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Paperback: 164 pagesSouls at Rest is a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of Sabbath for contemporary readers; a restful, poetic counterpoint to the speed and noise of today’s world, and a cure for its primary woes. The ancient, worldwide understanding of cyclical rest is blended with the formal Jewish Sabbath and made intensely new and relevant in the light of the Eucharist. Readers are invited to cultivate interior freedom by designing a contemplative, personal, non-legalistic Sabbath practice. Awarded the Catholic Writers Guild Seal of Approval.
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“I know of no better treatment of the subject…Charlotte Ostermann has given a gift to us in revealing the wisdom of God’s call to rest.” Dan Burke, Author: Navigating the Interior Life
“I cannot recommend Souls at Rest highly enough, and I would recommend it as the perfect gift for those who may be looking for ways to deepen their faith and strengthen the family bonds. Then when the natural bustle of the holidays settles down, its boundless wisdom can be absorbed and applied in all sorts of settings.”
–Genevieve Kineke, Author: The Authentic Catholic Woman
“I love ‘Souls at Rest’! It is a beautiful book, and I wish every Catholic would read it! It has changed the way I think of Sabbath rest, and the way I approach human being, especially on Sundays. Pope John Paul II issued an Apostolic Exhortation on Sunday years ago, and this book is packed with thoughtful ways to respond to his call to keep the Lord’s Day holy. This book helped me make changes that help me feel the difference Sunday can make in my whole life. In a time when we are becoming a society of technologists – more like machines – we need the advice in this book to help us live and enjoy the humanity with which we are blessed since the gift of the Incarnation.”
–Reverend Monsignor Vincent Krische
I was very pleased and pleasantly surprised as I read Charlotte’s book, “Souls at Rest” as how deep and penetrating it was. I love to read good challenging book and this one is. I was raised Catholic and practiced my faith all through my life and now at the age of 56 I thought I knew everything there was to know about “resting on the Sabbath”. This Catholic teaching is one that just tells it like it is and doesn’t take any more teaching to know it. But that statement has been proven wrong. There is so much more to know about honoring Sunday and when my eyes were opened to that, then I knew I would need some real ideas to make this applicable. I want to recommend this to everyone because like me, they may think they know enough about it and don’t want to take time to study it. I love reading the way Charlotte writes because she is so logical and practical and follows though in a very sensible way. I do wish I had this book when my kids were young and it would have helped me to instill in them a practice they do not practice very well anymore. Our culture, Catholics included, abuse this teaching considerably and it shows. Charlotte’s book instills in you a deep passionate love for God and that is all I am after and you can tell, that is why she wrote this. The book challenges me to love Christ more and evangelize others to do this also. I think of her book every Sunday and want to pick it up and update myself of what more I can do to show my love to God. While it was challenging, it was a fun read and I will plan on reading it again. I don’t know this woman very well, but from reading her book I know I love this woman and want to spend more time with her, that I can’t wait to read her next book.
–Mary Ellen Deters
“It could be argued that the predominant fault of modern culture is busyness. More than greed, lust or pride, a need to always stay active pervades our culture. Busyness is a major contributing factor to our tiredness, division and unsociability. When we cannot find peace, when our recreation fails to re-create us, then we find even more stress and unease. The damage done to our culture and more important, human persons is hard to overestimate. More than a description of and a solution to a problem, Charlotte Ostermann’s Souls at Rest offers a prescription and a remedy to busyness and its empty promises. It is an inspiring invitation to come and see what God has planned for you. Rooted in Sacred Scripture and following the Jewish and Christian traditions, Charlotte Ostermann has created a work that is prayerful and thoughtful. This book is an epiphany that uncovers a deep truth many have forgotten or never learned in the first place; that God wants us to give him one day of Sabbath rest a week which will in turn become a great gift for us.”
