NOW AVAILABLE! There is an ancient Christian saying from the Patristic Era which is known in its most concise form as lex orandi, lex credendi. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church translates it: “The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays.”

In May 1999, seven thousand people crowded the basilica in Bologna, Italy, to offer a farewell to Enzo Piccinini, a surgeon who died tragically at the age of forty-eight. Who was this doctor who had left an indelible mark on so many lives? 

In the talks and interviews collected in The Miracle of Hospitality, Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the international lay movement Communion and Liberation (CL), delves into the source of this miracle—the free gift we call charity.

Cry of the Heart is the late Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete’s incisive and heartfelt look at what the experience of suffering reveals to each of us. He draws upon insights from literary figures such as Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Elie Wiesel; adds the wisdom of Saints John Paul II and Padre Pio; and engages our own everyday human experience.

In 1980, two men sit down to record a conversation. They have much in common: both are passionate, articulate thinkers. But their differences are just as striking: Giovanni Testori is a well-known writer-and an openly gay man. Luigi Giussani is a Catholic priest who has attracted so many students with his striking way of re-proposing the Christian message that he’s unwittingly started a movement.

With his characteristic wit and ease, Albacete engages the thorniest questions—the relation of faith and reason, the problem of modernity, the possibility of a Christian culture—as they play out in science and politics, money and love, law and finance. He speaks to families, youth, and his friends in the media.

Ron Hansen opens the doors of his writing studio to share with us his passions for history, scandal, theology, Jesuits, the American West, and golf (which he plays even in bad weather).