Fr. Callistus' Recommendations

The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide to Everyday Living 
Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V.

St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is one of the most influential spiritual leaders of all time, yet many readers find his Rules for Discernment hard to understand. What can Ignatius teach us about the discernment of spirits that lies at the very heart of Christian life? In The Discernment of Spirits, Fr. Timothy Gallagher, a talented teacher, retreat leader, and scholar, helps us understand the Rules and how their insights are essential for our spiritual growth today. By integrating the Rules and the experience of contemporary people, Gallagher shows the precision, clarity, and insight of Ignatius's Rules, as well as the relevance of his thought for spiritual life today. When we learn to read Ignatius correctly, we discover in his remarkable words our own struggles, joys, and triumphs. This book is for all who desire greater awareness of God's action in their daily spiritual lives, and is essential reading for retreat directors, spiritual directors, priests, and counselors.

Into the Deep
Dan Burke

Prayer—it's mysterious, challenging, frustrating . . . and life-changing. Discover why growing in prayer, which sometimes can be compared to a battle, is worth every ounce of effort you give it. Even if you've never prayed, or if you've never developed the habit of daily prayer, God is waiting to meet you where you are and encourage you every step of the way.

Using a simple approach to prayer, you'll learn how even ten minutes a day can change your life. Author Dan Burke explains how to set up your own sacred prayer space, discusses the common obstacles to prayer, and provides practical ways to overcome them. You'll also read stories of others who are seeking to orient themselves to God through prayer.

If you're ready for God to transform your heart and mind, you will know the life that Jesus has promised; a life of peace and joy that cannot be taken away by the trials of this world.

Spiritual Warfare and The Discernment of Spirits
Dan Burke

Satan is always at work breeding sadness and anxiety while providing obstacles that prevent souls from making spiritual progress. In this concise yet powerful book, author Dan Burke presents the venerable, time-tested wisdom of Catholic mystics to help you understand the influence of the Enemy on your mind and heart, and the tactics you need to combat him.

With St. Ignatius as his guide, Burke presents here an indispensable, authoritative manual for engaging in daily battle with the Adversary combat that is both inevitable and winnable. Burke will help you recognize the ebbs and flows of consolation and desolation, and distinguish between the voices of God and of Satan. Best of all, you'll come to see the spiritual life not as a science to be learned, but as an intuitive art to be practiced as you move with increasing success from habitual sin to sanctity.

The battle for our souls is unavoidable. The saints won theirs by learning how to be spiritual warriors and by recognizing that we become stronger through battle and grow weaker from avoidance. With this book as your guide, you'll grow in strength and contentment as you learn:

• How to take captive every negative thought and make it obedient to Christ
• St. Ignatius's revelations exposing how the Devil seeks to influence us
• The Paradigm of Ascent and the Five Steps to Sanctity
• The three ways you can discern Good Spirits from Bad Spirits
• The three principal causes of desolation and what you must do when it afflicts your soul
• Proven methods for moving away from sin and toward self-giving love of God and neighbor.

Thirsting for Prayer
Fr. Jacques Philippe

"What the world most needs today is prayer. It is prayer that will give birth to all the renewals, healings, deep and fruitful transformations we all want for society today.... I am more and more convinced that everything comes from prayer and that, among the calls of the Spirit, this is the first and most urgent one we should respond to."

Many have already benefited from Fr. Jacques' best-selling book on prayer, Time for God. In Thirsting for Prayer Fr. Jacques revisits some of the themes covered in that book and develops new insights that are both profound and practical. These reflections guide us with simplicity on the path to intimacy with God, helping us to develop an actual taste for personal prayer. This "school of prayer" opens us up to the encounter with God that transforms us from within.

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us 
Fr. Wilfred Stinissen, Carmelite Priest

In this book I learned that God means something with all that happens to us and thus invites us to live in openness and wakefulness so that He can give us insight into the meaning when He wills. But we must abandon ourselves into His hands, as Jesus Himself abandons Himself into the hands of His heavenly father. There are degrees of abandonment:

1.  Accepting and assenting to God's will as it manifests itself in all circumstances of life.
2.  Actively doing God's will at every moment of our lives.
3.  Become a tool in God's hands. At this stage it is no longer that we do God's will but God who accomplishes His will through us.

Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart
Fr. Jacque Phillippe

From the book's Preface - Our day and age is one of agitation and inquietude. This tendency, evident in the daily life of our contemporaries, also manifests itself frequently in the domain of Christian and spiritual life. Our search for God, for saintliness, and our efforts to love and serve our neighbors are also frequently fraught with agitation and anxiety instead of being full of confidence and peace, as they should be if we were to find ourselves imbued with the attitude of small children, as the Gospels command us.