E-Books →A Shining Lamp The Oral Instructions of Catherine McAuley

These instructions were initially written down, insofar as that was humanly possible, by sisters who were actually present and listening as she spoke. Some of their manuscripts were later copied into the long manuscript compilation that is the centerpiece of this book. Research also indicates that in preparing and giving her lectures, Catherine often relied on the content of previously published spiritual books, including works by Alphonsus Rodriguez, SJ, Louis Bourdaloue, SJ, and other well-known spiritual writers of the eighteenth and earlier centuries. The book's endnotes illustrate this dependence.
Catherine McAuley's voice in these instructions is realistic, down-toearth, humble, and compassionate. She is clearly dead-set against "froth" and "mere outward show" in one's spiritual life. Like the practical Saint Teresa of Avila, whose life and thought she studied, she favors surrendering oneself now, with God's help, to "ordinary," every-day, possible holiness, rather than simply dreaming about extraordinary, but perhaps impossible, future sanctity. Her themes are some of the great themes of the Gospel: genuine humility and poverty of spirit, universal charity, self-denial, taking up one's "cross," and following Jesus Christ.
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