Books published by publisher Franciscan Media

In his newest book, Fr. Murray Bodo, OFM, brings to life seven teachings from the life and writings of St. Francis of Assisi in the prayerful, lyrical style his readers will recognize. These seven teachings are both a way and a destination, the way being transformation and the destination being the love of God. St Francis invites us to go on a journey from love through love into love.The seven teachings outlined here—plus an eighth teaching on love, the teaching behind all teachings—define a spirituality for our own time that anyone can learn to practice in his or her own life, anyone who has an attitude of reverence for others and for the earth and all of nature, and who acknowledges the existence of a higher power that is beyond what one can perceive with the senses. St. Francis was not a medieval theologian but a teacher of wisdom who used sayings, stories, and rituals to show us how we can allow God to transform our lives. In this, as in everything else, he was following in the footsteps of Jesus, who is the mystery of the fullness of God among us. You, too, can follow in Jesus’ footsteps with these teachings:The First Teaching: The Wonder of the IncarnationThe Second Teaching: The Paradox of Evangelical PovertyThe Third Teaching: Live the GospelThe Fourth Teaching: Go and Repair God’s HouseThe Fifth Teaching: Making PeaceThe Sixth Teaching: All Creatures Are Our Brothers and SistersThe Seventh Teaching: The Joy of Humble Praise and Service of GodThe Teaching of Teachings: LoveThis simple map for living is why St. Francis is still admired today in our fractious and divided world. What he teaches, if lived, brings joy, which is the result of union with God, who lives with us and within all of creation.Meditating on these teachings from St. Francis will give you hope; for hope is the grace to imagine a future more positive, more loving, and more joyful than the world we now find ourselves in. As St. Francis used to say to his brothers, “Let us begin to do good, for up to now we have done nothing.”

It's Christmas time at St. Anne parish, and a new family has arrived! The Perez family doesn’t look like the other families in the parish. As five-year-old Mateo stares at Katie and Patrick, clutching his little stuffed burro, they see he's just puzzled about them. But it's Father Miguel's job to take care of them, right? Just then, a bell rings and the twins are swept up in another Chime Travel adventure, this time to find Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem. This fresh yet authentic retelling of the biblical Infancy Narratives sheds new light on the life of the Holy Family. And when at last the Magi arrive, Katie asks Mary, “Are you sure you want all of these strangers around the baby?" Mary smiles. "Strangers are simply new friends, just waiting to be loved.” Katie and Patrick think of the Perez family. Can they still make new friends for Christmas?Book 5 in the Chime Travelers series, exciting new chapter books ideal for children in grades 2-5.

Forgiving Mother offers you practical guidance and spiritual wisdom to begin your journey to wholeness of spirit. Highly recommended! — Lisa M. Hendey, author, The Grace of Yes Marge Steinhage Fenelon knows the pain, fear, hopelessness, insecurity, resentment and anger of being raised by a troubled mother. She also knows the way out: Mary. In Forgiving Mother, Fenelon deftly explores the ways the Blessed Virgin can provide comfort and healing if you truly desire it. Drawing from personal experience as well as wisdom from Church documents, Scripture, and the saints, Fenelon sketches a path from despair to peace. She offers concrete steps and prayers to help you deal with the painful memories, emotions and fears that are rooted in your past. Part memoir, part spiritual guide, Forgiving Mother is a workbook for healing even the most deeply rooted pain. It also includes a novena, which you can pray alongside each chapter or as a final step in the healing process. You will likely find solace from going through the novena again and again, as you’ll find healing is a cyclical process—not a linear one. You are a child of Mary and she loves you tenderly. She really, truly is your mother—given to you by our Lord as he hung dying on the cross. Jesus wants you to accept his mother as your own and to develop a deepening relationship with her so that she can fill the void that the past has left inside of you. And in her kind, motherly way, she will. What’s more, she will lead you to her son who, as God, is the ultimate source of all healing and peace. Pray through it, meditate on it, and let Mary’s love sink into your heart and soul. Above all, be gentle with yourself. This is your healing process, and no one else’s. With the Blessed Mother’s help, you can become the whole, healed and truly cherished person you were meant to be.The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

Human lives—and human issues—run the gamut from addiction and anger to weariness and worries. God, I Have Issues is a gentle call to prayer in the midst of our good and bad times, trusting our problems and joys to a God who wishes to share them all with us. Each "issue" opens with a Scripture passage (and lists others that are related) and contains a reflection, "prayer pointers" and "words to take with you."

