Conventual Franciscan charism, the ecclesiola, the church in microcosm. Here we can readily discern the radical effects of Fehlner’s encounter with Maximilian Kolbe and this volume’s close affinity with volume six of this series, on St. Maximilian Kolbe. In part three of this volume, comprising essays from the final fifteen years of his life, Fehlner brings his lifetime of prayerful contemplation and research directly to bear upon practical spirituality. In these essays, Fehlner’s spiritual testament, our author presents his Catholic and Franciscan charismatic vision of Christian life.

This volume of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner on Ecclesiology and the Franciscan Charism contains some of the most practical of all of Fehlner's writings. This volume is divided into three parts. In the first, we are treated to Fehlner's first reflections on ecclesiology in the wake of Vatican II and his own earlier research into Bonaventure's ecclesiology and Duns Scotus's teachings on grace and personhood. To Fehlner, these studies, along with his Tractatus de gratia and teaching notes on the mission of the Holy Spirit, all from the 1960s, contain the rationes seminales of the entirety of his later thought. In part two, we find writings mainly from the following two decades on the Conventual Franciscan charism, the ecclesiola, the church in microcosm. Here we can readily discern the radical effects of Fehlner's encounter with Maximilian Kolbe and this volume's close affinity with volume six of this series, on St. Maximilian Kolbe. In part three of this volume, comprising essays from the final fifteen years of his life, Fehlner brings his lifetime of prayerful contemplation and research directly to bear upon practical spirituality. In these essays, Fehlner's spiritual testament, our author presents his Catholic and Franciscan charismatic vision of Christian life.

This first volume of Collected Essays presents Peter Damian Fehlner’s later reflections on the unique role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the place of God’s eternal design for creation. These essays explore personhood, the divine missions, and ecclesiology. Framed within a Trinitarian vision and flowing out of fifty years of prayerful study of Scripture and the Tradition, Fehlner deepens and extends the wisdom of his Franciscan theological forebears, St. Bonaventure, Bl. John Duns Scotus, and St. Maximilian Kolbe, along with John Henry Newman, in Trinitarian theology, Christology, Mariology, and ecclesiology. This vision is particularly relevant in today’s theological and philosophical contexts, shedding light on the joint work of the Son and Holy Spirit as they constitute and build up the body of Christ through salvation history. The intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary in the Holy Spirit is clarified in these essays, unveiling the true face of the church as mother, teacher, and bride. Mary is exemplar and active associate with her Son as a member of his body. Within this volume, we discover our true nature and calling in Christ. Fehlner shows us how salvation history and metaphysical theology meet in the church, our mother, a true Marian Metaphysics.

In this third volume of Collected Essays, Peter Damian Fehlner traces the Franciscan Marian-ecclesiological vision and mission back to its sources in Francis and Clare of Assisi. Fehlner shows how the quintessentially Franciscan theological themes and their elaboration down the centuries find their roots in the Poverello, the “Man totally Catholic and Apostolic,” as well as in Clare, the “imprint of the Mother of God.” In thoroughly Trinitarian fashion, Fehlner unveils Francis’s understanding of Mary—type and exemplar, mother and member of the church—as the firstborn daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Mary is, therefore, primordially the Virgin-made-Church. Flowering out into the Franciscan theological tradition, this volume features two studies where Fehlner unpacks this Franciscan, Marian-ecclesiological tradition in systematic and mystical theology. Fehlner takes St. Francis Anthony Fasani, his Conventual predecessor, as his guide in the spiritual exegesis of Scripture and Catholic devotion, unveiling the ecclesiological and Marian implications of the Song of Songs. In systematics, Fehlner analyzes the love song of the Son for his church in his definitive study of Bonaventure’s understanding of charity and the divine missions in the church.

In this fourth volume of Collected Essays, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and the Franciscan Tradition, Peter Damian Fehlner traces the development of the Franciscan theologies of redemption, co-redemption, and the Immaculate Conception as they both flow from and return to a very concrete spirituality rooted in devotion to the persons of Jesus and Mary. The main protagonists in these studies are the towering figures of Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus. Framed within an ecclesiological and sacramental worldview, shaped by the correlative and markedly Franciscan doctrines of the Absolute Primacy of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception, Fehlner outlines the theological background and rationale for affirming Mary’s co-redemptive role in creation and salvation history. In articulating this great vision of the church, Fehlner discloses the Catholic and Franciscan understanding of Tradition and its progressive penetration and integration of doctrinal and devotional development into the life of the church. For Fehlner, Mary’s co-redemptive association with her Son and her union in charity with the Holy Spirit provides both the primary instance of and the hermeneutical key for prayerfully receiving and living the mysteries of our salvation.

Daniel Horan, O.F.M., popular author of Dating God and other books on Franciscan themes—and expert on the spirituality of Thomas Merton—masterfully presents the untold story of how the most popular saint in Christian history inspired the most popular spiritual writer of the twentieth century, and how together they can inspire a new generation of Christians. Millions of Christians and non-Christians look to Thomas Merton for spiritual wisdom and guidance, but to whom did Merton look? In The Franciscan Heart of Thomas Merton, Franciscan friar and author Daniel Horan shows how, both before and after he became a Trappist monk, Merton’s life was shaped by his love for St. Francis and for the Franciscan spiritual and intellectual tradition. Given recent renewed interest in St. Francis, this timely resource is both informative and practical, revealing a previously hidden side of Merton that will inspire a new generation of Christians to live richer, deeper, and more justice-minded lives of faith.

Volume six of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner, entitled simply, St. Maximilian Kolbe, gathers together Fehlner's essays on the great Conventual Franciscan saint and martyr. These works come mainly from the journal founded by Kolbe, Miles Immaculatae, and were composed in the 1980s when Fehlner was editor of said journal. Readers of this volume will note the close connection to the themes of ecclesiological renewal and the Conventual Franciscan charism treated in volume five, as Fehlner worked to integrate and synthesize Kolbe's Mariological and pneumatological insights in a context of ecclesial mission and evangelization. The essays in this volume form a mosaic of Kolbean theology and spirituality, mapping out the geography of Fehlner's own theological itinerary that will reach, in terms of scholarly output, its final destination in his posthumous Theologian of Auschwitz (2019). Themes addressed, among others, in this volume include Kolbe's understanding of the history and unity of the Franciscan Order, the Trinity in relation to Immaculate Conception, creation and evolution, consecration, Kolbe's vision for Niepokalanow, Kolbe and the contemporary magisterium, and Kolbe's relevance for a contemporary retrieval of Bonaventure's theology of history.