THE CLASSICS OF WESTERN SPIRITUALITY

Tthis is one of THE BEST books I read on sufisum,with new horizons of sufi wisdom Its true what Ibn Arabi once told,his writing will reach to whom it it's meant even after a1000 years .that way I feel blessed to have many a writings of THE SHAIKUL AKBAR,it really Akbar .....friends.

a book of the interior life as in Jesus Christ

"Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this supra-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name". Pseudo-Dionysius (5th or 6th century). This book collects the four works plus letters of the 5th or 6th century person who choose to write under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite, the 1st century disciple of St Paul in Athens. These four works are "The Divine Names", "The Mystical Theology", "The Celestial Hierarchy" and 'The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy" and are completed with an extensive index to biblical Allusions and Quotations as wel as a general index.

"Saint Catherine of Genoa ...is an Italian Roman Catholic saint and mystic, admired for her work among the sick and the poor and remembered because of various writings describing both these actions and her mystical experiences. She was a member of the noble Fieschi family, and spent most of her life and her means serving the sick, especially during the plague which ravaged Genoa in 1497 and 1501. She died in that city in 1510. Her fame outside her native city is connected with the publication in 1551 of the book known in English as the Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa. She and her teaching were the subject of Baron Friedrich von Hügel's classic work The Mystical Element of Religion."--from Wikiped., July 2014. "Catherine, who lived for 60 years and died early in the 16th century, leads the modern reader directly to the more significant issues of the day. In her life she reconciled aspects of spirituality often seen to be either mutually exclusive or in conflict. This married lay woman was both a mystic and a humanitarian, a constant contemplative, yet daily immersed in the physical care of the sick and the destitute. For the last five centuries she has been the inspiration of such spiritual greats as Francis de Sales, Robert Bellarmine, Fenelon, Newman and Hecker. Friedrich von Hügel's famous Mystical Element of Religion was a study of the spirituality of Catherine. Purgation and Purgatory is a collection of sayings on spiritual purification in this life and the next. The Spiritual Dialogue gives us a readable and coherent inner history of Catherine.--from amazon.com.

Catherine was a mystic whose plunge into God plunged her deep into the affairs of society, Church and the souls of all who came under her influence. Her Dialogue has been called a great tapestry to which Catherine adds stitch upon stitch until she is satisfied that she has communicated all she can of what she has learned of the way of God. Six centuries after her death, we live in a time so badly in need of her sense of institutional reform as flowing from Divine truth, love and charity. In the opening pages Catherine presents a series of questions or petitions to God the Father, each of which receives a response and amplification. There is the magnificent symbolic portrayal of Christ as the bridge. There are specific discussions of discernment, tears (true and false spiritual emotion), truth, the sacramental heart ('mystic body') of the Church, divine providence, obedience. It is not so much a treatise to be read as it is a conversation to be entered into with earnest leisure and leisurely earnest.

An Encomium on Saint Anthony by John of Schmun A letter to the Disciples of Antony by Serapion of ThmuisInstrumental in the conversion of many, including St. Augustine, The Life of Antony provided the model saint's life and constitutes, in the words of patristics scholar Johannes Quasten, 'the most important document of early monasticism.' Here is one volume are translations of the text in the Greek written by Athanasius (from the new critical edition of G. J. M. Bartelink) and in the Coptic, the language Antony himself spoke. Two short contemporary coptic texts further manifest the powerful influence of 'the father of monks.'

"This great master of Eastern Christianity was an abbot, spiritual director of renown, theologian and important Church reformer. These 'Discourses' which form the central work of his life, were preached by St. Symeon to his monks during their morning Matins ritual. They treat such basic spiritual themes as repentance, detachment, renunciation, the works of charity, impassibility, remembrance of death, sorrow for sins, the practice of God's commandments, mystical union with the indwelling Trinity, faith and contemplation." -- Back cover.

Presents a selection of writings by the 14th-century Flemish mystic noted for his Trinitarian theology, and for whom the contemplative life involved activity or going out, just as God is always dynamic, thus reflecting the mystic life as not so much a progression of stages, but a simultaneous activity, return, and rest.