Dr. Ray Guarendi believes that parenting is too important to be taken seriously—and that goes double for grandparenting. As a father of ten, clinical psychologist, radio host and author of many books about marriage and parenting, Dr. Ray has spent his career helping to strengthen families through a combination of Catholic theology, common-sense insights and wry humor. Now, having become a new grandpa himself, Dr. Ray is turning his attention to the joyful, rejuvenating and sometimes complicated subject of grandparenting.In Grandparenting: Just Like Parenting Only Different, he answers real questions from grands. Some wonder how being a grandparent will differ from being a parent, and want to mature into it with as few wrinkles as possible. Some are a daily presence in their grandchildren’s lives, perhaps even sharing a home with them and wanting their interactions to be as smooth as possible. Others live many miles away and fear yielding to the temptation of bribery to endear their distant grandbabies to them. Some are baffled as to why their own children are raising the grandkids so unlike they were raised—in practice, discipline or morals. Others see their grandchildren as difficult to be around, and ask what, if anything, they can do about it.Whether you’re a “Grandma,” a “Poppy,” an “Opa” or a “Nana,” Dr. Ray can help you navigate this second go-round with children in a way that mirrors God’s own unconditional love for us. You’ll learn to balance the expertise you’ve banked during decades as a parent with the emotional dynamics of this new stage of life. And best of all, you’ll get a little extra insight into savoring the true, unabashed joy of grandparenthood.

If there’s one thing Katie never thought she’d do, it was walk through something called the “Door of the Dead.” During a class field trip to visit the monastery of the Poor Clares, Katie is unexpectedly swept up into her second Chime Travelers adventure. She finds herself in Assisi, the same city where her twin brother Patrick met St. Francis of Assisi on his last journey through time. Instead of meeting St. Francis, Katie meets a young woman named Clare. Clare has everything—she’s beautiful, her family is wealthy, and she is to be married soon. Katie discovers that Clare also has a secret: she wants to leave everything behind and join Francis and his brothers in service to God. But Clare’s family doesn’t want her to go. On the night she leaves, Clare and Katie must run through the darkness and escape through a door only used for funerals, the Door of the Dead. Has Clare made a mistake? Is God really calling her to leave everything she knows behind? And should Katie go with her on this dangerous adventure? Book 4 in the Chime Travelers series, exciting new chapter books ideal for children in grades 2-4.

We drive to work on the stored energy of ten thousand years of sunlight. Our daily bread seems to generate miraculously from store shelves. And our communities can be connected with a billion ones and zeros over fiber optic cables. For us, the idea of being a creature can seem passé. Yet in this lonely world of mastery, in a time so dominated by human desire and design that it has been dubbed the “anthropocene,” the human age, many of us feel that we are missing some essential truth about who we are. The glimpses of this truth come when we lose cell reception on a long hike in the forest and our eyes are lifted to the simple marvel of trees. We feel this truth when we take up a shovel and sense the satisfying heave of dirt as we plant a modest garden. We hear this truth when we tune out the traffic and listen to the song sparrow’s melody, eavesdropping on a beauty that serves no human economy. In all this we hear a whisper of the truth that we are creatures—and we long to live in this reality. But how can we, when we have moved so far from our life source in the soil? For the past 50 years, Wendell Berry has been helping seekers chart a return to the practice of being creatures. Through his essays, poetry and fiction, Berry has repeatedly drawn our attention to the ways in which our lives are gifts in a whole economy of gifts. Berry presents us with the sort of coherent vision for the lived moral and spiritual life that we need now. His work helps us remember our givenness and embrace our life as creatures. His insights flow from a life and practices, and so it is a vision that can be practiced and lived—it is a vision that is grounded in the art of being a creature. Wendell Berry and the Given Life articulates his vision for the creaturely life and the Christian understandings of humility and creation that underpin it. The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

More than thirty-five years after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador—an outspoken opponent of injustice and defender of the poor—his words remain as relevant and challenging as ever. In Through the Year with Oscar Romero, you’ll encounter 365 passages from the archbishop’s powerful homilies, curated to fit into your spiritual practice every day of the year. During his time serving the people of El Salvador’s rural regions, Romero witnessed firsthand the suffering of the country’s poor and dispossessed. Later, his outspoken disavowal of violence and repression was recorded in courageous homilies broadcast by radio throughout the country. Romero's homilies were so popular that in rural communities, the poorest of the poor would conserve their batteries all week in order to be able to listen to the archbishop’s Sunday Mass. Archbishop Romero was shot to death on March 24, 1980, while performing Mass. Although his killer was never found, many blame his assassination on right-wing death squads. This rerelease of Through the Year with Oscar Romero features a new introduction celebrating Archbishop Romero’s 2015 beatification, which named him a martyr and placed him one step closer to becoming a saint. Let Archbishop Romero accompany you throughout the year. You’ll be inspired by the way he truly lived Jesus’s teachings—and what’s more, you’ll be spurred on to action yourself. As Romero himself put it: “A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of God that does not get under anyone's skin or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?”

