August Publishers Newsletter
Posted by ida decesaris on
AUGUST 2024
Dear Friend,
As the Catholic Church continues to move forward on the synodal path, we remember the role of the Second Vatican Council in recovering the synodal tradition and propelling it forward in the life of the church. That is the subject of Cardinal Robert McElroy’s contribution to a new book, Vatican II at 60: Re-Energizing the Renewal, edited by Catherine E. Clifford with Stephen Lampe. In his Preface to the volume, Cardinal Blaise Cupich welcomes the invitation to return again to the documents of Vatican II, “not only for their message but also for their dynamism, realizing that they are the tradition of a living church that needs their message and dynamism as much today as it did in 1965.”
As believers we take many paths and encounter the holy everywhere. In Touched by this Place: Theology, Community, and the Power of Place, Benjamín Valentín, a young professor at Boston College, offers a theological meditation on the meaning of “place” with specific reference to his own starting point as a diasporic Puerto Rican in Spanish Harlem. As Catherine Keller notes, he “gathers the dimensions, the populations, the urgencies of our living material locatedness into something much richer than ‘context’---into the displaced relationality of place itself.”
As many of you know, Joyce Rupp is one of the most popular spiritual authors today. In her new book, Vessels of Love: Poems and Prayers for the Later Years of Life, she writes not from a geographical “place” but from a stage of life She reflects on these “elderhood years” as an occasion to take stock of a “Presence of immeasurable love” that “has been flowing through our lives, quietly filling the vessel of our inner being. . . Now is the efficacious time to tend ‘our tiny vessel’ so this graced goodness strengthens in us and benefits the life of those we encounter.”
As summer gives way to fall, be sure to review the Orbis Fall 2024 catalog and also check our online Summer Sale featuring deep discounts on selected recent titles, bestsellers, and classics.
And in the changing of seasons, note this counsel from Joyce Rupp:
“Tend to what is at hand / approach the not-yet firmly / yet lightly, / a whisper in the heart / amid days of fragmentation.
Keep the not-yet close by, / a companion when life feels gray. / Watch it closely, / but do not latch on to it / until the future reaches for your hand.”
Peace,
