For a great many of the laity, Catholic life consists simply in the Sunday Mass, the occasional sacraments, and daily prayers; and this narrow practice they would defend as though it were all that they were, in virtue of their state, called upon to show. Now, it is surely to be regretted that the whole treasury of the Church, which is most needed just by those whose busy lives are crammed with material interests, should be left to the hands of so small a proportion of her children. Is it any wonder that prayers become listless and uninteresting, that Mass itself develops into routine, that the sacraments become badges of respectability, or, at the most, professions of faith? The real inner life, which Christ came to endow with fuller life, shrivels up.

Without regular reminders of God and a sure routine of prayer and meditation, the inner life shrivels, devotion grows listless, and the Sacraments can become mere habits. Daily meditation is a proven remedy for such dangerous spiritual lethargy, and in our challenging time it is a more important practice than ever before. Originally published as Meditations for Layfolk, this edition of Classic Catholic Meditations recovers the readable and insightful essays of Fr. Bede Jarrett, OP (d. 1934), who understood the need for Catholic laypeople to shape and sanctify their busy lives with brief times of devotion and focused mental prayer. In these pages, Fr. Jarrett offers more than 120 meditations with precisely that goal in mind: None are longer than 1,000 words, and each one attends to some unique truth of Divine Revelation that assists the reader in personal prayer. Don't know how to meditate? Fr. Jarrett's simple and kindly guidance is accessible for those in all walks of life, and makes this time-honored practice understandable for those unfamiliar with traditional Catholic forms of prayer. Classic Catholic Meditations will calm your soul, inform and enrich your faith, and help you enter more deeply into prayer. Why not begin today?

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Excerpt from Meditations for Layfolk To confront ourselves every morning with some deep truth of revela tion is to realize our dignity as Christians. The high doctrine that St. Paul taught to his converts, men indeed just rescued from a rather degraded paganism, insisted always on the lofty position to which each had been called. He dealt with the sinner by making him realize that he was intended to be a saint. All of us need this inspiriting view of our vocation. Our lives are cast in mean streets, and we therefore count them without honour or value. Conscious simply of their pettiness, we make no attempt to see their true grandeur. We see but dimly if we see only the vision of the glory of the world. Taking, then, day by day a glimpse at one or other of the mysteries of God, we shall surely be led to understand ever more and more the worth of those souls of ours for which Christ did not disdain to die. There will of course be no need to worry ourselves if through some cause or other we are not able each day to fit in our meditation. So long as we can make it a general rule, we can well afford to allow some exceptions. But perhaps the word meditation itself sounds too alarming? We think not, for by this time the old fear of it as an intellectual gymnastic exercise of exceptional skill should have vanished. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.