Michael Dubruiel: Free Catholic Book

        Eucharist means..."thanksgiving"

Michael Dubruiel wrote a book to help people deepen their experience of the Mass.  He titled it, How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist.  You can read about it here. It is available free today (4/17/2-26)

The following is an excerpt:

From Chapter 3 - Adore. Part 6

“ T R U S T I N G  I N G O D    I N A LL C I R C U M S TA N C E S ”

When Our Lord spoke about his Second Coming, an event that every celebration of the Eucharist looks forward to and prays for in a joyful manner,he laid out the signs that will precede that coming, and indeed they are all rather horrible — that is, if all your hope is invested in your 401K.Yet notice the contrast between the unbeliever and the believer:

And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
— LUKE 2 1 : 2 5 – 2 8 ( EMPHASIS ADDED )

While one crowd is dying of fear because everything seems to be crumbling around them the other crowd, the believers, stand up and look to the heavens. Why?
If we truly place our faith in God,we will trust in him no matter what happens. In fact, the way that we see will be completely different. Jesus referred to unbelievers as blind and believers as those who truly see. Seeing that God is the “one thing needful” keeps us from putting our trust in anything else.

St. Benedict, in his Rule, counsels those who want to follow Christ “to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.” This means that we must love Christ above everything else, and that being loved by Christ must be our first priority in life.

Michael Dubruiel: Free Catholic Book

     

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From How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist by Michael Dubruiel

About Michael Dubruiel

From chapter 2 - Serve. 

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE FOR YOU?”

When Jesus had finished washing the feet of his disciples, he rose and resumed his place at the table and asked them a simple question: “Do you know what I have done for you?”
There are several ways to take this question which Jesus posed to us, his followers; let me suggest two.

What Jesus Has Saved Us From

The first possible meaning relates to what Jesus has done for us by his sacrificial act on the cross Do we know what Jesus has saved us from?

You may know enough to say,“Jesus has redeemed us from the bondage of original sin,” but unless you know what the lived consequences of this sin are, you cannot fully appreciate what Jesus has saved you from.The Catechism of the Catholic Church spells out the nature and effects of original sin in paragraphs 397–412. Here I briefly summarize this teaching and contrast it with how Jesus has reversed the “curse” of original sin.

 First, in the sin:

•    Man “let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and,abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command” (CCC 397).

— Jesus trusted in God completely, even to death on the Cross, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).

•    Man “preferred himself to God,” thereby turning his back on the Creator (CCC 398).
— Jesus, though he was the form of God, did not deem equality with God; rather, Jesus lowered himself, taking the role of a servant (see Philippians 2:6–7).
As a result of original sin:

•    People are “afraid of the God of whom they have con-ceived a distorted image” (CCC 399).
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— At the Conception of Jesus, his Mother was told: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30). — Jesus told his followers, “I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten by God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:5–7).

•    The original “harmony in which they [Adam and Eve] found themselves … is now destroyed” (CCC 400). — Jesus set the example of reversing this disharmony, so that St. Paul would pray, “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus” (Romans 15:5).

•    “The control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered” (CCC 400).
— Jesus’s death and our incorporation into it at baptism restore the right order, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace” (Romans 6:12–14).

LIVING THE E UCHARIST

Is your Christian life dominated by the fallen worldview?  Do you strive with the help of the Holy Spirit and the nourishment of the Eucharist to live the new life of the kingdom that Jesus offers?

Michael Dubruiel: The Pocket Guide to the Mass

   Michael Dubruiel's Pocket Guide to the Mass - a sample page. 

Walks you through the Mass, explaining the biblical basis of prayers, the meaning behind gestures, and a brief overview of the spirituality that brings Catholics together for Eucharist each week.

Published in 2007, still in print. 

An excellent resource for your parish for the Eucharistic Revival year. 

More books by Michael Dubruiel

Michael Dubruiel: The Pocket Guide to the Mass

   A Pocket Guide to the Mass by Michael Dubruiel: introduction

Get the most out of the Mass...

A Pocket Guide to the Mass walks you through the biblical basis of prayers, the meaning behind gestures, and a brief overview of the spirituality that brings Catholics together for Eucharist each week.

Reenergize your time at Mass or help those who are new or returning to the Church with this quick and insightful overview. Rediscover the fullness of the Mass today!

Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI

    by Michael Dubruiel...from 2007

I think with the release of this book (which I got yesterday and read straight through) the pope is positioning himself to be the St. Thomas Aquinas of our age. How or why do I say this? Because like St. Thomas who answered the objections to the Faith in his day, this pope is doing the same.

A few months ago someone asked me what book I would recommend that they give to their adult children who no longer practiced the faith, without hesitation I named this book as the one. At the time I had only read some excerpts available online from Germany and Italy. It was an act of faith then, now that I have the book I know that my recommendation was justified.

This is a great book, magisterial (even though the pope doesn't want it thought of in that way). It is not just another book about Jesus, it a revolutionary book about Jesus...in that it recaptures why people have had their lives changed by their belief in Jesus for over 2,000 years.
What makes this book so special? It is like a modern Summa (those who know St. Thomas Aquinas will understand me here) in that it answers modern questions of doubt, skepticism and even inquiry on not only who Jesus is, but why Jesus is the most important person anyone has ever or can ever know.
The pope's methodology is to take a scene from the Bible, like the Lord's baptism and then to draw on that scene from the entire Bible, to show what modern scholarship has done to help us to understand the historical context of the scene, tell us how the early Church fathers interpreted the scene, how would it have been viewed in Judaism (he uses the reflections of a Rabbi when discussing the Sermon on the Mount) and then to give the reader the meaning of this event for them. Along the way he answers questions to the many objections modern people bring to their encounter with Jesus.

As someone who has studied theology for a number of years and been exposed to every screwball theology out there, I found this book to be a corrective lens to refocus and correct my vision of who Jesus is and what following him means. What impresses me (and I'm not easily impressed) is that the Pope takes on the "screwball (my term, not his)" theologies in such a way as to making them seem silly (although he is incredibly charitable in his approach).

This book will have a great effect on renewing the Church and centering it on an image of Christ that is Biblical and credible, erasing years of poor and faulty preaching and teaching.

If you are not Catholic, but a Christian you will love this book too. In fact I predict you will be come a big fan of Joseph Ratzinger and will want to read his many published works to encounter someone rooted in Scripture and conversant with modern attacks on it. If you are a non Christian I think you will find in the book an excellent introduction to what Christians believe about the God-man from Nazareth. To all you parents out there who sent your kids to Catholic schools and now wish they would practice their faith, give them this book and reintroduce them to Jesus of Nazareth.