Volume II recounts many more apparitions and favors and prophecies describing a huge apostasy in the Church, the general corruption of the clergy and the Prelates, heresies, and the culpability of the highest Church authorities. Our Lady also predicted that at the moment when the situation would seem lost, she would intervene and restore the Church to her proper splendor. An inspiring work of piety and faith.
Relates the most important revelations in the 17th century of Our Lady to a Conceptionist nun in Quito, Ecuador. Our Lady told her that a great crisis in the Church would begin in the middle of the 20th century and continue to our days.
On January 16, 1599, the Most Holy Mother of God appeared to Mother Marianna of Jesus Torres in the convent of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito, Ecuador, asking her to have a statue made of herself as she appeared, with the Child Jesus in her left arm and a crosier and the keys of the cloister in her right hand. Our Lady holds the crosier as a sign that she herself governs the convent and likewise asked that that her statue be placed in the throne of the abbess, where this statue is still kept to this day. The statue was consecrated by the bishop of Quito on February 2, 1611 with title, "Mary of Good Success of the Purification or Candlemas." During the various apparitions granted to Mother Marianna until her death on January 16, 1635, Our Lady of Good Success foretold the evils of our times in great detail. She was told that her visions and life would only be known beginning from the twentieth century, and was asked to help by her prayers and penances the souls of that time in which there would be an enormous decadence of the faith. It was God's will to reserve these revelations and the story of the life of Mother Mariana for our time, when the corruption of behavior is universal and the precious light of the faith is almost extinct, fulfilling the prophecies of Our Lady. The Mother of God also foretold that this devotion would obtain mercy and pardon for all sinners who have recourse to her with a contrite heart since she is the Mother of Mercy. Likewise she said, "The consoling title of Good Success... will be the support and safeguard of the faith in the presence of the complete corruption of the twentieth century." The novena presented here was written by Fr. Jose Urrate which has an imprimatur by the Archbishop of Quito, Carlos Maria de la Torre, on July 31, 1941.
Volume I tells the early life of Mother Mariana and her first years in the convent in Quito. She was asked to become an expiatory victim for the sins of heresy, blasphemy and impurity of the 20th century. It relates the first three important apparitions of Our Lady.
'Zesty' Daily Mail 'A real gem of a book' Stylist A wickedly funny tale of two rebellious sisters in 1940s Rio de Janeiro Euridice is bright and ambitious. But this is Brazil in the 1940s, and society expects her to be a loving wife and mother. While Antenor is busy congratulating himself on his excellent catch, Euridice spends her humdrum days ironing his shirts and removing the lumps of onion from his food, dreaming of the success she could have made of herself – as a writer, dressmaker or culinary whizz – in another life. Her free-spirited sister Guida, on the other hand, is the kind of person who was 'born knowing everything'. When she returns from her failed elopement with stories of heartbreak and loss, the lives of Euridice and her husband are thrown into confusion, with disastrous consequences. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is a darkly comic debut, bursting with vibrant Brazilian spirit and unforgettable characters – a jubilant novel about the emancipation of women.
Caplan (TO TOUCH IS TO LIVE) asserts that "the reality of the present condition of contemporary spirituality in the West is one of grave distortion, confusion, fraud, and a fundamental lack of education." She claims that, as positive as the tremendous rise in spirituality is, there is not any context for determining whether any particular teaching, or teacher, is truly enlightening. Caplan compiles interviews with such noted spiritual masters as Joan Halifax, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi on the nature of enlightenment. In the first section, Caplan examines the motivations people have for seeking enlightenment and contends that very often they seek this state as a means of gratifying the ego. This "presumption of enlightenment," she says, often afflicts teachers masquerading as spiritual leaders. These teachers sometimes look down on their students and gloat over how far they have come and how far the students have to go. A second section focuses on "The Dangers of Mystical Experience," in which Caplan claims that many seekers mistake the mystical experience itself for enlightenment; she and the teachers she interviews all assert that enlightenment always involves gaining some knowledge about self and others. The third section, "Corruption and Consequence," focuses on the nature of power and corruption; the fourth section, "Navigating the Mine Field: Preventing Dangers on the Path," provides a survey of the ways in which practitioners can avoid the "pitfalls of false enlightenment." A final section, "Disillusionment, Humility and the Beginning of Spiritual Life," concludes that "the Real spiritual life [is] the life of total annihilation and the return to just what is." Caplan's illuminating book calls into question the motives of the spiritual snake handlers of the modern age and urges seekers to pay the price of traveling the hard road to true enlightenment.
Enter the lush world of 1950s New York City, where a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors live side by side in the glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success in this debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue. “Rich both in twists and period detail, this tale of big-city ambition is impossible to put down.”—People When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency hall mates aren't: plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesn't belong—a notion the models do nothing to disabuse. Yet when Darby befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, she's introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz clubs where the music is as addictive as the heroin that's used there, the startling sounds of bebop, and even the possibility of romance. Over half a century later, the Barbizon's gone condo and most of its long-ago guests are forgotten. But rumors of Darby's involvement in a deadly skirmish with a hotel maid back in 1952 haunt the halls of the building as surely as the melancholy music that floats from the elderly woman's rent-controlled apartment. It's a combination too intoxicating for journalist Rose Lewin, Darby's upstairs neighbor, to resist—not to mention the perfect distraction from her own imploding personal life. Yet as Rose's obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the shocking truth is finally revealed.
'Queer delight through and through' - Leah Johnson, author of You Should See Me in a Crown A teen girl navigates friendship drama, the end of high school, and discovering her queerness in Ophelia After All, the hilarious and heartfelt contemporary YA debut by Racquel Marie. Ophelia Rojas knows what she likes: her best friends, Cuban food, rose-gardening, and boys – way too many boys. Her friends and parents make fun of her endless stream of crushes, but Ophelia is a romantic at heart. She couldn’t change, even if she wanted to. So when she finds herself thinking more about cute, quiet Talia Sanchez than the loss of a perfect prom with her ex-boyfriend, seeds of doubt take root in Ophelia’s firm image of herself. Add to that the impending end of high school and the fracturing of her once-solid friend group, and things are spiraling a little out of control. But the course of love - and sexuality - never did run smooth. As her secrets begin to unravel, Ophelia must make a choice between clinging to the fantasy version of herself she’s always imagined or upending everyone’s expectations to rediscover who she really is, after all.
