Beautiful Year

By: Diana Butler Bass

Published by St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2025-11-04

<p><b>One of America’s most trusted theologians offers spiritual inspiration for every week of the year</b><br><br><i>A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance </i>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.<br><br> 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 <i>A Wrinkle in Time</i> in Advent, to remembering her father’s old-fashioned blue Christmas decorations, and offering a revolutionary reading of the Last Supper.<br><br>With fresh insights on familiar stories, these essays surprise and inspire, challenge and comfort, and will be savored year after year. Beautifully designed, the book is also a perfect gift.</p>