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1Book1Diocese in Lent and Easter

Lent 2025 – Rowan William’s Passions of the Soul
The 1Book1Diocese read for Lent 2025 will be Rowan Williams’ deeply wise book Passions of the Soul. In this brief text the former Archbishop of Canterbury tells how self-awareness about our instincts and emotions can offer practical assistance in diagnosing what is binding us to unhelpful and potentially destructive patterns of thinking. In the process, Williams shows how these thoughts like pride or anger are not necessarily wrong in themselves if we attend to these thoughts properly. He states, “For the Eastern Christian writers, ‘passion’ is the whole realm of instinct, reaction, coping mechanisms, and this is the level at which complications arise. We cannot live without these things if we are to be human at all; yet unless we understand and in some degree transfigure them, we are trapped in something less than human.”

Williams’ takes an original turn in pairing each of these eight thoughts, that became the seven deadly sins in Western Christianity, with the beatitudes. This accessible introduction to insight from ancient Christian writers offers a pragmatic approach to examining where we can let unhealthy tapes play within our minds. Sewanee’s Professor of Pastoral Theology, Mother Julia Gatta writes, “It is a gem…Passions of the Soul merits multiple readings to savor the superb wordcraft and absorb the wisdom of its pages.”

Group Discussion Guide for Passions of the Soul

Eastertide 2025 – Bishop Frank and Victoria Logue’s Holy Mysteries

In 2025, we will also offer a 1Book1Diocese read for Easter through Pentecost of Holy Mysteries: Encountering the Risen Jesus by Frank and Victoria Logue. As with their Advent through Epiphany devotional Feast of Feasts for 2022-2023, the Eastertide reflections are offered at no cost.

These daily devotions weave together the strands of the resurrection appearances found in the Bible with the teachings of some of the notable witnesses to this Easter season throughout church history. Each week, you will read meditations on two of the resurrection appearances. A personal reflection each week on how Frank and Victoria have encountered Jesus are written hoping to prompt readers to consider the ways, both mundane and surprising, they have experienced the risen Jesus.

“We are good at marking the seasons of Advent and Lent,” Bishop Logue said, “but rarely consider the richness of Eastertide. Victoria thought that we should reflect together on the resurrection and the mystagogical teaching of the early Church when, after baptism, new Christians learned more about the sacraments. It has been beneficial to us to spend time reflecting on this season and we trust it will benefit those who take this journey with us.”

They will be posted at the diocesan website and on social media. In addition:

The book is available now for free download

Also, available for purchase
No one needs to purchase a copy of the book. For those who choose to do so, we have set it up as print-on-demand at the lowest allowable cost for distribution through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

 

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