Favorite religious writings? Read anything written by a monk you recommend?

Favorite religious writings? Read anything written by a monk you recommend?

Cloud of Unknowing and Dark Night of the Soul
I love Christian mysticism, it's comfy

>Favorite religious writings?
As in specifically religious or does fiction pass? I'll give a list of random works I liked
Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton
Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross
Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
End of the Affair by Graham Greene (as a person a lot less Catholic than his writings would tell you)
Silence by Shusaku Endo (will pray a rosary for anyone who can get me some of his epubs that aren't Silence, Kikus Prayer or Golden County)
Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger
There's a lot of interesting philosophy, modern thomism has had a pretty large revival.

>Read anything written by a monk you recommend?
Outside Aquinas, recently, nothing.

Great list, although technically Aquinas was a friar not a monk.

Anyway, I'll add:
Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas
Confessions by Augustine
The Sources of Christian Ethics by Servais Pinckaers
Grace: Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (reading this now)
Commentary on the Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux (this guy was a monk)
The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart

And for some fiction:
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

Is that French stuff translated into English?

Yeah it's all available in English translation. My French isn't really good enough to read academic theology.

I thought you were a French Catholic user I often talk to in these treads who is always sad nobody else can read it.

Nope, just an American Catholic. A lot of great Catholic theologians tend to be French, which is kind of interesting.

is france a very catholic country?

There's barely 5% of pious Catholics, at best.
It used to be the centre power and largest Catholic nation, they, used to have anyway, a lot of Catholic leaning centres as well as a large, awake tradition which had to intellectually deal with the revolution.

what are the most catholic parts?

Religio Medici, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Cur Deus Homo, The Imitation of Christ, Introduction to Christianity, The Kingdom of God is Within You, Origen's Philocalia, Summa Theologica, the writings of Francis of Assisi

Life of St. Anthony - Athanasius

St. Francis de Sales is sort of an honorary Franciscan, so I think he counts as a monk. I have read, and really loved, his "Introduction to the Devout Life." It's written specifically for laypeople, and it contains steps that one can take in their own, mundane life to become closer to God.

Incidentally, Francis de Sales is the patron saint of writers and journalists. As a writer and a Catholic, I took him as my Confirmation saint, and I pray to him very often. I think he's interceded for me, as well, but I suppose that might be hard to prove.

>I pray to him very often
I thought it was heresy to pray to anyone but God. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read that somewhere (I am by no means an expert on Catholicism).

probably the vendee, lorraine,

Catholics believe that the dead can pray for the living and the living can pray for the dead. We are all a mystical body that transcends time and space. The saints, in particular, can especially offer intercessory prayer for us, because they are very close to God.

It's all formulated as a sign of faith on the part of Christians. We pray to the saints because we believe that God will work through them, that our praying to them is a sign of greater faith in him. There's a fair amount of mystery involved, too. This is some of what God has told us, through himself and through his servants, and perhaps we won't fully understand it until we're dead. But the saints are there for us, so we ask for their prayers through our own.

My diary desu senpai

protestants typically pray to one of the three parts of the Godhead

catholics believe in intercessory prayer and pray to saints etc.

also Brittany I'd assume

Benedict XVI is an excellent writer. Spirit of the liturgy is excellent.

Also Sayings of the Desert Fathers is indispensible

Catholics can ask those in heaven to pray for them just like they can ask someone on Earth

catholics think it's not but catholics are heretics

So you claim you can communicate with dead? And that you know whether someone is in heaven or not? That´s apostasy.

>So you claim you can communicate with dead?
No.
>And that you know whether someone is in heaven or not?
Based on confirmed miracles the church proclaims a saint who indeed is in haven.

>No.

So what, you just pray and think "Oh God, I don't know if this guy's gonna hear my prayer or not, but I really hope he does!"?

>confirmed miracles

Pic related.

>So what, you just pray and think "Oh God, I don't know if this guy's gonna hear my prayer or not, but I really hope he does!"?
We know they hear us. That doesn't equate talking to the dead.
>Pic related.
Step up you meme game, kid.

I'm not the guy who is arguing with you; but to be fair, he asked you if you could communicate with the dead. For all intents and purposes, it sounds like you believe you can communicate with the dead.

Communicating with the dead has a very different connotation.
Usually, and I assumed that's what he was referring to, especially considering his tone, was some kind of a summoning ritual where a dead person talks to me.

"Communicating with the dead" refers to "communicating with the dead", viz. conveying a message of some kind to a person that is no longer alive.