Audiobooks with the Western and Eastern Church Fathers. St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Benedict, St. Augustine, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and many more!

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After leaving the Parisian chair, Bonaventura retires in meditation on Mount Verna, to embark on a contemplative itinerary that leads him to God. The first stage of this journey is the contemplation of the creatures. Bonaventure shows the reader the degrees of the ascent to God, degrees that man can know and travel through the prayer. The physical world is described as a mirror and as a book through which it is possible to reach God: «He who is not brightened [illustratur] by such splendors of created things is blind; he who does not awake at such clamors is deaf; he who does not praise God on account of [ex] all these effects is mute; he who does not turn towards [advertit] the First Principle on account of such indications [indiciis] is stupid.»<a href="https://inters.org/Bonaventure-God-Vestiges-Universe" rel="nofollow">https://inters.org/Bonaventure-God-Vestiges-Universe</a>

St. Bonaventure - On The Degrees of Ascension to God

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The Rule of Saint Benedict (Regula Benedicti) is a book of precepts written by St. Benedict of Nursia, founder of the Benedictine Order and of the Monastery of Monte Cassino, and founder of monasticism in the Western Church. The work became the rule of conduct for all Western monks.In Dante&#39;s Divine Comedy we meet St. Benedict in Sphere Seven in Paradiso, with the Contemplatives.The spirit of St Benedict&#39;s Rule is summed up in the motto of the Benedictine Confederation: pax (&#34;peace&#34;) and the traditional ora et labora (&#34;pray and work&#34;).

The Rule of St. Benedict Part II

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The Rule of St. Benedict Part I

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&#34;You want me to tell you why God is to be loved and how much.I answer, the reason for loving God is God Himself; and the measure of love due to Him is immeasurable love. . . .&#34;Saint Bernard&#39;s On Loving God is one of his most delightful, and most widely read, works. It stands in the tradition of the Fathers of the Church, but it carries patristic teaching into the Middle Ages and into the cloister. Its famous affirmation that God is to be loved without limit, sine modo, is taken directly from the letters of Saint Augustine. While the tract is not an example of scholastic theology, it shows a typically twelfth-century love of logic and an unexpectedly precise use of terminology. In reading or listening to this work, it is very important, as with all medieval authors, to take them on their own terms, without superimposing on them categories favored by later generations, even our own. Or especially not our own.(summary from wiki and the reader)

St. Bernard of Clairvaux - On Loving God Part II

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St. Bernard of Clairvaux - On Loving God Part I

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pod-public-media-files/2022/10/27/18/1bc6dfa8-3402-4847-b68d-633c563ea71e_nyssa_essays.mp3

To Eustathius.All you who study medicine have, one may say, humanity for your profession: and I think that one who preferred your science to all the serious pursuits of life would form the proper judgment, and not miss the right decision, if it be true that life, the most valued of all things, is a thing to be shunned, and full of pain, if it may not be had with health, and health your art supplies. But in your own case the science is in a notable degree of double efficacy; you enlarge for yourself the bounds of its humanity, since you do not limit the benefit of your art to men&#39;s bodies, but take thought also for the cure of troubles of the mind.01 On the Holy Trinity and of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit 02 On &#34;Not Three Gods&#34;03 On the Faith

St. Gregory of Nyssa - On the Holy Trinity, On Not Three Gods, On the Faith

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The Confessions outlines Augustine&#39;s sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written, and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the following 1,000 years, through the Middle Ages. It is not a complete autobiography, as it was written in his early 40s, and he lived long afterwards, producing another important work (City of God). It does, nonetheless, provide an unbroken record of his development of thought and is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries. It is a significant theological work, featuring spiritual meditations and insights. It begins:&#34;GREAT art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness, that Thou, O God, resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakes us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, unless it repose in Thee.”

