A Beautiful Year

One of America’s most trusted theologians offers spiritual inspiration for every week of the year. This program is read by the author.

A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance offers an essay for every week in the seasons of the Christian year: From Advent and Christmas to Lent and Easter through the entire calendar.

Other than its major holidays, many people are not familiar with the rhythms of the church year, an ancient spiritual cycle of time. Yet all religions have such calendars — and they shape our understanding of faith. In the West, we live in tension with the secular calendar (mostly an inheritance from the Roman Empire) and the Christian liturgical calendar, a cycle of sacred stories that compose a larger narrative of love, hospitality, mercy, justice, and gratitude. Bass reclaims and presents fresh perspectives for every biblical text in the church year; from musing on A Wrinkle in Time in Advent, to remembering her father’s old-fashioned blue Christmas decorations, and offering a revolutionary reading of the Last Supper.

With fresh insights on familiar stories, these essays surprise and inspire, challenge and comfort, and will be savored year after year. This audiobook is a perfect gift.

"Her articulation and pace permit one to listen closely while also thinking about how to put the principles advocated into practice immediately." —AudioFile on Grateful

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press Essentials