"Breaking Open the Word assists leaders of adult and teen Christian initiation, as well as Bible study groups, to "break open" and explore the word of God proclaimed in the Sunday liturgy. The Scripture readings in this book are taken directly from the texts use during the Mass, the Lectionary for Sunday Mass. After each reading, the pastoral commentary and reflection questions by biblical scholar Mary Katharine Deeley facilitate meditation and discussion, bringing Scripture alive and making it relevant to today. Breaking Open the Word can be used on its own or in combination with Liguori Publications' Journey of Faith RCIA program. Each reading is cross-referenced to a Journey of Faith lesson, enabling a Lectionary-based approach to catechesis for Christian initiation. Separate volumes of Breaking Open the Word are available for each year of the three-year liturgical cycle, and each includes additional materials for use during Lent and the Easter Triduum. Mary Katharine Deeley, MDiv, PhD, serves as the pastoral associate and director of Christ the Teacher Institute for the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University"--
Volume three in a three-part series that functions as a pastoral tool for sharing the word of God; focuses on Cycle C and emphasizes using the lectionary in catechesis throughout the year.
"It is not enough to understand the Lectionary readings in their liturgical context. Knowledge of the biblical context of the Lectionary readings is vitally important, especially for facilitators of RCIA and other faith-sharing groups and for those who proclaim the Word. Breaking Open the Lectionary provides this essential background information by placing the readings for each Sunday of the liturgical year in their biblical contexts, as distinct from their contexts in the Lectionary, and explaining how knowledge of these contexts affects our ability to understand what the inspired authors intended to teach." "Breaking Open the Lectionary will help those who break open the Word to avoid misinterpreting Scripture by providing readers with the background information needed to recognize when the application of a particular passage to a person's life is faithful to the Bible and when it is not. While the book is for Cycle B, the readings for the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent in Cycle A are also included for RCIA groups. Three sets of discussion questions - for Breaking Open the Word groups, other faith-sharing groups, and Bible study groups - round off each Sunday."--BOOK JACKET.
Will help those who Break open the Word in RCIA and those involved in Lectionary-based faith sharing or Bible study groups to hear the Word as a living Word and to know that the Word they are hearing is compatible with what the biblical authors are teaching.
Breaking Open Gods Word: A Three-year Cycle of Reflections on the Sunday Readings of the Liturgical Year invites readers to embark upon a journey through the riches of the Catholic Churchs three-year lectionary for readings for Sunday Mass. The lectionary, a sequence of appointed passages from the texts of the Old and New Testaments, pairs readings with the seasons and feasts of the church year. Sister Celine Goessl, a member of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross, has taken a lifetime practice of prayerful listening to the messages God shares through scriptural texts and brought it into conversation with her immersion in the details of daily life to create the collection of reflections appearing in Breaking Open Gods Word. The intent of this collection is to help Gods Word enflesh itself in the readers daily life and to empower him or her to take action to live as Christs presence in other peoples lives. You may watch the changing of the seasons in your parishs worship and hear the variety of texts read at Mass. As you do, and you find life presenting you with ever-changing challenges to your faith, Breaking Open Gods Word offers to accompany you on your daily journey. Along the way, Sister Celine Goessls prayerful reflections can offer you inspiration and guidance for living and witnessing faithfully in whatever circumstances you face each day.
This wry memoir tackles twelve different spiritual practices in a quest to become more saintly, including fasting, fixed-hour prayer, the Jesus Prayer, gratitude, Sabbath-keeping, and generosity. Although Riess begins with great plans for success (“Really, how hard could that be?” she asks blithely at the start of her saint-making year), she finds to her growing humiliation that she is failing—not just at some of the practices, but at every single one. What emerges is a funny yet vulnerable story of the quest for spiritual perfection and the reality of spiritual failure, which turns out to be a valuable practice in and of itself. Praise for Flunking Sainthood: " Flunking Sainthood is surprising and freeing; it is fun and funny; and it is full of wisdom. It is, in fact, the best book on the practices of the spiritual life that I have read in a long, long time." - Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath Jana Riess reminds us that saints are different from most of us: They are special, we are barely normal. They get it right, we rarely get it. They see God, we strain to see much of anything. And, Jana is no saint. Rather than climbing to the pinnacle and sitting on a pedestal to tell us how it could be, Jana slides right next to us and reminds us that sainthood is overrated. With humor and insight she whispers to is that our lives matter just as they are. She prods us to never let our failures hold us back. She calls us to something greater than spiritual success - ordinary faithfulness. Flunking Sainthood is the book I’m giving to my friends who are seeking to make sense of their emerging faith. - Doug Pagitt, author of A Christianity Worth Believing “Jana Riess may have flunked at sainthood, but she's written a wonderful book. It's both reverent and irreverent, and it will make you want to become a better Christian -- or Jew, or Muslim, or Zoroastrian, or Jedi, or whatever you happen to be.” - AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically "Warm, light-hearted, and laugh-out-loud funny, Jana Riess may indeed have flunked sainthood, but this memoir assures us that she is utterly and deeply human, and that is something even more wonderful. Honest and sincere, she will endear you from page one." -- Donna Freitas, author of The Possibilities of Sainthood “With a helpfully hilarious account of her own grappling with godliness, Jana Riess proves to be a standup historian well-practiced in the art of oddly revivifying self-deprecation. She loves her guides, historical and contemporary, even as she finds them alternately impractical, harsh, or "infuriatingly jolly." The book is freaking wonderful—a candid and committed tale of prayers that resists supersizing and spirituality that has no home save the glory and the muck of the everyday.”--David Dark, author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything “Jana Riess's new book is a delight—fun, funny, engaging and a powerful reminder that the greatest work in our lives is not what we'll do for God but what God is doing in us.” --Margaret Feinberg, www.margaretfeinberg.com, author of Scouting the Divine and Hungry for God “Flunking Sainthood allows those of us who have attempted new spiritual practices-- and failed-- to breathe a great sigh of relief and to laugh out loud. Jana Reiss’s exposé of her year-long and less-than-successful attempts at eleven classic spiritual practices entertains and educates us with its honesty and down-to-earthiness. In spite of Jana’s paltry attempts at piety and her botched prayer makeovers, God showed up in the surprising, sneaky ways that only God does. Jana is the kind of girlfriend I like to have--hilarious, smart, stubborn, irreverent, and totally gaga over God. She writes in the unfiltered, uncensored way I’d write if I had the skill and the guts (Oh sorry, Mom, I meant gumption, not guts.)” --Sybil MacBeth, author of Praying in Color
