World-renowned evangelist, Emmy Award winner, and New York Times best-selling author Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen presents a collection of engaging sermons, that will encourage the reader to better understand the two greatest sermons preached by Christ.
THE CROSS AND THE BEATITUDES
Jesus calls all His children to the pulpit of the Cross, and every word He says to them is set down for the purpose of an eternal publication and undying consolation.
There was never a preacher like the dying Christ. There was never a congregation like that which gathered about the pulpit of the Cross. And there was never a sermon like the Seven Last Words.
These meditations on the Seven Last Words correlated to the Beatitudes make no pretence to absoluteness. The Words are not necessarily related to the beatitudes but they do make convenient points of illustrations.
BLESSED ARE THE MEEK
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL
"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
BLESSED ARE THE CLEAN OF HEART
"(Son) behold thy mother, Woman, behold thy son."
BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT
"My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER JUSTICE
"I thirst."
BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS
"It is consummated."
BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN
"Father into thy hands I commend my spirit."
Sprache
ISBN-13
978-1-7777271-7-8 (9781777727178)
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Fulton John Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895. In high school, he won a three-year university scholarship, but he turned it down to pursue a vocation to the priesthood. He attended St. Viator College Seminary in Illinois and St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota. In 1919, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois. He earned a licentiate in sacred theology and a bachelor of canon law at the Catholic University of America and a doctorate at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
Sheen received numerous teaching offers but declined them in obedience to his bishop and became an assistant pastor in a rural parish. Having thus tested his obedience, the bishop later permitted him to teach at the Catholic University of America and at St. Edmund's College in Ware, England, where he met G.K. Chesterton, whose weekly BBC radio broadcast inspired Sheen's later NBC broadcast, The Catholic Hour (1930-1952).
In 1952, Sheen began appearing on ABC in his own series, Life Is Worth Living. Despite being given a time slot that forced him to compete with Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra, the dynamic Sheen enjoyed enormous success and in 1954 reach tens of millions of viewers, non-Catholics as well as Catholics.
When asked by Pope Pius XII how many converts he had made, Sheen responded, "Your Holiness, I have never counted them. I am always afraid if I did count them, I might think I made them, instead of the Lord."
Sheen gave annual Good Friday homilies at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral, led numerous retreats for priests and religious, and preached at summer conferences in England.
"If you want people to stay as they are," he said, "tell them what they want to hear. If you want to improve them, tell them what they should know." This he did, not only in his preaching but also in the more than ninety books he wrote. His book, Peace of Soul was sixth on the New York Times best-seller list.
Sheen served as auxiliary bishop of New York (1951-1966) and as bishop of Rochester (1966-1969).
The good Lord called Fulton Sheen home in 1979. His television broadcasts, now on tape, and his books continue his earthly work of winning souls for Christ. Sheen's cause for canonization was opened in 2002, and in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI declared him "Venerable."
