In his first Encyclical, Pope Benedict helps to clarify the meaning of love. He examines the nature of various kinds of love—human love and divine love, eros, friendship, and charity. He writes beautifully and inspirationally of how man was made for love by the God who is love, the God who became one of us out of love—Jesus Christ.

What can the lay person learn from the life of a monk? Solitude and Silence are two pillars of monastic life that many people quickly point to as the hardest and most confusing parts of this kind of religious consecration. However, the great spiritual writer Thomas à Kempis, author of The Imitation of Christ, helps us to understand that all Christians are called to some solitude and silence in our lives while not taking on a complete eremitical life.

The Consolation of Philosophy is one of the key works in the rich tradition of Western philosophy, partly because of the circumstances in which it was written. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c480-c524) was of aristocratic Roman birth and became consul and then master of offices at Ravenna, one of the highest posts under the Ostrogothic Roman ruler Theodoric. But Boethius was unjustly charged with treason in 524, and this led to house arrest, then torture and execution.

Origen (c. 185-c. 253) was the most influential Christian theologian before Augustine, the founder of Biblical study as a serious discipline in the Christian tradition, and a figure with immense influence on the development of Christian spirituality. This volume presents a comprehensive and accessible insight into Origen's life and writings, written and compiled by Joseph W. Trigg, a leading Origen authority. An introduction analyzes the principal influences that formed him as a Christian and as a thinker.

In The Madness of Crowds Douglas Murray investigates the dangers of ‘woke’ culture and the rise of identity politics. In lively, razor-sharp prose he examines the most controversial issues of our moment: sexuality, gender, technology and race, with interludes on the Marxist foundations of ‘wokeness’, the impact of tech and how, in an increasingly online culture, we must relearn the ability to forgive.