THE BOOK STUDY FELLOWSHIP   2005-2006 A Roman Catholic/Orthodox Christian Fellowship 7PM – 9PM (The 4th Tuesday of the month)   Living in the Light: Prayer, Simplicity and Love September 27th – a potluck celebration at St. John Neumann (6:30PM) You are Peter: An Orthodox Theologian’s Reflection of the Exercise of Papal Primacy by Olivier Clement   This book, written by a well-known French Orthodox theologian teaching in Paris, is a response to questions raised Ut Unum Sint, the 1995 encyclical of the late Pope John Paul II, on the challenges of ecumenical dialogue. In this encyclical, he asks those churches not in union with Rome to dialogue with him in order “to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation” in the 21st century, seeking “together” those “forms in which this Petrine ministry may accomplish a service of love recognized by all concerned.”   October 25th – at St. Paul’s The Inner Kingdom by Bishop Kallistos Ware   Bishop Kallistos Ware, no stranger to St. Paul’s, is one of the foremost teachers of the Orthodox faith today. A retired professor of Oxford University and a monk of the St. John the Evangelist and Theologian Monastery on the Greek island of Patmos, Bishop Ware has written two immensely popular introductions to the Orthodox faith, The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way. In this book, Bishop Ware writes about the Jesus Prayer, the need for repentance, martyrdom and spiritual guidance, as well as telling the story of his movement from the Anglican Church of his childhood to his becoming an Orthodox Christian as a young adult.   November 29th – at St. Paul’s The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life by Paula Huston   This book is the fruit of the author’s spiritual quest for simplicity, a quest that led her to a Camaldolese monastery near Big Sur, where she learned to begin walking the path of the disciplines of the ancient Christian monastic tradition: solitude, silence, devotion, integrity and tranquility, a path by which God re-arranges our minds and hearts, opening us to something more than we had understood before. Written by a wife, mother and professor, Ms. Huston offers an abundance of practical wisdom on how these ancient disciplines can be lived in the midst of contemporary American society.   December – No meeting this month for the Christmas/New Year holidays   January 24th – at St. Paul’s Light through Darkness: The Orthodox Tradition by John Chryssavgis   Australian-born Deacon John Chryssavgis studied in Athens and later at Oxford, under Bishop Kallistos Ware, and has taught theology in both Sydney and Boston. He is a theological advisor to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on environmental concerns. In this book, he explores the meaning of Christian detachment as keeping our grasping ego in check, “not allowing self-centeredness to distract us from what is most essential in our relationship with our God and our world…in order to discern the value of sharing and the intrinsic honor of the good things in life.”     February 28th – at St. Paul’s Invitation to Love by Thomas Keating, OCSO   Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk, is the octogenarian leader of the centering prayer movement within contemporary American Roman Catholicism who founded Contemplative Outreach. He sees the major impediment to human growth as our continued enslavement to the false self, a sense of self based on selfish pride, anger, greed and even apathy. He integrates classical Christian teaching with the insights of modern psychology, presenting centering prayer as a healing process that might be called spiritual therapy.   March 28th – at St. Paul’s The Lenten Spring by Thomas Hopko   For Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Lent is the liturgical season of repentance and change, of prayer, almsgiving and fasting in preparation for the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ at Easter/Pascha. In this book, Father Thomas Hopko, the former dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York and no stranger to St. Paul’s, offers 40 meditations on the journey of Great Lent within an Orthodox Christian context. Richly quoting the Scriptures and many of the Lenten hymns sung during Orthodox liturgical services, Father Hopko explores a variety of themes in Christian living: joy, repentance, compassion, prayer, forgiveness, humility, mercy and service.   April 25th – at St. Paul’s Courage to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom and Georges LeFebvre, OSB   This little book, co-authored by a Russian Orthodox archbishop and a French Benedictine monk, offers wonderful insights into the nature of prayer as an art and a discipline. For the late Anthony Bloom (+2003), “prayer is born of the discovery that the world has depths” that offer to us “our own deepest truth.” For Georges LeFebvre, a Benedictine monk, prayer is being open to God’s mystery while at the same time being conscious of the fact that we are God’s children. “Prayer is being,” he writes. “It is not something added on, it is being aware of what we are.”   May 23rd – a potluck celebration at St. John Neumann (6:30PM) Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form    by Basil Pennington, OCSO   The late Father Basil Pennington (+2005) was a co-founder, together with Father Thomas Keating, of the centering prayer movement. A Trappist monk who knew Thomas Merton and attended the Second Vatican Council, he wrote more than 50 books before his untimely death as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident. His interest in Orthodoxy led him to be the first Roman Catholic monk in centuries to spend almost a year in retreat on Mt. Athos, the millennium-old Orthodox monastic center in northern Greece. “In the center of your being,” he wrote, “lives God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Centering prayer allows you to experience His presence and be touched and transformed by Him.”