The Confessions, by St Augustine of Hippo Part VI

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The Confessions, by St Augustine of Hippo Part V

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The Confessions, by St Augustine of Hippo Part IV

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The Confessions, by St Augustine of Hippo Part III

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The Confessions, by St Augustine of Hippo Part II

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The Confessions, by St Augustine of Hippo Part I

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&#34;If a piece of wood became as aware of the nearness of God as an archangel is, the piece of wood would be as happy as an archangel.&#34;This is a collection of seven sermons of Meister Eckhart, the German medieval scholastic philosopher-theologian, which were translated by Claude Field and published with a Preface in approximately 1909. The publication was titled Heart and Life Booklets. No. 22, and published in London by H. R. Allenson, Ltd. / Racquet Court, 111 Fleet Street, E.C.01	The Attractive Power of God	02	The Nearness of the Kingdom	03	The Angel&#39;s Greeting	04	True Hearing	05	The Self-Communication of God	06	Sanctification	07	Outward and Inward Morality

Meister Eckhart's Sermons

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His admirable book &#34;On Virginity&#34;, written about 370, was composed to strengthen in all who read it the desire for a life of perfect virtue. - Summary by Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913).

St. Gregory of Nyssa - On Virginity Part II

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St. Gregory of Nyssa - On Virginity Part I

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TRIAD supernal, both super-God and super-good, Guardian of the Theosophy of Christian men, direct us aright to the super-unknown and super-brilliant and highest summit of the mystic Oracles, where the simple and absolute a!nd changeless mysteries of theology lie hidden within the super-luminous gloom of the silence, revealing hidden things, which in its deepest darkness shines above the most super-brilliant, and in the altogether impalpable and invisible, fills to overflowing the eyeless minds with glories of surpassing beauty. This then be my prayer; but thou, O dear Timothy, by thy persistent commerce with the mystic visions, leave behind both sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts, and all objects of sense and intelligence, and all things not being and being, and be raised aloft unknowingly to the union, as far&#39; as attainable, with Him Who is above every essence and knowledge. For by the resistless and absolute ecstasy in all purity, from thyself and all, thou wilt be carried on high, to the superessential ray of the Divine darkness, when thou hast cast away all, and become free from all.<a href="https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/areopagite_06_mystic_theology.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/areopagite_06_mystic_theology.htm</a>

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - Mystic Theology

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The subject of the treatise was suggested, as is plain from the text itself, as the result of a public, or at any rate semi-public, discussion with some person unknown in which St. Bernard, strongly commending the work of grace, had seemed to lay himself open to the charge of unduly minimizing the function of free will.There is about the treatise the fragrance of mystical theology; not the mystical theology of the esoteric, but that of the simple Christian living in the world. It is wonderful how this ascetic, this cloistered recluse, touches his subject with the hand of one who knows the pulsations of average humanity.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux - Concerning Grace and Free Will Part II

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St. Bernard of Clairvaux - Concerning Grace and Free Will Part I

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The Summa Theologica (or the Summa Theologiae or simply the Summa, written 1265–1274) is the most famous work of Thomas Aquinas although it was never finished. It was intended as a manual for beginners as a compilation of all of the main theological teachings of that time. It summarizes the reasonings for almost all points of Christian theology in the West, which, before the Protestant Reformation, subsisted solely in the Roman Catholic Church. The Summa&#39;s topics follow a cycle: the existence of God, God&#39;s creation, Man, Man&#39;s purpose, Christ, the Sacraments, and back to God. (Summary adapted from the Wikipedia) 115. Of the Action of the Corporeal Creature 116. On Fate 117. Of Things Pertaining to the Action of Man 118. Of the Production of Man from Man As to the Soul 119. Of the Propagation of Man As to the Body

Summa Theologica - Part I Q115-119: Of the Action of the Corporeal Creature - Of the Propagation of Man As to the Body

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The Summa Theologica (or the Summa Theologiae or simply the Summa, written 1265–1274) is the most famous work of Thomas Aquinas although it was never finished. It was intended as a manual for beginners as a compilation of all of the main theological teachings of that time. It summarizes the reasonings for almost all points of Christian theology in the West, which, before the Protestant Reformation, subsisted solely in the Roman Catholic Church. The Summa&#39;s topics follow a cycle: the existence of God, God&#39;s creation, Man, Man&#39;s purpose, Christ, the Sacraments, and back to God. (Summary adapted from the Wikipedia) 109. The Ordering of the Bad Angels 110. How Angels Act on Bodies 111. The Action of the Angels on Man 112. The Mission of the Angels 113. Of the Guardianship of the Good Angels 114. Of the Assaults of the Demons

Summa Theologica - Part I Q109-114: The Ordering of the Bad Angels - Of the Assaults of the Demons

Audiobooks with the Western and Eastern Church Fathers. St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Benedict, St. Augustine, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and many more!