Got a favorite Lenten book?

  • My priest sent out an e-mail of the litur­gi­cal sched­ule all the way up to Pascha, thus cement­ing the feel­ing that Lent is com­ing along way too fast this year.

    It makes me start think­ing about a good book to read through Lent. Last year I read Frederica’s “First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Jour­ney Through the Canon of St. Andrew” (LINK) which I thor­oughly enjoyed. But maybe it’s time to re-read Fr. Schmemann’s “Great Lent” (LINK). And I also had a book that was was a read­ing and reflec­tion for every day of Lent, but I don’t seem to be able to find it (any­one know the one?). That might be good too.

    Or, if I felt like being mighty, I could go through Fr. John Mack’s “Ascend­ing the Heights:A Layman’s Guide to ‘The Lad­der of Divine Ascents’.” (LINK) Or try to make it through Fr. Jack Sparks tril­ogy based on “Unseen War­fare” (LINK).

    If I don’t think I’m up to that kind of spir­i­tual bench­press­ing, there are books made up of short thoughts that a per­son can take at their own pace. Things like Fr. Elchaninov’s “Diary of a Russ­ian Priest” (LINK), which I’ve been rav­ing on about. Or one called “The Time of the Spirit” (LINK) that has eclec­tic read­ings for all the months of the year — the Lenten por­tion is a very short read, but it’s some­times inter­est­ing to get an ecu­meni­cal (gasp!) perspective.

    Just curi­ous — any­one else got a Lenten book they like? All of the ones I just men­tioned are good, but some­thing new would be good too. (And BTW, it doesn’t have to be Orthodox.)


    Related posts:

    1. Fine lit­tle Lenten sandwich
    2. Read­ing the lives of the saints
    3. Harry Pot­ter — yeah, why not?
    4. Change and the Church
    5. Sea­sons change — in church, at home

    January 12th, 2007 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Deb 01.12.2007

    UK blog­ger, Eliz­a­beth “The Gar­den Win­dow”, found a good pos­si­bil­ity at the end of last year’s Lent here:
    http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html

    I don’t know if it will be updated for 2007, but this ver­sion looks easy enough to use.

    I like many of your options too. I need to pon­der what I’m going to do this year.

  • Mimi

    Wow, Deb’s link is very cool.

    I did both “First Fruits” and “Great Lent” last year, a chap­ter per day on both of them. I also have “Daily Lenten Guide for the Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian” which I enjoy — is that the one you were miss­ing? http://www.light-n-life.com/shopping/order_produc…

    I’ve also read “The Lenten Spring” and enjoyed it.

  • Grace

    Deb: That one is def­i­nitely a keeper. I love the idea of mak­ing your way through that many read­ings of the Fathers dur­ing Lent.

  • Grace

    Mimi: Bingo! I knew some­one would know it. Yes, that’s the one. (Hm. Now I have to won­der what hap­pened to my copy.)

  • Mimi

    I’m glad that’s it. Unfor­tu­nately I don’t know where your copy went.

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