The Perennial Novelty of Jesus

    The perennial novelty of Jesus can be best gauged from the growing efforts to make him a nonentity. In recent decades secularists as well as Jews have been in the forefront of such efforts, a fact of which Catholics should be more aware than they are. The novelty of Jesus was so great that Old Testament prophecies about him fell far short of what his novelty really is. This in spite of the fact that the Old Testament was very novel in relation to all other religions. Then the startlingly novel aspects of Jesus public mission of little more than two years are presented. That mission aimed at gradually disclosing Jesus' real status, his equality with the Father, the most novel message conceivable. That message had for its backdrop Jesus' extraordinary life and deeds. Their combined novelty perpetuates itself in the lives of saints of whom ever fresh instances arise within the Church.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892539-07-6  •  viii+89 pages  •  softcover  •  $6.00

The Drama of Quantities

    Quantities rule modern life and do this increasingly. Their rule at times is tantamount to tyranny. For this man can only blame himself. Galileo was the first to show that motion, and therefore everything in this life, is ruled by verifiably exact laws. But it was the same Galileo, who gave for mankind a pattern in hubris, which in this case was all the more alluring as it came wrapped in science. Galileo argued that only quantities put man into contact with reality and that secondary qualities were a purely subjective matter. The first scientific dent in man's inordinate respect for quantities came when Gödel formulated, in 1930, his theory of the incompleteness of arithmetic, this basic systematization of numbers. He, however, lacked philosophical and personal qualities to reverse the trend initiated by Galileo. Instead, enormous hearing was given to pontifications in the name of mathematics, such as Norbert Wiener's statements on cybernetics as if it impinged even on religion. Power over quantitative laws gave mankind undreamed riches, but also impoverished his grasp of his sense of purpose, which implies immensely more than mere quantities.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-47-X  •  viii + 76 pages  •  softcover  •  $5

Archipelago Church

    The Catholic Church has been rapidly changing for now four decades. The changes may appear as a flood, if one considers what has happened in Europe, a continent that a century ago could appear to be a Catholic continent. Catholicism suffered greatly on other continents as well. They all seem to be awash in a flood of secularism and immorality. This dismal picture is balanced by the emergence of ever new islands of sound faith and spirituality. They are often centered on the Secular Institutes and especially on their core members, dedicated to the three evangelical counsels. There have been in addition an unusually large number of beatifications and canonizations during the pontificate of John Paul II. The men and women so honored serve as the solid foundations of ever new isles of intense spiritual life, the chief sign of the perennial vitality of the Church as if it were an Archipelago in the midst of sinister waves.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-0-9790577-0-0  •  viii + 77 pages  •  softcover   •   $5

Resurrection?

    Christian faith rests on the resurrection of Christ. He rose from the dead in a body, which, though real in the ordinary sense, also had most stupendous characteristics. Concerning the details of this most extraordinary of all events, the four Gospels are our sole source of information. They constitute a source which should recommend itself also by its sober factual style. Critics, who have questioned that source, only keep contradicting one another, whereas the story of the Resurrection keeps making its unique impact throughout history. Christian posterity has, from the start, insisted on the reality of Jesus' risen body and also on the importance of the reality of the Church as a witness to Jesus' resurrection. Needless to say, the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the body of believers has always been most resented by the world, and for a variety of reasons, of which most pernicious is the cult of the body. Such are the three points discussed in this book, which deals with the question of questions: Resurrection?

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-39-9  •  viii + 78 pages  •  softcover  •  $5

Thy Kingdom Come?

    What Jesus taught about the kingdom of God sums up his teaching. And he most emphatically enjoined us to pray: "Thy kingdom come." A review of his teaching of the kingdom of God shows that one should not pray for its coming with facile confidence. God's kingdom, let alone its final arrival, means an irrevocable separation of those who proved themselves worthy of that kingdom from those who failed to do so. The history of the Church shows a difference between praying for God's kingdom or praying for such form of it which is a compromise of God's purpose with man. The latter is man's eternal salvation and not necessarily his well-being on earth, which all too often means a departure from the standards of of God's kingdom. What about the future? What are those features of the Church of the future for which one would pray in vain the words "thy kingdom come," and what are those features that will surely be on hand?

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-37-2  •  viii + 76 pages  •  softcover  •  $5.00

Death?

    Death is a reality with the longest shadow. Ancient pagan man either resigned to his inability to escape the reach of that shadow or tried to put up a brave front to it. Hopes of a life beyond death remained very vague and unconvincing. During much of the Old Testament the problem of death remained a question not to be confronted. Only within the message delivered by Jesus was death spoken of as the beginning of a life never to be terminated. Faith in life beyond death could then inspire fearless and often joyful approaches to most cruel forms of death, as shown in accounts about the last hours of martyrs and saints. Modern post-Christian grapplings with death are so many vain flights from death, even though they show the traces of Christian faith in future life. Unfortunately, the treatments of death in the "new" theology is too often lost in convoluted phraseology, which conveys little about the plain Christian assurance that death is merely the portal beyond which great personal realities—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—beckon to the dying.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-43-7  •  viii + 75 pages  •  softcover  •  $5

Confidence in God?

    Confidence building has become the hottest pursuit of our times. A wild variety of means is being tried, only to invite ever new methods. They all show drastic shortcomings. For that reason alone it may be worth taking a new and serious look at the question whether one can have confidence in God. God has always been a mysterious being, but he is especially so in a post-Christian age that has become oblivious to the fact of Christ in whom God has become a most concrete being. And so did confidence which it was the purpose of Christ's life on earth to build and perpetuate. Such is the topic of the first chapter. Christ achieved the building of that confidence by undergoing a baptism, his death, so that by rising from the death, he may assure all those who are baptized that they, too, can cope with death, this greatest threat to human confidence. This is why baptism has become the foremost treasure of the Church, as shown in the second chapter. The third chapter is about the saints as so many models of unshaken confidence in God.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-36-4  •  viii + 76 pages  •  softcover  •  $5