Households And Holiness

Households and Holiness provides a clear overview of the religious lives of Israelite women. Carol Meyers stresses the diversity of religious practices in ancient Israel and argues we must examine practices as well as beliefs. The book explores anthropology, archaeological evidence, ethnographic data, and textual sources.

To ask why Christians live together, writes Tom Breidenthal, is to ask what a Christian household is and what kind of householding Christian faith inspires. In the church today we find many different kinds of households: married couples with and without children, single parents, same-sex couples, monastic communities, people living alone. In constructing a theology of the Christian household Breidenthal begins with New Testament texts on the family and goes on to develop criteria by which we can tell the difference between households that are holy, households that fall short of holiness, and households whose basic premises rule out any possibility of holiness. He thus sheds considerable light on the essential and vexing questions of our time concerning intimacy, sexuality, community, childrearing, and the sanctifying nearness of others.

Stay serene (and find God) amid the dishes and diapers Written especially for women in charge of households, this book will help you discover a path to sanctity in your vocation as a housewife, show you the meaning of even boring work, help you pray in the midst of turmoil, and much more.

A masterful teacher looks at "down-to-earth" holiness and inspires us to live for God on the spot where we're standing. To be holy, writes Fr. O'Malley, is to be "fully human, fully alive," and he draws on Jesus' life and the examples of saints who are flawed like us to surprise us and inspire us to be what we already are: children of God in the family of God.