The Nature of the Mystical Body
by Fr. Ernest Mura, FSV / Angeline Bouchard, tr. / Foreword by Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
276 pp. paperback / First English edition, Herder Book Co.
We are pleased to announce and offer another of our valuable Catholic titles back in print. Our used copies of this book were very popular, and so many have found in it a reliable source of doctrine and spiritual enrichment. It was originally published in France in 1934, then first published in English in 1963. The foreword by Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., from the original French edition, appears here for the first time in English.
Father Mura brings scholarly devotion to the writing of this wonderful book, relying on Scripture, the Saints and esteemed theologians of the Church to explain the doctrine.
From the author's Introduction: "In his Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, Pope Pius XII cast a significant light on the dogma of the Mystical Body ... The doctrine of the Mystical Body, embracing in its supernatural reality the person of the Word made flesh, Our Lord Jesus Christ and all his brothers of members through grace, is a sublime doctrine and one that is most fruitful for the life of souls and of human society. Indeed, this doctrine is not new, for it is developed in the epistles of St. Paul... The doctrine ... is the central point of all Revelation, the supreme mystery of Christianity; St. Paul calls it 'the mystery which has been hidden from eternity in God'... It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the doctrine of the Mystical Body, whether in the exposition of dogma or in the practice of the interior life - in short in every phase of Christian life."
How true it is that once the revealed truths that are most familiar to us—the notion of grace, the sacrament of baptism, the dogma of the spiritual motherhood of Mary—are seen in their relationship to the total doctrine, they take on a breadth, a supernatural beauty, and a practical significance that we did not suspect.
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