Spiritual Classics

 

Beginning in September 2023, the Spiritual Classics discussion group will meet in-person at the Ascension campus in the Parish Center.  The group usually meets on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:30 pm.  The schedule for 2023-2024 is linked below.

 

We discuss books that inspire our spiritual growth, recount the spiritual lives of saints and others who have grown close to God, or provide us with spiritual sustenance.  We’ve discussed several books by Pope Francis, books by various saints, books from the Middle Ages, and books by spiritual giants like Thomas Merton and John of the Cross.  A list of books we’ve discussed is linked below.

 

We select books that are approachable, relatively short, and worthy of a discussion for about an hour.  Reading the book is not required in order to join the discussions.

   

For more information, send an email to [email protected].

 

Marguerite Porete and The Mirror of Simple Souls

 

Join us for the upcoming Spiritual Classics discussion on Marguerite Porete’s classic writing, The Mirror of Simple Souls.  We will meet on Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 7:30 pm in the Ascension Parish Center Dining Room.  Jeff Wood will lead the discussion.  All Oak Park parishes are welcome.

 

Originally written in the fourteenth century and enormously popular throughout Europe at the time, The Mirror of Simple Souls was lost for six centuries until it was rediscovered in a rare book collection in the British Library and attributed to Marguerite Porete, part of a French beguine community in what is now Belgium.  The book is a dialogue among allegorical figures conversing about the nature of the spirit and the relation between the soul and God.  Because human love is like divine love, Porete shows how the human soul can achieve a lasting union with God.    

 

A free online version of the modern translation is available at Scribd.  The 1927 translation is available online at the Internet Archive.   Paulist Press published the modern translation in 1993 and copies are available through The Book Table on Lake Street in Oak Park, Barnes & Noble, AbeBooks, and Amazon.  Be sure not to purchase the novel with the same name by Aline Kiner, published by Pushkin Press in 2023.  

 

If you have any questions or would like more information about our monthly Spiritual Classics discussions, please send an email to [email protected].

 

September 5   Joseph Bernardin, The Gift of Peace
                        led by Jeff Wood

 

October 5       Writings of Saint Francis 
(Thursday)      led by Father Bob Hutmacher 
            
November 14   Henri Nouwen, Return of the Prodigal Son 
                           led by Donna Ioppolo 

 

December 5    St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) 

February 6      Flannery O’Connor, Selected Stories

March 5          Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man 
                         led by Rich Kordesh

 

April 2            John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love 

May 7            Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls (Paulist Press 1993)