Many of us fail to recognize that obtaining the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to getting to heaven. We often block their reception through our own faults. We fail to see how they are passed on or strengthened in the sacraments. And, sadly, we forget to petition God in prayer to bestow these gifts upon us. In these pages, Dr. Kevin Vost — best-selling author of The One-Minute Aquinas — provides us with a substantive yet readable introduction to the seven gifts and how we can humbly submit our wills to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. As Dr. Vost explains, these God-given gifts help us to conform our lives to His image, intellect and will. They prevent us from being drawn into frustration – and possibly self-destruction – by following our own sensual appetites. Indeed, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are the only path to being fully happy on earth and in the life to come. With St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure as his guides, Dr. Vost introduces you to the special charism of the Holy Spirit before explaining each gift one by one. You’ll discover the special meaning behind each of the natural and theological virtues, and you’ll learn the indispensible link between the seven gifts and the Beatitudes. You’ll also learn: How the seven gifts differ from the fruits of the Holy Spirit.The three ways to perfect fear of the Lord.The one sacrament that helps you fortify fortitude – it’s not the one you think.How the gift of knowledge differs from the gift of understanding.The seven steps to unwrapping – and sharing – each of the Holy Spirit’s gifts.The greatest of the seven gifts – and why you must possess it to attain heaven.Are the seven gifts habits we must develop, or does the Holy Spirit instill the habits in us? Don’t let another year go by without unwrapping and enjoying the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Read this book, and then accept the seven gifts the Holy Spirit so desperately wants to give you.

Bishop Serratelli's words help you appreciate more fully how the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit can help you live a truly authentic Christian Life.

All Men and Both Sexes explores the use of such universal terms as &"people,&" &"man,&" or &"human&" in early modern England, from the civil war through the Enlightenment. Such language falsely implies inclusion of both men and women when actually it excludes women. Recent scholarship has focused on the Rights of Man doctrine from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution as explanation for women&’s exclusion from citizenship. According to Hilda Smith we need to go back further, to the English Revolution and the more grounded (but equally restricted) values tied to the &"free born Englishman.&" Citing educational treatises, advice literature to young people, guild records, popular periodicals, and parliamentary debates, she demonstrates how the &"male maturation process&" came to define the qualities attached to citizenship and responsible adulthood, which in turn became the basis for modern individualism and liberalism. By the eighteenth century a new discourse of sensibility was describing women as dependent beings outside the state, in a separate sphere and in need of protection. This excluded women from reform debates, forcing them to seek not an extension of a democratic franchise but a specific women&’s suffrage focused on gender difference.

By taking account of the ways in which early modern women made use of formal and generic structures to constitute themselves in writing, the essays collected here interrogate the discursive contours of gendered identity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The contributors explore how generic choice, mixture, and revision influence narrative constructions of the female self in early modern England. Collectively they situate women's life writings within the broader textual culture of early modern England while maintaining a focus on the particular rhetorical devices and narrative structures that comprise individual texts. Reconsidering women's life writing in light of recent critical trends-most notably historical formalism-this volume produces both new readings of early modern texts (such as Margaret Cavendish's autobiography and the diary of Anne Clifford) and a new understanding of the complex relationships between literary forms and early modern women's 'selves'. This volume engages with new critical methods to make innovative connections between canonical and non-canonical writing; in so doing, it helps to shape the future of scholarship on early modern women.