Addresses the current exodus of Christians from evangelical churches and argues for a return to historical roots.

Pastor Harris Kakoulides writes about the importance of the Lord's supper being taken every Sunday

Recent scholarship on the historical Jesus has rightly focused upon how Jesus understood his own mission. But no scholarly effort to understand the mission of Jesus can rest content without exploring the historical possibility that Jesus envisioned his own death. In this careful and far-reaching study, Scot McKnight contends that Jesus did in fact anticipate his own death, that Jesus understood his death as an atoning sacrifice, and that his death as an atoning sacrifice stood at the heart of Jesus' own mission to protect his own followers from the judgment of God.

As the number of available priests has declined, the Sunday Mass is becoming less and less available in some parishes and dioceses. Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest addresses this growing reality by providing the appropriate ritual to be used in the celebrating community. This revised ritual edition of Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest is fully bilingual, with Spanish and English printed side by side. It includes Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and two appendices, Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest and Gathered in Steadfast Faith. This beautifully bound ritual book includes three ribbons and is printed in two colors. It will be a welcome addition to the sacristy or library of every parish, school, convent, and religious house.

How great the differences between the Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and a pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's in Rome! And also, between the early baptisms by immersion described in the Acts of the Apostles and the baptisms of newborns in our parishes today. Why such a change in the celebration of the Christian mystery? Why the recent reforms, often misunderstood? In History of the Liturgy, Marcel Metzger answers such questions and offers an understanding of this evolution through a carefully documented historical survey. The essential forms of the liturgy were fixed very early according to the tradition received from the apostles. But the place given to biblical readings, teaching, singing, and ritual has varied in the course of the centuries. In History of the Liturgy, Metzger describes the most important phases of these changes. In describing the first millennium, he focuses on liturgy's essentials common to the Eastern and Western Churches. In describing the second millennium, he explains the deviations of the Western Churches which called for the effort of reform and renewal begun by Vatican II. Metzger studies the development of the liturgical institutions and distinguishes liturgy's five main stages that correspond to the situations of the Churches in ancient, medieval, and modern societies. He begins by focusing on the apostolic period, roughly the first century of our era, until the death of the apostles. He follows by studying the period of minorities and semi-clan destiny until the beginning of the fourth century. He then focuses on the Peace of the Church," which grants public status to the churches in the Empire, fosters their growth, and organizes the collaboration between Empire and Church. The work concludes by studying the stability, rigidity, renewals, and reforms of the Roman liturgy, from the end of the Middle Ages to Vatican II. This clear and accurate survey of the history of liturgy is designed to awaken readers' interest, on a solid yet introductory level, in the realities that have made and still make up the Church's liturgical life: assemblies, Eucharist, baptism, reconciliation, dally praise, the Church's calendar, and its architecture. In History of the Liturgy, Metzger stresses that if history is the teacher of life, the eyes of Christian faith allow us to recognize in it as well the mysterious presence of God, who, through the Spirit, guides his people. And this happens, above all, in the liturgy. "

For hundreds of years, we thought we knew what happened during Jesus' last days. Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are not only observed by Christians around the world, but are also recognized in calendars and by non-practitioners as commemorating the true timeline of events in the life of Christ. But apparent inconsistencies in the gospel accounts of Jesus' final week have puzzled Bible scholars for centuries. In The Mystery of the Last Supper, Colin Humphreys uses science to reveal the truth about Jesus' final days. Reconciling conflicting Gospel accounts and scientific evidence, Humphreys reveals the exact date of the Last Supper in a definitive new timeline of Holy Week.

Examines Hebrews' exposition of Jesus' death, his self-offering in heaven at his ascension, and the link between them.