The History of the Kingdom of God I: Creation to Parousia is a revision by Sofia Cavalletti of her earlier work, History's Golden Thread, a core text in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Another core text, Living Liturgy, has also been revised and will be the second volume, The History of the Kingdom of God II: Liturgy and the Building of the Kingdom. Together, these two volumes offer the reader insight into Scripture and Liturgy as the means to understand God's plan of salvation history, from the creation of the world, through redemption by the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, to its culmination in the Parousia, when God will be all in all. While this first volume is essential reading for all catechists of the Good Shepherd, anyone who studies the Bible and who seeks to understand God's revelation through sacred history will be enlightened and inspired by Cavalletti's insights and scholarship. According to Rebekah Rojcewicz, the translator of both the original volume and this revision, and also a catechist herself, this revised edition is "even more essential, … a fruit of Cavalletti's more than fifty years of patient observation of and work with children in the atrium…. Essentiality is one of the strongest spiritual characteristics of even the youngest children, and it is also one of the most severe disciplines for most adults. In this book, the less is truly more, for it enables us to more readily detect the "golden thread," the plan of God that binds together the whole history of salvation.

A 'kingdom' is a group of people ruled by one person, the 'king', who makes all the laws himself without their votes or approval. The concept is anathema to contemporary democracy and its confidence in government by the people, the naive assumption that majorities will always get it right. History does not encourage optimism. There have been more bad kings than good, even in God's chosen people Israel. Behind our world's problems, which baffle our finest politicians and philosophers, lies a fundamental, racial and fatal error of having chosen the wrong king. Born into his kingdom, he has deceived us into thinking we can each of us be our own kingdom, inevitably clashing with each other, as individuals or nations. The only solution is to find the right king and become his loyal citizens. One day all other kingdoms will be shaken to pieces but this will remain, for ever. Only then will the conflict, in which every one of us is involved, be resolved.

This book traces the history of the biblical idea of the Kingdom of God and suggests its contemporary relevance. “To grasp what is meant by the Kingdom of God is to come very close to the heart of the Bible’s gospel of salvation.”—from the Preface

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” —Matthew 13:31–32 When Jesus began his ministry, he announced that the kingdom of God was at hand. But many modern-day Christians don’t really understand what the kingdom of God is or how it relates to the message of the gospel. Defining kingdom as the King’s power over the King’s people in the King’s place, Patrick Schreiner investigates the key events, prophecies, and passages of Scripture that highlight the important theme of kingdom across the storyline of the Bible—helping readers see how the mission of Jesus and the coming of the kingdom fit together. Part of the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series.

Bestselling author and theologian Scott Hahn offers a commentary on 1 and 2 Chronicles as a liturgical and theological interpretation of Israel's history.

This book describes the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori-based style of catechesis that focuses on the child’s independent journey to God by working with materials in a specially prepared place called an atrium. Written by Sofia Cavaletti, the Italian scripture scholar who developed the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, this classic work demonstrates the profound spiritual capabilities of children as brought forth through their engagement in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. This book is important for anyone desiring to learn about the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd or the spiritual life of children ages 3-6. Sofia Cavaletti is an internationally known biblical scholar and was a member of the committee that prepared the Directory for Masses with Children. Together with her collaborator, Gianna Gobbi, a Montessori educator, she has traveled throughout the world forming catechists in this essentially oral method and helping to establish catechetical centers modeled on their Centro di Catechesi in Rome.

From the award-winning author of Lost Mountain, a stirring work of memoir, spiritual journey, and historical inquiry. At the age of thirty-three, Erik Reece's father, a Baptist minister, took his own life, leaving Erik in the care of his grandmother and his grandfather-also a fundamentalist Baptist preacher, and a pillar of his rural Virginia community. While Erik grew up with a conflicted relationship with Christianity, he unexpectedly found comfort in the Jefferson Bible. Inspired by the text, he undertook what would become a spiritual and literary quest to identify an "American gospel" coursing through the work of both great and forgotten American geniuses, from William Byrd to Walt Whitman to William James to Lynn Margulis. The result of Reece's journey is a deeply intimate, stirring book about personal, political, and historical demons-and the geniuses we must call upon to combat them.