In the mailbox today... "The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI"

From Doubleday (who was kind enough to send it):

Let God's Light Shine Forth: the Spiritual vision of Pope Benedict XVI

Though he was a familiar Church leader for many years before becoming pope, there has been little awareness of the spiritual side of Benedict XVI. Now for the first time readers are given a brilliant overview of the Pope’s most inspirational teachings in Let God’s Light Shine Forth. Editor Robert Moynihan offers a brief introduction to the life and work of Pope Benedict XVI and then presents an absorbing collection of his most persuasive words.

Within these pages, Pope Benedict XVI introduces a God who is good, beautiful, and true, the fountain of all life. The most important thing for each person, in Benedict’s view, is to discover and develop a loving relationship with God, because this is the way to the deepest and most lasting happiness that human beings can experience. Even in our darkest moments, he teaches, we can have hope that all things will ultimately work out in a wonderful way to show God’s glory and bring blessedness to individual men and women.

Many of these selections deal specifically with questions such as: Who is God? How we can know him? What does he wants us to do and to be? Having spent his entire life thinking, studying, and praying about such questions, Benedict has become perhaps the leading contemporary theologian (the word literally means “knower of God”) in the Roman Catholic Church. From his earliest work as a teacher to his first words as leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict’s vision of hope is powerfully summarized in Let God’s Light Shine Forth. [More...]

I hope to set aside some time tomorrow afternoon and this weekend to start reading it.

I'd like to say at the outset that I love the type of paper they decided to use for the book. It's flexible and light, making the pages really easy to thumb through quickly. I hate books with super-stiff spines that make the book difficult to open all the way and are next to impossible to keep open with one hand (I need the other hand free as I read so I can keep sipping my coffee or tea).

And don't worry, I will get around to reviewing what's actually printed on the pages as well. Should be good!