Paraclete Press Blog

Here’s some advice from the Desert Fathers and Mothers: Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you everything you need to know. Here’s another counsel from Thomas à Kempis’s famous book The Imitation of Christ: Every time you leave your...

All creatures are like syllables in a song which God is singing. Everything that is, is just a little syllable in this song which God is continually singing. —Thomas Merton, 1915–1968 American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, and mystic This is...

New York, 3 October 1789By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits,...

Need a little help picking out the right gift for your friends and family this year? We understand finding gifts can be a challenge. That's why we've created our gift guide below—sorted by category and by person—to make your Christmas shopping a joyful experience, and to...

By Laura Alary, author of Here: The Dot We Call Home On a wall in my home hangs a print of a beach. There is nothing to identify the location, though the red-brown cliffs rising from pale sand offer a...

I got a rock.—Charlie Brown Halloween is meant to frighten us: ghouls, ghosts, and skeletons. My ninety-year-old grandmother resented the neighborhood decorations, reminders of the frail bones in her own hands, and of her own impending death. Arthur Conan Doyle...

1) For starters, the cross was crucial for St. Francis. . . The cross was (and is) sometimes seen as a sign of judgment and sin and suffering... The sheer joy and hope—the well of love—that Clare and Francis see in the...

OPTIMISM  Excerpted from The Complete Julian of Norwichby Fr. John Julian, OJN Julian is a theological optimist. Standing over against the pessimism and sin-absorption of the theology of much of the Middle Ages—and in spite of living in the midst of...