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It was probably with Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, published in 1948, that the modern spirituality book was born. People began to realize how much they could experience from this kind of reading, and today the number of spiritual books dwarfs (fifty to one) the number published in Merton’s early days as a monk.
It also used to be that if you wanted to learn about monastic spirituality, your only real choice was to go to a monastery. Today you can do a lot from home—especially with guides like Benedictine abbot Jerome Kodell. His new book, Life Lessons from the Monastery, offers monastic wisdom that speaks to any ordinary Christian. It’s like spending time with a monk—only in a book.
Life Lessons begins with a beautiful reflection on God’s loving presence. It’s as if Abbot Jerome wants to get our full attention and say: “Every Christian life must begin right here!” Quoting from Scripture and from Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical on love, he finds fresh ways to tell us about God’s promises of love, grace, and forgiveness, despite our best efforts to miss them.
God loves us “completely, unconditionally, in spite of anything…
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