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Little Rock Catholic Study Bible

Open the Little Rock Catholic Study Bible and feel at home with the Word of God. Through accessibly written information and engaging visuals that highlight and clarify significant areas of Scripture, readers will easily gain an understanding of these ancient texts that can be carried into today's world. Using the authorized translation in the New American Bible Revised Edition, this lasting volume is ideal for both personal use and group Bible study. The valuable information in the Little Rock Catholic Study Bible is offered in small notes and inserts that accompany the Bible texts as well as in expanded essays, articles, and graphics. Key symbols help readers quickly identify the type of information they need, such as explanations, definitions, dates, character and author profiles, archaeological insights, personal prayer starters, and insights connecting Scripture and its use in today's church. Colorful maps, timelines, photographs, and charts further enhance the study experience. Longer articles are dedicated to explaining study Bible fundamentals, the Catholic Church's use of the Bible, and the people and places of the biblical world.

Little Steps, Big Faith: How The Science Of Early Childhood Development Can Help You Grow Your Child's Faith

From brain science to language development and social skills, we've never known more about how children's minds develop in the first five years of life. Yet with all the information available, Christian parents may find themselves confused about how to apply these learnings to daily life with their children. In Little Steps, Big Faith, early childhood expert Dr. Dawn Rundman navigates the research to arrive at surprising insights about how very young children experience God, and how parents can use science to teach faith.

Little Strength, Big God: Discover a God Greater than Your Goliaths

Discover timeless truths to slay your giants. Like the faithful in Hebrews 11, you can become mighty in battle.Loss and intimidation are not new to God's people. What if you had to choose between--- Drowning your baby or letting your worst enemy raise him?- Bowing before an idol or being thrown into a fiery furnace?- Compromising your convictions or being tossed to the lions?- Living in fear or leading ill-equipped volunteers against an intimidating enemy?The believers who faced these decisions felt their limitations. Yet they found strength in the Lord. You can too. Using the men and women highlighted in the last half of Hebrews 11, Little Strength, Big God will help you turn your weaknesses into strengths to accomplish God's purpose in your life. When trouble attacks, you don't need a bigger God--you need clearer vision. Discover the transforming power of a God greater than your Goliaths and live strong now.

Little Talks with God (Paraclete Essentials)

"Eternal greatness! You made yourself low and small to make mankind great." While in an ecstatic trance, St. Catherine of Siena dictated The Dialogue. In this intense and searching work, she offers up petitions to God, filling her conversation with instruction on discernment, true and false spiritual emotion, obedience and truth, and revealing her famous image of Christ as the Bridge. Catherine's brilliant insights into the nature of the spiritual life have motivated Christians for centuries to unite a life of prayer with a life of action. "This have I told you, my sweetest daughter, that you might know the perfection of this union-producing state, when the eye of the intellect is ravished by the fire of my charity, in which it receives supernatural light. With this light the souls in the state of union love me, because love follows the intellect, and the more it knows the more it can love." (from the book)

Little Theologians: Children, Culture, and the Making of Theological Meaning

Children don't just learn theology. They actively create it, playing with ideas and drawing together aspects of their own lives to form theological understanding. David Csinos offers a groundbreaking exploration of how cultural contexts intersect with the theological meaning-making of children.

Little White Lies (Holly's Heart #10)

Book 10 of HOLLY'S HEART. Holly and Andie are headed to California, when Andie falls for an older boy. Holly wants to tell someone, but stretching the truth causes major problems and soon they're in a situation only God can make right.

