Books for Lent: The Third Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the third in the series.]

If the primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence on God and to enable us—as the Lenten Triodian puts it—to "draw near to the mountain of prayer," the following books are hammers, saws and levels for the task.

When You Fast
by Kallistos Ware
Maybe the all-time best use of a dollar (fifty)—it’s actually an excerpt from the introduction to The Lenten Triodion.

Celebration of Discipline (email or call for availability) 
by Richard Foster
Foster’s chapter on fasting is excellent, like nearly everything he writes regarding spiritual discipline.

The Spirit of Food: 
Thirty-four Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God
edited by Leslie Leyland Fields
A poetic rendering of spirituality's physicality and the ways attentive living can be an act of prayer. 

Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life
by Mary Margaret Funk
Like Foster, Funk’s thoughts on fasting are not to be missed. The teachings of John Cassian and other desert masters are palpable throughout.

Great Lent: Journey to Pascha
by Alexander Schmemann
Especially helpful is the section titled “The Two Meanings of Fasting.” 

Books for Lent: The Second Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the second in the series.]

The inner significance of Lent is best summed up in the triad of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To quote Bishop Kallistos Ware, "Divorced from prayer and from the reception of the holy sacraments, unaccompanied by acts of compassion, our fasting becomes pharisaical or even demonic. It leads, not to contrition and joyfulness, put to pride, inward tension and irritability."

That said, here are our picks (among the myriad available) on prayer...

Beginning to Pray
by Anthony Bloom
"The day when God is absent, when He is silent—that is the beginning of prayer."

Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way (email or call for availability) 
by Matthew the Poor
A contemporary Egyptian monastic points the way to those who desire, and are willing to sacrifice for, an existence formed by the practice of unceasing prayer.

Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition
by Gabriel Bunge, O.S.B.
Written by a Benedictine monk and patristic scholar, this book belongs in the hands of anyone who seriously desires a life of prayer.

Prayer for Beginners (email or call for availability)
by Peter Kreeft
A clear and eminently reasonable approach to prayer for people not very good at praying.

Clinging: The Experience of Prayer
by Emilie Griffin
A simple, elegantly written, and warmly felt invitation to prayer.

First Fruits of Prayer (email or call for availability)  
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
A fine exposition of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.

Prayer: Living With God
by Simon Tugwell
Focuses on our relationship with God and ways we can learn to enjoy and appreciate that relationship through prayer.

Prayer in Practice
by Simon Tugwell
An unblinkingly honest and even humorous treatise on different forms of prayer.

Three Prayers
by Olivier Clement
A meditation on three of the most essential prayers of the Christian tradition.

The Art of Prayer
compiled by Igumen Chariton
A privileged glimpse into a sort of working journal of a monk intent on achieving unceasing prayer.

On the Prayer of Jesus (email or call for availability)  
by Ignatius Brianchaninov
Blunt and trustworthy advice about the right and wrong ways to approach the practice of the Jesus Prayer.

The gift of the fast

"Let us welcome gladly the gift of the fast," said Theodore the Studite in his homily at the start of Lent.

Though we may approach this season of repentance and fasting with at least some sense of dread, Bishop Kallistos Ware writes in The Lenten Triodian that abstinence leads not only to weariness and hunger, "but also to a sense of lightness, wakefulness, freedom and joy." 

Love is (or ought to be) the heart of our intention. In his classic ascetic treatise, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus colorfully and skillfully paints "an icon of man's progression to perfection---or completeness---in the spiritual life which, in its fulness, is nothing less than union with and participation in the divine nature of the one true God, the Holy Trinity. But St. John warns us that there is only one proper motive for setting out on this path and that is love for God" (from the introduction to Remember Thy First Love).

And because we believe that love for God can be nurtured through the reading of good books, we (as a matter of course) have a list of suggestions. You may have seen these lists before, but books have been added or subtracted due to availability. As one book tends to lead to another, who knows what you might find next. 

We will post a list a day for the next few days, so as not to overwhelm. Please also browse our website or call the store if you have any questions. 

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[A bit more from Theodore the Studite's homily on Great Lent, Catechesis 53]

And so I ask, let us welcome gladly the gift of the fast, not making ourselves miserable, as we are taught, but let us advance with cheerfulness of heart, innocent, not slandering, not angry, not evil, not envying; rather peaceable towards each other, and loving, fair, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits; breathing in seasonable stillness, since hubbub is damaging in a community; speaking suitable words, since too unreasonable stillness is profitless; yet above all unsleepingly keeping watch over our thoughts, not opening the door to the passions, not giving place to the devil. If the spirit of the powerful one, it says, rise up against you, do not let it find your place. So that the enemy has power to suggest, but in no way to enter.