We drive to work on the stored energy of ten thousand years of sunlight. Our daily bread seems to generate miraculously from store shelves. And our communities can be connected with a billion ones and zeros over fiber optic cables. For us, the idea of being a creature can seem passé. Yet in this lonely world of mastery, in a time so dominated by human desire and design that it has been dubbed the “anthropocene,” the human age, many of us feel that we are missing some essential truth about who we are. The glimpses of this truth come when we lose cell reception on a long hike in the forest and our eyes are lifted to the simple marvel of trees. We feel this truth when we take up a shovel and sense the satisfying heave of dirt as we plant a modest garden. We hear this truth when we tune out the traffic and listen to the song sparrow’s melody, eavesdropping on a beauty that serves no human economy. In all this we hear a whisper of the truth that we are creatures—and we long to live in this reality. But how can we, when we have moved so far from our life source in the soil? For the past 50 years, Wendell Berry has been helping seekers chart a return to the practice of being creatures. Through his essays, poetry and fiction, Berry has repeatedly drawn our attention to the ways in which our lives are gifts in a whole economy of gifts.Berry presents us with the sort of coherent vision for the lived moral and spiritual life that we need now. His work helps us remember our givenness and embrace our life as creatures. His insights flow from a life and practices, and so it is a vision that can be practiced and lived—it is a vision that is grounded in the art of being a creature. Wendell Berry and the Given Life articulates his vision for the creaturely life and the Christian understandings of humility and creation that underpin it.

Travel Saint Junipero Serra’s Camino Real in California with a pilgrim’s heart—and this book in hand— and prepare to continue, in your own way, the forward journey that he began in the 1700s. You’ll make your way to 21 missions, stretching from San Diego to Sonoma north of San Francisco Bay. The more you seek, the more you will find. The more you ask, the more you will receive. Such is the nature of a pilgrimage. Each of the missions is a unique jewel and a spiritual oasis. Some are found wedged into cities; others are surrounded by mountains and valleys. They range from simple to ornate. The grounds are filled with bells, statues, fountains, and gardens, all symbols of life and feasts of color. Old Spanish mission art can be found next to Indian wall paintings. Symbols of piety from two centuries form a wonderful holy mix. But author Stephen J. Binz does not gloss over the sometimes-painful historical aspects of the missions. The mission histories are difficult reading, documenting mistreatment and uprisings. But despite the many flaws of the Spanish mission system, the gospel still found ways in these missions to break through to hurting communities—and it continues to break through today. For each of the 21 missions, this guide offers you the street address for your GPS, the mission’s website, a brief history of the place, the story of the mission’s patron or namesake, and information about the mission bells. You’ll be given a tour of the mission church, as well as a prayer service for your visit.But this book is much more than a simple travel guide. You’ll learn more about the life of Saint Junípero Serra, whose vision is responsible for this holy Camino. You’ll be enriched by two interwoven traditions: the Spanish Franciscan and the American Indian. You’ll find yourself becoming more committed to being a missionary disciple, always desiring to communicate the reason for the joy and hope that is within you. Let the journey begin.

Alessandro is staying with his grandparents, who run a small shop that sells figures for the presepe (Nativity scene), while his parents look for work in another country. To help with the boy’s loneliness, his grandfather encourages Alessandro to make his own figure of the baby Jesus. They will bring that figure to Rome in two weeks to have it blessed by the Holy Father on Bambinelli Sunday. Through the events that occur in the time leading up to receiving the blessing in St. Peter's Square, Alessandro comes to see his world in a new way, and receives the best surprise of all in the end.This book for children ages 7-10 tells a wonderful story about sharing, comfort, generosity, and forgiveness through the lens of a long-standing Italian tradition. The beautiful illustrations and timeless story make this a treasure Advent and Christmas resource for generations to come.

Travel Saint Junipero Serra’s Camino Real in California with a pilgrim’s heart—and this book in hand— and prepare to continue, in your own way, the forward journey that he began in the 1700s. You’ll make your way to 21 missions, stretching from San Diego to Sonoma north of San Francisco Bay. The more you seek, the more you will find. The more you ask, the more you will receive. Such is the nature of a pilgrimage. Each of the missions is a unique jewel and a spiritual oasis. Some are found wedged into cities; others are surrounded by mountains and valleys. They range from simple to ornate. The grounds are filled with bells, statues, fountains, and gardens, all symbols of life and feasts of color. Old Spanish mission art can be found next to Indian wall paintings. Symbols of piety from two centuries form a wonderful holy mix. But author Stephen J. Binz does not gloss over the sometimes-painful historical aspects of the missions. The mission histories are difficult reading, documenting mistreatment and uprisings. But despite the many flaws of the Spanish mission system, the gospel still found ways in these missions to break through to hurting communities—and it continues to break through today. For each of the 21 missions, this guide offers you the street address for your GPS, the mission’s website, a brief history of the place, the story of the mission’s patron or namesake, and information about the mission bells. You’ll be given a tour of the mission church, as well as a prayer service for your visit. But this book is much more than a simple travel guide. You’ll learn more about the life of Saint Junípero Serra, whose vision is responsible for this holy Camino. You’ll be enriched by two interwoven traditions: the Spanish Franciscan and the American Indian. You’ll find yourself becoming more committed to being a missionary disciple, always desiring to communicate the reason for the joy and hope that is within you. Let the journey begin.A 2018 Catholic Press Association Book Award winner.