Littluns and the Book of Darkness

For All Seasons and All Reasons. Littluns are mythical little people (little one's) only about three-feet in height, but more importantly representative of God's perfect creation; what He intended for us all on Earth as it is in Heaven. Their secret homeland is paradise found (and kept) with peace and prosperity the norm and not the exception. On what should be a pleasant Scavenger Hunt outing, five "Littluns" journey down from their secret mountaintop homeland, only to find themselves trapped within the darkness that is consuming the land below, spreading terror, destruction and extermination in its path. Five Littluns sacrifice everything in this most crucial journey and adventure of a lifetime. After the sky had fallen onto the land below, and eventually Satan being incarcerated to a bottomless pit, the world enjoyed peace for a thousand years. Soon afterward the beast was released once again. To now complete his purpose while entering the realm of the living, along with the necessity of possessing the body of a human host, it becomes necessary for the Evil One to place most of his more dark powers into his newly created Book of Darkness because no living-being could possess those evil words and survive. But through a twist of fate, his book becomes lost and now to fulfill his mission he must have his book back at all costs. A multi-award winning family friendly book including two "Mom's Choice" awards, Littluns: And the Book of Darkness" is perfect for readers of all ages looking for a very different reading experience. It's a one-of-a-kind adventure depicting true friendships; full of valued choices between right and wrong, good or evil, God's light in contrast to Satan's darkness. For the "Young Adult" and grown-up Christian and secular reader, Littluns are an ageless example of courage under the worst possible conditions and what it means to love and be loved under God.

Liturgical Dogmatics: How Catholic Beliefs Flow from Liturgical Prayer

God is indescribable: "not-able-to-be-written-down". How can we do dogmatics when there is an absolute difference between the Creator and the creature? How dare we say anything about God without his permission? God is incomprehensible, but he is not unapproachable. He gives access to himself in the liturgy he has given us. There, what dogma stammers to state, liturgy celebrates in mystical participation; what knowledge cannot fasten together, love unites. Liturgical Dogmatics examines dogma in light of liturgy. It is not a theology of liturgy, because it does not look at liturgy; rather, it looks through liturgy to see the whole sweeping saving activity of God, which dogma describes. Through this lens, the author illuminates thirty-six classic dogmas in a readable and sometimes imaginative way. He shows that while dogma protects the mystery of divine love from heretical corruption, its final goal is achieved when the believer is united to that mystery in liturgical worship.

Liturgical Language: Keeping It Metaphoric, Making It Inclusive

Through a review of the history of language, Ramshaw illustrates the difficulties of forming texts from words that have undergone numerous translations and whose primary meanings have also changed throughout the centuries. Her discussion of symbolic imagery and theological language illustrates how essential it is that words be evaluated and chosen with understanding and care.

Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Life of the World

Modern missional movements have often viewed the historic Christian traditions with suspicion.Liturgical Mission

Liturgical Power: Between Economic and Political Theology (Commonalities)

Is Christianity exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or do its concepts actually underpin secular politics? To this question, which animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology, Liturgical Power advances a third alternative. Christian anti-politics, Heron contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, he argues, assumes the form of what today we call “administration,” but which the ancients termed “economics.” The book’s principal aim is thus genealogical: it seeks to understand our current conception of government in light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity.This transformation in the idea of politics precipitates in turn a concurrent shift in the organization of power; an organization whose determining principle, Heron contends, is liturgy—understood in the broad sense as “public service.” Whereas until now only liturgy’s acclamatory dimension has made the concept available for political theory, Heron positions it more broadly as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, he argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service.

Liturgical Space: Christian Worship and Church Buildings in Western Europe 1500-2000 (Liturgy, Worship and Society Series)

This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the internal arrangement of church buildings in Western Europe between 1500 and 2000, showing how these arrangements have met the liturgical needs of their respective denominations, Catholic and Protestant, over this period. In addition to a chapter looking at the general impact of the Reformation on church buildings, there are separate chapters on the churches of the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions between the mid-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and on the ecclesiological movement of the nineteenth century and the liturgical movement of the twentieth century, both of which have impacted on all the churches of Western Europe over the past 150 years. The book is extensively illustrated with figures in the text and a series of plates and also contains comprehensive guides to both further reading and buildings to visit throughout Western Europe.

Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur (Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought)

While only rarely reflecting explicitly on liturgy, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) gave sustained attention to several themes pertinent to the interpretation of worship, including metaphor, narrative, subjectivity, and memory. Inspired by his well-known aphorism, “The symbol gives rise to thought,” Liturgical Theology after Schmemann offers an original exploration of the symbolic world of the Byzantine Rite , culminating in a Ricoeurian analysis of its Theophany “Great Blessing of Water.” . The book examines two fundamental questions: 1) what are the implications of the philosopher’s oeuvre for liturgical theology at large? And 2)how does the adoption of a Ricoeurian hermeneutic shape the study of a particular rite? Taking the seminal legacy of Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) as its point of departure, Butcher contributes to the renewal of contemporary Eastern Christian thought and ritual practice by engaging a spectrum of current theological and philosophical conversations.

Liturgies for Hope: Sixty Prayers for the Highs, the Lows, and Everything in Between

Sixty contemporary, comforting liturgies that break through the noise of modern life to offer time-tested wisdom for readers navigating burnout, anxiety, and other stresses.&“Beautiful words to help us access the longings of our souls and bring them to God. If you&’re looking for a jumpstart to your spiritual life, start here.&”—Rich Villodas, lead pastor of New Life Fellowship and author of Good and Beautiful and KindRemind us, Jesus, that You lay sleeping in the boat, in the middle of the storm at sea. You are neither surprised nor distressed by the mounting chaos. You are not a God who panics.When writers Audrey Elledge and Elizabeth Moore were inspired to create an anchor of hope for their own local community, they moved forward by turning to the past, to a time when Christians looked at the collapsing world around them and resolved to offer something beautiful—something true—through poetic prayers. The stunning result is Liturgies for Hope, an original collection of modern liturgies reminiscent of past generations of faith. Designed to awaken your prayer life, the entries in this gentle guide explore experiences such as• feeling burned-out and soul-weary• embracing the mystery of faith• receiving the kindness of others• struggling with secret shame• bursting with thanksgivingWith Scripture references for every prayer, Liturgies for Hope is both timeless and ideal for this moment, offering words to express our longings, shore up our prayers, and reorient our souls.

Liturgies for Wholeness: 60 Prayers to Encounter the Depth, Creativity, and Friendship of God in Ordinary Moments

Sixty modern and inspiring liturgies that offer compassionate insight to nurture your soul, from the bestselling authors of Liturgies for Hope.&“A voice of reassurance and a much needed reminder of the hope we have.&”—Joshua Luke Smith, performing artist, pastor, and authorWhat if my current life is preparing me for something I can&’t see? Oh God, when I feel overlooked and forgotten,when I ache to be important,redirect my heart to You who remembers me. When your spirit is restless and you can&’t find the words, these modern-day liturgies help you articulate your brokenness to the God who calls you beloved.The lyrical prayers in Liturgies for Wholeness name our longings—the ache for physical rest, the grief over something we never had, the desire for healing in a relationship—even as they call us to notice the blessing of washing our face and watching nightfall and sink deep into an awareness of God&’s presence.Divided into eight sections—including Mind, Senses, Body, Home, and Community—these liturgies can be read communally or individually to bring you into greater intimacy with God. Each prayer includes related Scripture references to offer you further opportunity for meditation and reflection.With each liturgy in Liturgies for Wholeness, may you sense God&’s deep desire for you and may you delight in the only One who can make you whole.

Liturgies from Below: Praying with People at the End of the World

It’s been said that prayer is the vocabulary of faith. This book offers a wealth of resources from forgotten places to help us create a new vocabulary for worship and prayer, one that is located amidst the poor and the major issues of violence and destruction around the world today. It is a collection of prayers, songs, rituals, rites of healing, Eucharistic and baptismal prayers, meditations and art from four continents: Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and Europe. Liturgies from Below is the culmination of a project organized by the Council for World Mission (CWM) during 2018-2019. Approximately 100 people from four continents worked with CWM, collaborating to create indigenous prayers and liturgies expressing their own contexts, for sharing with their communities and the rest of the world. The project was called “Re-Imagining Worship as Acts of Defiance and Alternatives in the Context of Empire”. The author and others spent weeks living in each of four communities for several weeks/months, getting to know the people, and then facilitating the people’s own creation of prayers and liturgies. The author, other scholars, pastors, artists, activists and students all came from radically different ethnicities, races, sexualities, churches and Christian theologies. The people in each location were poor, living in very challenging communities, living in oppressive and seemingly hopeless situations. After some time, they wrote prayers and stories of their experience trying to live the Christian faith in utterly abandoned places. What we have here is an immensely rich and varied collection of liturgical sources from various communities dealing with issues of violence, immigration/refugees, drugs, land grabbing, war on the poor, attack on women, militarization, climate change, and so on.

