Applied Christianity contains the thirty conferences of a seven-day silent Ignatian retreat first given in the 1930’s by Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, S.J. The author of this book, Father John J. Hugo, of Pittsburgh, made the retreat under Father Lacouture in 1938 and then went on to teach it regularly, mostly to the laity.
The most famous promoter of the retreats was Dorothy Day, co-founder with Peter Maurin of The Catholic Worker.
Father Hugo said that the retreat offers the “complete panorama of the Christian life, in which the relation of the several parts to one another and to the whole is clearly visible.”
In 1968 Sister M. Angelica, a member of the Sisters of Charity of the Greensburg, Pennsylvania, diocese, wrote of this retreat and Father Hugo’s books: “I will always hold this to be the only that work that gave me the full, consistent, integrated, uncompromising teaching on the spiritual life . . . so rooted in the scriptures and spiritual masters — such a work of wisdom. I defy anyone to do this in any other context or framework of the Christian life.”
Yet, she asked, “But who can take it in this cozy, comfortable age? Will ‘Christians’ ever be able to ‘drink all this straight?’ Maybe not till there is a great cosmic purge sent by God. Maybe not then.”
Applied Christianity is for those who seek such a guide for living the Christian life in all the fullness of God’s truth.
The companion books to Applied Christianity, authored by Fr. Hugo, are also available from Castle of Grace. You Are Gods! expands on the first sixteen conferences of Part One of Applied Christianity. Fr. Hugo thought this part needed to be presented in greater detail. Nature and the Supernatural contains Fr. Hugo’s rebuttals of various critics who misunderstood the retreat, and is a veritable compendium of Catholic teaching on the spiritual life. A Sign of Contradiction gives the history of the retreat. In the Vineyard: Doing God’s Work in God’s Way points out some basic principles from the retreat to make an apostolate spiritually fruitful. Each volume contains a foreword by Fr. Hugo’s niece, Rosemary Hugo Fielding.
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