–Fr. Steven Beseau
“‘What the world needs now is love sweet love…’ These words are from a famous old song. Today, though, in our hectic, frantic, chaotic lives we should be more prone to say, ‘What the world needs now is rest, sweet rest…’ Mrs. Charlotte Ostermann in her book, Souls at Rest drives that home in her typical, characteristic way. That is she does it with a wisdom, a depth, a beauty, a poetical vein, that makes you hunger for that rest that makes life more then livable, it makes it a foretaste of what is to come, what we call Heaven! Through her words and her musings we will discover truly that the ‘Sabbath is God’s poem of eternity’!”
–Sister Susan Pieper, Director of the Apostles of the Interior Life
“As a new mother I felt lost and alone until I discovered the wisdom of Charlotte Ostermann. Her honest and thoughtful advice was filled with the richness of the Holy Spirit and the practical reality of years of experience. It’s by the grace of God that I was put in her path. She is truly a treasure to be discovered. A mind ahead of her time in a world that needs her now!”
–Olivia Louise Stear
“God has given us the Lord’s Day as a supernatural day in which we can wrap ourselves in the Holy Spirit’s tallitand truly give ourselves to Him as a bride gives herself to her husband, inviting His indwelling presence to enter more deeply into us. He has now sent Mrs. Charlotte Ostermann to teach us how.”
–Marty Barrack, author of Second Exodus
“Our world and our families are in desperate need of rest and a renewed focus on God. Perhaps a renewed appreciation and observance of the sabbath is just what we need.”
–Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur, Author of Letters to Mary From a Young Mother
This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies. The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a […]
Some audiences want to cut right to the chase: “Give us practical applications of all your ideas about Sabbath-keeping.” OK – here you go: In this talk I do just that – give concrete, practical ways to dip into the kind of leisure that brings interior equanimity and leaves you more whole, more human, more […]
I prepared this talk for the Heart of a Woman group, in Kansas City, shortly after the suicide of a Catholic mother of ten. It was a shock to me, but not entirely unexpected, as I had known her during the years she struggled with depression and disintegration, despite her devotion to the Church, Christ, […]
For an Apostles of the Interior Life Women’s Retreat, where the theme was “The King Desires Your Beauty,” I prepared this truly interesting talk. Will you believe me when I say that this is another of my favorites?!?! I know, I’ve said that about a lot of these talks, but revisiting them to give a […]
I once asked a friend who calls herself a Jewish-Catholic if it had been hard for her to accept Mary’s role in Salvation History. She laughed and said, “Heck no! Every Sabbath was begun by a Jewish mama’s prayers! I’d have been suspicious if Lord Sabbaoth hadn’t come through a woman.” Jewish women welcomed Sabbath […]
Differences between the original myth of Cupid and Psyche, and C.S. Lewis’ retelling of the myth in Till We Have Faces have the effect of revealing new dimensionality in the Christian understanding of both myth and of the human person. The pre-Christian myth, like the pre-Christian person, is veiled in a darkness that constitutes a […]
In “Stour Valley and Dedham Church” Constable has painted the Vale of Dedham – a familiar and beloved area of his native England.
“The Merry Drinker,” by Frans Hals This is a portrait of an unnamed man, called in the title only ‘a merry drinker’.
Giotto’s painting, The Wedding Feast at Cana, portrays the literal and spiritual senses of this story.
Berlinghieri’s St. Francis appears behind the altar of San Francesco in Pescia, Italy. It is an excellent example of art ordered to divine worship.
A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere. She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but […]
Benedictine College hosted a Symposium for Advancing the New Evangelization in 2014. The theme was Transcendentals as Preambles to Faith, and I got to propose my take on that as a paper. Anyone who knows me could probably have bet good money I’d do something ‘three dimensional’ with that, and they’d have won those bets. […]
I once got a chance to do an all-day retreat with one of the sister Apostles of the Interior Life. Naturally, I wanted to discuss the role of leisure in the formation of persons! As usual, I prayed about the upcoming event, and God brought together several threads of my contemplation to weave this talk. […]
Did you know YOU are a poem? Check out Ephesians 2:10, where the Greek ‘poema’ is usually translated ‘workmanship’. I like ‘poema’ better, as it implies beauty and artistry, but ‘workmanship’ is nice. I’ve discussed the importance of poetry, poetic education, poetic imagination and poetic reading in many different venues (many of the talk topics […]
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