Liturgy Wars: Ritual Theory and Protestant Reform in Nineteenth-Century Zurich (Religion in History, Society and Culture #Vol. 4)

The nineteenth century was a period of intense religious conflict across Europe, as people confronted the major changes brought by modernity. In Zurich, one phase of this religious conflict was played out in a struggle over revisions to the ritual of baptism. In its analysis of the Zurich conflict, Liturgy Wars offers a strategy for understanding the links between theology, ritual, and socio-politics. Theodore M. Vial offers a new perspective on contemporary ritual studies - and critiques the cognivist approaches of Lawson and McCauley, as well as Catherine Bell's analysis of power and the body - by reintergrating the imporatance of speech acts into considerations of ritual.

Liturgy and Architecture: From the Early Church to the Middle Ages (Liturgy, Worship and Society Series)

In this book Allan Doig explores the interrelationship of liturgy and architecture from the Early Church to the close of the Middle Ages, taking into account social, economic, technical, theological and artistic factors. These are crucial to a proper understanding of ecclesiastical architecture of all periods, and together their study illuminates the study of liturgy. Buildings and their archaeology are standing indices of human activity, and the whole matrix of meaning they present is highly revealing of the larger meaning of ritual performance within, and movement through, their space. The excavation of the mid-third-century church at Dura Europos in the Syrian desert, the grandeur of Constantine's Imperial basilicas, the influence of the great pilgrimage sites, and the marvels of soaring Gothic cathedrals, all come alive in a new way when the space is animated by the liturgy for which they were built. Reviewing the most recent research in the area, and moving the debate forward, this study will be useful to liturgists, clergy, theologians, art and architectural historians, and those interested in the conservation of ecclesiastical structures built for the liturgy.

Liturgy and Society in Early Medieval Rome (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West)

The liturgy, the public worship of the Catholic Church, was a crucial factor in forging the society of early medieval Rome. As the Roman Empire dissolved, a new world emerged as Christian bishops stepped into the power vacuum left by the dismantling of the Empire. Among these potentates, none was more important than the bishop of Rome, the pope. The documents, archaeology, and architecture that issued forth from papal Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries preserve a precious glimpse into novel societal patterns. The underexploited liturgical sources in particular enrich and complicate our historical understanding of this period. They show how liturgy was the ’social glue’ that held together the Christian society of early medieval Rome - and excluded those who did not belong to it. This study places the liturgy center stage, filling a gap in research on early medieval Rome and demonstrating the utility of investigating how the liturgy functioned in medieval Europe. It includes a detailed analysis of the papal Mass, the central act of liturgy and the most obvious example of the close interaction of liturgy, social relations and power. The first extant Mass liturgy, the First Roman Ordo, is also given a new presentation in Latin here with an English translation and commentary. Other grand liturgical events such as penitential processions are also examined, as well as more mundane acts of worship. Far from a pious business with limited influence, the liturgy established an exchange between humans and the divine that oriented Roman society to God and fostered the dominance of the clergy.

Liturgy and the Beauty of the Unknown: Another Place

Contemporary culture is rediscovering the importance of beauty for both social transformation and personal happiness. Theologians have sought, in their varied ways, to demonstrate how God's beauty is associated with notions of truth and goodness. This book breaks new ground by suggesting that liturgy is the means par excellence by which an experience of beauty is communicated. Drawing from both secular and religious understandings, in particular the mystical and apophatic tradition, the book demonstrates how liturgy has the potential to achieve the one ultimately reliable form of beauty because its embodied components are able to reflect the disturbing beauty of the One to whom worship is always offered. Such components rely on understanding the aesthetic dynamics upon which liturgy relies. This book draws from a broad range of disciplines concerned with understanding beauty and self-transformation and concludes that while secular utopian forms have much to contribute to ethical transformation, they ultimately fail since they lack the Christological and eschatological framework needed, which liturgy alone provides.

Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium: Compunction and Hymnody

This book explores the liturgical experience of emotions in Byzantium through the hymns of Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete and Kassia. It reimagines the performance of their hymns during Great Lent and Holy Week in Constantinople. In doing so, it understands compunction as a liturgical emotion, intertwined with paradisal nostalgia, a desire for repentance and a wellspring of tears. For the faithful, liturgical emotions were embodied experiences that were enacted through sacred song and mystagogy. The three hymnographers chosen for this study span a period of nearly four centuries and had an important connection to Constantinople, which forms the topographical and liturgical nexus of the study. Their work also covers three distinct genres of hymnography: kontakion, kanon and sticheron idiomelon. Through these lenses of period, place and genre this study examines the affective performativity hymns and the Byzantine experience of compunction.

Liturgy in Postcolonial Perspectives

This book brings Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars from different fields of knowledge and many places across the globe to introduce/expand the dialogue between the field of liturgy and postcolonial/decolonial thinking. Connecting main themes in both fields, this book shows what is at stake in this dialectical scholarship.

Liturgy in the Age of Reason: Worship and Sacraments in England and Scotland 1662–c.1800

Worship has always been affected by its surrounding culture. This book examines the changing perspectives in and discussions on worship styles and practices from the Restoration to the death of Wesley, in England and Scotland. Moving beyond the text, Spinks grounds the discussion within the changing cultural and intellectual framework of the period referred to as the Enlightenment. The focus is the end of the early modern period, when already the upheaval of the English Civil War, the methods of the Cambridge Platonists, and the thinking of Descartes and Spinoza were making the period one of transition, and Newtonian thought and the thought of John Locke impacted theological thought and worship forms. It is against this framework that the worship in England and Scotland will be described and assessed. As well as published and unpublished liturgical documents, this book draws on contemporary accounts and descriptions of worship, catechisms, sermons and theological works, and contemporary diaries. Musical and architectural changes are also noted, particularly the late seventeenth century hymns of Richard Davies of Rothwell, Joseph Stennett and Benjamin Keach. This book places worship in the society which it served, and from which changes sprang. It explores the interaction of cultural thought and worship, drawing parallels between the Enlightenment period and problems of late modernity and the worship wars of the late twentieth century.

Liturgy in the Wilderness: How The Lord's Prayer Shapes The Imagination Of The Church In A Secular Age

Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord's Prayer Shapes the Imagination of the Church in a Secular Age

What you pray . . . shapes what you believe . . . shapes how you live. The Lord&’s Prayer is a beautiful, subversive passage of words given to the church by Jesus. It forms our imaginations and—given time—transforms us. And today, we are in desperate need of renewed imaginations. Christians are living in a wilderness of secularism. The historic Christian faith is seen as absurd at best and dangerously oppressive at worst. Followers of Jesus must begin to imagine life as a faithful minority who are ever seeking to subvert what is evil with good, what is hateful with love, what is corrosive with nurture.In Liturgy in the Wilderness, Anglican priest D. J. Marotta shows how the Lord&’s Prayer provides a framework in our secular age for understanding, believing, and living in light of Jesus Christ. When we pray the Lord&’s Prayer, we&’re planting seeds that can split concrete. We&’re dripping water that can wear away granite. We&’re shifting spiritual tectonic plates that lie deep beneath culture, society, and the depths of our own hearts. When we pray the Lord&’s Prayer, our imaginations are stirred, moved, and transformed. We&’re taken apart and put back together. We&’re stripped of our idols, addictions, and false hopes. We&’re offered new words of trust and mission. And we begin to see the world differently—the way Jesus saw it.With this book, Marotta awakens our hearts to the beauty, sustaining power, and bounty of the Lord&’s Prayer and shows us how to live faithfully in the wilderness.