Fr. Alfred Delp,S.J., was a heroic German Jesuit priest who was imprisoned and martyred by the Nazis in a Nazi death camp in 1945. At the time of his arrest, he was the Rector of St. Georg Church in Munich, and had a reputation for being a gripping, dynamic preacher, and one who was an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime. He was an important figure in the Resistance movement against Nazism. Accused of conspiring against the Nazi government, he was arrested in 1944, tortured, imprisoned, and executed on Feb 2, 1945. While in prison, Fr. Delp was able to write a few meditations found in this book, which also includes his powerful reflections from prison during the Advent season about the profound spiritual meaning and lessons of Advent, as well as his sermons he gave on the season of Advent at his parish in Munich. These meditations were smuggled out of Berlin and read by friends and parishioners of St. Georg in Munich. His approach to Advent, the season that prepares us for Christmas, is what Fr. Delp called an "Advent of the heart." More than just preparing us for Christmas, it is a spiritual program, a way of life. He proclaimed that our personal, social and historical circumstances, even suffering, offer us entry into the true Advent, our personal journey toward a meeting and dialogue with God. Indeed, his own life, and great sufferings, illustrated the true Advent he preached and wrote about. From his very prison cell he presented a timeless spiritual message, and in an extreme situation, his deep faith gave him the courage to draw closer to God, and to witness to the truth even at the cost of his own life. These meditations will challenge and inspire all Christians to embark upon that same spiritual journey toward union with God, a journey that will transform our lives. ?As one of the last witnesses who knew Fr. Alfred Delp personally, I am very pleased this book will make him better known in America. The more one reads his writings, the more one clearly recognizes the prophetic message for our times! Like his contemporary, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Delp ranks among the great prophets who endured the horror of Nazism and handed down a powerful message for our times.? Karl Kreuser, S.J., from the Foreword

Based on beautiful seasonal hymns, Crafton's daily meditations on faith, prayer, forgiveness, and healing for Advent and Christmas make an excellent companion for the season. For centuries the words and poetry of our hymns have spoken deeply to us. Many people, in fact, find that what is heard in poetry and music sinks deeper into the soul than does ordinary prose. And so it is to the beautiful seasonal hymns that Barbara Cawthorne Crafton turns for inspiration for daily meditations during the great devotional seasons of the church year: Advent/Christmas.

Rediscover the gift of Advent that comes without packages, ribbons, and bows. We don’t know why the Grinch hated Christmas. We just know he did. In this new Advent study, Matt Rawle explores the faith themes in the Christmas classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! including, how did the Grinch’s heart grow three sizes come Christmas morning? How did Christmas save the Grinch? Could it be that the very thing we think we hate is the one thing that changes our lives? This Advent and Christmas season, look at a familiar classic through the lens of faith and see how Christ speaks to us through our culture. Additional components for a four-week Advent study include a DVD featuring Matt Rawle, a comprehensive Leader Guide, and resources for children and youth.

This is the first in a series of three books based on the liturgical year. In this memoir about winters on her family's farm, Tickle offers glimpses of rural family life while exploring the mysteries of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. Advertising.

The bestselling author of Intern and Doctored tells the story of the thing that makes us tick For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in Heart: A History, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that have changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between key historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little-known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ. He introduces us to Daniel Hale Williams, the African American doctor who performed the world’s first open heart surgery in Gilded Age Chicago. We meet C. Walton Lillehei, who connected a patient’s circulatory system to a healthy donor’s, paving the way for the heart-lung machine. And we encounter Wilson Greatbatch, who saved millions by inventing the pacemaker—by accident. Jauhar deftly braids these tales of discovery, hubris, and sorrow with moving accounts of his family’s history of heart ailments and the patients he’s treated over many years. He also confronts the limits of medical technology, arguing that future progress will depend more on how we choose to live than on the devices we invent. Affecting, engaging, and beautifully written, Heart: A History takes the full measure of the only organ that can move itself.

An eminent scholar unearths the captivating history of the two-lobed heart symbol from scripture and tapestry to T-shirts and text messages, shedding light on how we have expressed love since antiquity The symmetrical, exuberant heart is everywhere: it gives shape to candy, pendants, the frothy milk on top of a cappuccino, and much else. How can we explain the ubiquity of what might be the most recognizable symbol in the world? In The Amorous Heart, Marilyn Yalom tracks the heart metaphor and heart iconography across two thousand years, through Christian theology, pagan love poetry, medieval painting, Shakespearean drama, Enlightenment science, and into the present. She argues that the symbol reveals a tension between love as romantic and sexual on the one hand, and as religious and spiritual on the other. Ultimately, the heart symbol is a guide to the astonishing variety of human affections, from the erotic to the chaste and from the unrequited to the conjugal.

a daily devotional for the Advent season; Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room walks the reader through several key elements of opening one's heart to God; for a sample of the first part of the book, go to desertdirection.com.