A perk of having a blog!

A while back I posted about the three stages of holiness, and I referenced "the book that changed my life," namely, The Ordinary Path to Holiness, by R. Thomas Richard.

Lo and behold, I received this wonderful email just a short time later! I thought I would share it with all of you:

Hello Leila,

I was very happy to come across your blog, and the encouraging review you gave of my book, The Ordinary Path to Holiness. Your surprise and delight -- deep delight -- in discovering the treasure of traditional Catholic spiritual theology reminded me so much of my own surprise, and joy, and gratitude when I first discovered that same wonderful gift! Like you, I was deeply blessed in the beautiful precision and profundity and penetrating expanse of Catholic doctrine -- but for a long time I thought that prayer, spirituality, was a different sort of thing entirely. When I was introduced to this treasure, and when I found the great spiritual wealth entrusted to our Church, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it, and I overflowed with joy.

I want to pass on to you a second and similar treasure that I found, that I was led to (or into) by the first. In my first book, as you know, there is a chapter on the Our Father, and a comparison with the Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila. After writing the Ordinary Path, I continued to ponder and to pray the Our Father, probing and seeking to understand how it could be "parallel" to her picture and experience of the spiritual life and indeed to the journey of prayer. The result of this exploration was my second book, The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father. I hope that you will read that second book -- I think it might be a help to you also.

I'd like also to invite you to visit my humble blog -- http://renewthechurch.wordpress.com/. That blog links to my larger website, www.renewthechurch.com, on which are pages for each of those two books.  The page on The Interior Liturgy gives a link to the EWTN store where that book can be purchased. I hope it can help you more deeply appreciate the surprising order and development of the spiritual life that is within that great prayer -- as I also was surprised and awed to discover it.

Blessings and grace to you and to your family.

Thomas Richard

Talk about a perk of the blog! To think that I would hear from the man whose book had such an impact on my life, well, I am so very grateful. I haven't yet read the second book, but I hope to be back here to talk about it when I do.