This book offers a reflective journey through life and scripture toward inner peace, acceptance, and a more fulfilling existence. It includes reflections, scripture passages, life-questions, and some practical ways of responding to them. This book can be used alone in quiet personal reflection or with others in-group situations. John A. Flanagan is a priest from Co. Monaghan serving the Diocese of Clogher. He is currently the Diocesan Advisor for Primary Religious Education in the diocese. ""Exemplifies the best of contemporary Irish Catholicism-simple, fluent, and direct. Ideal for the traditional Catholic reader in Ireland or America."" -Library Journal

Abu-al-Barakat published two versions of the list of seventy disciples sent out by Jesus. Anton Baumstark presents here the Arabic text, along with a critical Latin version, of Barakat’s list that was allegedly translated from a Greek original.

Abu-al-Barakat published two versions of the list of seventy disciples sent out by Jesus. Anton Baumstark presents here the Arabic text, along with a Latin translation, of Barakat’s list that was allegedly translated a non-Greek source.

Paul Vetter presents here a critical edition of the Armenian version of the Acts of Peter and Paul along with a Greek translation. Vetter’s introduction to the text includes a discussion of the complex transmission history evident in the manuscripts.

These eighteen stories pertaining to Anastasius of Mount Sinai include unique information and variations of stories preserved elsewhere. Nau presents the edited Greek text along with an introductory discussion of authorship and sources.

The Life of Abercius, which received much attention after the archaeological discovery of the “inscription of Abercius,” previously existed in two recensions. Élie Batareikh found a manuscript containing a third recension and publishes here the Greek text of that recension.

A constant theme running through the ten Céifin Conferences since 1998 has been changes in family life. A key question to emerge from the first conference was, Who is rearing the next generation? and that question has not gone away. The family now needs to be examined, not as an argument for or against anything, but in itself. What does it really mean to our society and what does it contribute to human, social and spiritual development? The economic miracle, 1994, 2007, brought undreamed-of affluence. We welcomed it. However, there is no doubt that relationships suffered, particularly in the area of family and community. We are currently experiencing the beginnings of a recession. Food and fuel prices are escalating; jobs are threatened. The family will once again be on the frontline of experiencing difficult economic changes, coming on the back of a period when it experienced significant social and religious changes. How resourceful are family units after a period of consumerism? This conference should enable delegates to broaden their awareness of the current state of family life and the changing nature of relationships between home, school, and work-place , placing particular emphasis on a new vision for the changing family.

Anton Baumstark presents the Arabic text and Latin translation of an Egyptian version of the Testamentum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi. Baumstark discusses the date of the text and compares the content of the liturgical prayers with various contemporary sources.

This Syriac version of the “Liturgy of St. Athanasius” provides a valuable resource for the development of liturgical materials and practices in the Syrian Monophysite tradition. The text includes a critical apparatus and a Latin translation.

François Nau collated various manuscripts containing stories about the holy fathers of Sinai and presents here the critical and annotated text. These stories offer otherwise unknown information about St. John Climacus and include useful historical and geographic details.

Marius Besson presents the critical text of two manuscripts containing an apophthegmatic text with sayings attributed to Isaac of Nineveh. The text also includes a separate apparatus with references to parallel texts in various early Christian documents.

The records of two provincial synods found among the writings of Catholicos Timothy I provide a unique perspective into the christological disputes and struggle for authority in Syriac-speaking Christianity in the late 8th century.

Opium addiction in China during the closing decades of the Ch'ing dynasty afflicted all segments of society. From government officials to farmers, the population fell prey to the effects of the drug. Some provinces reported addiction rates as high as eighty percent. With the birth of Chinese nationalism, reformers -- missionaries who had witnessed the effects of opium on Chinese society, students who had studied abroad and returned to their native land with broader perspectives, families who had lost all through the addiction of a loved one, doctors who had firsthand knowledge that opium use led only to death -- cried out against the drug.Even though many were convinced that opium use had sapped the strength of China, ending the use of the drug was a complicated problem. Opium trade financed the colonial government of India, and imports amounted to many tons annually. Domestic poppies were also cultivated as source of income.Kathleen Lodwick examines the intersecting efforts of Protestant missionaries, particularly medical doctors, who had long denounced opium use, the British Royal Commission on Opium, which was decidedly pro-opium, the U.S. Philippine Commission, which denounced not only the trade but the Chinese people, and the British officials who finally undertook the task of ending the importation of opium to China.China kept few records on the amount of drug use or its effects. Missionary medical doctors conducted the first scientific survey on the effects of the drug, and their findings provided clear evidence of its perniciousness. Such evidence could not be ignored, whatever the fortunes involved, and missionaries conducted a campaign of education and awareness in China and abroad. As a result of their efforts, China and Britain entered into a treaty that called for all opium trade to cease by 1917, and both governments as well as the missionaries become immediately active toward that end. The suppression campaign was among the most successful of the late Ch'ing reforms.Lodwick tells a fascinating story of imperial exploitation and of a strain of honest crusaders who sought to right some of the wrongs their own nation was perpetrating. This book represents a strong argument against legalization of addictive drugs, a topic being discussed today in the United States as a solution to the societal problems our own drug use has caused.

Dilemmas of a parent, attitudes to immigrants, choices to be made about Irelands future in Europe: these are among the themes treated in this collection of essays in moral theology, comprising theological reflections on current moral and pastoral problems. Other topics include human rights, inter-faith and inter-church dialogue, Christian values in a pluralist society, and homosexuality and the priesthood.

This book is a reproduction of Philoxenos Dolabani’s handwritten catalog of the manuscripts contained at Dayr al-Za‘faran. Dolabani was one of the greatest scholars of Syriac in the twentieth century and he made the catalogue while still a monk. This work, two volumes combined under one cover, is an important resource for all interested in Syriac and Christian Arabic.

The author is the Milanese expert on the Ambrosian rite and this (with Volume 2) makes available in English very important material previously unknown.