"The Holy Family is the beginning of countless other holy families." - Pope John Paul II.There is a beautiful tradition in the Church that St. Joseph lived on the Earth with Jesus and Mary for thirty years. Thirty years to adore the face of Our Lord and Savior, thirty years to contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation, and thirty years to be a true father. Joseph experienced a life that no man in history can parallel. Joseph knew Jesus and Mary intimately. Not only that, in many mysterious ways, he led them. Join St. Joseph for this 30-day journey and you will discover how to become a man after God's own heart!

“This book is . . . my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord.’” –Benedict XVI In this bold, momentous work, the Pope––in his first book written as Benedict XVI––seeks to salvage the person of Jesus from recent “popular” depictions and to restore Jesus’ true identity as discovered in the Gospels. Through his brilliance as a theologian and his personal conviction as a believer, the Pope shares a rich, compelling, flesh-and-blood portrait of Jesus and incites us to encounter, face-to-face, the central figure of the Christian faith. From Jesus of Nazareth: “. . . the great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: But what has Jesus really brought, then, if he has not brought world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God! He has brought the God who once gradually unveiled his countenance first to Abraham, then to Moses and the prophets, and then in the wisdom literature–the God who showed his face only in Israel, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the true God, whom he has brought to the peoples of the earth. He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about where we are going and where we come from: faith, hope, and love.”

Building on the work of biblical scholars—Rudolph Bultmann, Raymond Brown, Jane Schaberg, and Robert Funk, among others—filmmaker Paul Verhoeven disrobes the mythical Jesus to reveal a man who has much in common with other great political leaders throughout history—human beings who believed that change was coming in their lifetimes. Gone is the Jesus of the miracles, gone the son of God, gone the weaver of arcane parables whose meanings are obscure. In their place Verhoeven gives us his vision of Jesus as a complete man, someone who was changed by events, the leader of a political movement, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who, in his speeches and sayings, introduced a new ethic in which the embrace of human contradictions transcends the mechanics of value and worth that had defined the material world before Jesus. "The Romans saw [Jesus] as an insurrectionist, what today is often called a terrorist. It is very likely there were ‘wanted’ posters of him on the gates of Jerusalem. He was dangerous because he was proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven, but this wasn’t the Kingdom of Heaven as we think of it now, some spectral thing in the future, up in the sky. For Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven was a very tangible thing. Something that was already present on Earth, in the same way that Che Guevara proclaimed Marxism as the advent of world change. If you were totalitarian rulers, running an occupation like the Romans, this was troubling talk, and that was why Jesus was killed." —Paul Verhoeven, from profile by Mark Jacobson in New York Magazine

Be enriched by the understanding of Mary as a Jewish woman and nourished by the Magnificat in a new edition of this classic of woman's spirituality.

Saint Joseph passes through the Gospel without our hearing him utter as much as a single word. But God had selected him for a special mission: to look after two of the greatest treasures who have ever been on earth -- Jesus and Mary. And Joseph has a personality of uncommon richness. The figure of Joseph is also an incentive God has given us to stir up hope in the ordinary person. This book consists of a series of reflections on the life of Saint Joseph in the light of faith and based on revelation. At the end the reader's love for and devotion to this great saint will have grown considerably. For Joseph, the last of the patriarchs, shows how any one of us can come to be a great saint.

In 1740, Moravian immigrants made their first permanent American settlement in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Nazareth was closed to residents outside of the Moravian faith. In 1856, the town opened to non-Moravians, who were then allowed to own property and live and work in the town. Early industries, including textiles, cement production, and agriculture, attracted immigrants and expanded the town's diversity from a predominately German origin to include a sizeable Italian and Polish population. During the 20th century, many of these businesses continued, including the world-renowned C.F. Martin Guitar Company, which has been family owned and operated since 1833. By mid-century, at least three large cement companies surrounded the Nazareth borough area and employed hundreds of laborers. Nazareth was also home to the Nazareth Speedway, a one-mile tri-oval paved track of Indy and United States Auto Club (USAC) racing fame, and is home to racing champions Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, and third-generation driver Marco Andretti.