One Ordinary Sunday: A Meditation on the Mystery of the Mass - Softcover

Paula Huston

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594715955 ISBN 13: 9781594715952

Publisher: Ave Maria Press, 2016

Synopsis

Winner of the 2017 Association of Catholic Publishers Excellence in Publishing Award: General Interest Books (First Place) and the Catholic Press Association Book Award: Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith (First Place).

The popular, award-winning writer Paula Huston draws on her spiritual wisdom and her talent as a novelist to provide both moment-by-moment record of her experience of one particular Mass on one particular Sunday in her home parish in California and a theologically and historically rich exploration of the origin and meaning of the liturgy.

For Catholics, the Mass is the "source and summit of the Christian life," as the documents of the Church put it. Yet many Catholics might confess to not understand in any depth what goes on in an "ordinary" celebration of the Eucharist. In perhaps her most compelling and original book to date, novelist and spiritual writer Paula Huston guides us through a Mass on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time at her home parish in Arroyo Grande, California. Huston's personal and spiritual reflections offer fresh and often unexpected insights into the profound mystery at the heart of the Catholic faith.

A natural storyteller, Huston deftly illuminates what might seem either mysterious to those unfamiliar with the Mass or overly familiar to those who have lost an appreciation of its mystery. In the Mass "we are healed and restored and spiritually fed," she writes. "We are handed strong armor against evil. We are unified and made whole as a people and as a Church. We get a little taste of heaven."

Readers of this book will learn

• how our confession of sins at the beginning of the Mass
  differs from the sacrament of Penance;


• what it means to say that the Mass is a sacrifice;


• why the prayers of the Mass, especially the Gloria, are full
  of scriptural allusions;


• what the purpose of the Eucharistic Prayer is; and


• what happens at the consecration of bread and wine and how it
  is the most profound mystery and miracle of the Mass.

This is a book for all Catholics, especially those who have questions about the basic practices of their faith, who are new to the Church and still somewhat baffled about its rituals of worship, or who have left the Church behind but still feel like part of the family.

About this title

About the Author:

Paula Huston, a National Endowment for the Arts fellow, wrote literary fiction for more than twenty years before shifting her focus to spirituality. She taught writing and literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and mentors graduate students in creative nonfiction for Seattle Pacific University's MFA in Creative Writing program. Huston is the award-winning author of several spiritual nonfiction books, including Simplifying the Soul.

Review:

"To say I loved this book would be an understatement. Paula Huston caught me up in her writing about the ordinary in Ordinary time and she sun-laced the quotidian again and again and again with that sense of Kairos. What she has done is record in a single summer Sunday Mass what millions of Catholics have experienced many times over, using storied language that captures the sacred transfiguring of the gray, foggy everyday of our ordinary lives. Her worries are our worries, her doubts our doubts, her convictions our convictions, beautifully rendered and surprised by joy. I want to share what Huston has given us with as many people as I can. Bless her for writing this book and sharing an ordinary Sunday Mass which, like da Vinci's Last Supper, manages to capture the divine amidst the turmoil and confusion of Christ's breaking of the bread on the night he was betrayed, when he gave himself, as he continues to give himself and as only God can." --Paul Mariani, Biographer, poet, and author of Thirty Days: On Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius

"Paula Huston does for us in the twenty-first century what Ambrose and Cyril did for Christians in the fourth. She wants us to know that an extraordinary thing happens at Mass on every ordinary Sunday. To her task of opening up the mysteries she brings a novelist's sense of drama and descriptive power as well as a convert's sense of discovery and wonder. She has made something beautiful for God and for us. This book will do much good." --Mike Aquilina, Author of The Mass of the Early Christians

"I loved this book. Avoiding the dull abstractions and overly philosophical notions of catechisms, Paula Huston educates the reader about the feel, history, and graces of the Mass and provides fascinating details about the purpose and meaning of its actions and symbols. One Ordinary Sunday will be illuminating not just for regular parishioners but for those who stand outside the Church and wonder what those Catholics are up to." --Ron Hansen, Author of Mariette in Ecstasy

"Paula Huston has written an unusual form of autobiography: a story of her soul, narrated while she and her family are in attendance at an ordinary Sunday Mass. This is a 'convert story,' but one very different from The Seven Storey Mountain of Thomas Merton or The Golden String of Bede Griffiths." --Rev. Thomas Matus, O.S.B. Cam., Author of The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers

About this edition

• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1594715955
• ISBN 13: 9781594715952
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256