The Book of the Blessed Virgin—Volume 2: Mother of Mercy

Edited by F. J. Sheed

Few men had as much an influence upon the leading lights of twentieth-century Catholicism as did F. J. Sheed. Helmsman of Sheed & Ward, “the most influential Catholic publishers in the English-speaking world,” Sheed was friend or publisher (or often both) to G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, Ronald Knox and Caryll Houselander, Evelyn Waugh and Christopher Dawson, and many others. Having this singular grace of familiarity with Catholic letters, in 1950 Sheed asked of himself: “Each of [our] books told some part of what is to be known about Our Lady extraordinarily well; if no one of them covered everything, among them they covered a great deal. How much did they cover?” The answer to that question: The Mary Book—represented after more than seventy years (in two volumes) as The Book of the Blessed Virgin.

And Jesus, seeing his mother there, and the disciple, too, whom he loved, standing by, said to his mother: Woman, this is thy son. Then he said to the disciple: This is thy mother. And from that hour the disciple took her into his own keeping. (John 19:26–27)

This volume presents the last part of The Mary Book, “All Generations Call Her Blessed,” more than three dozen reflections on the role of the Mother of God who is also merciful Mother of all the living. With readings from Belloc and Chesterton, Houselander and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Maisie Ward and Walter Farrell, O.P. (among others), The Book of the Blessed Virgin: Mother of Mercy offers a graceful portrait of Our Lady as Mater misericordiae.

F. J. Sheed (1897–1981) was a writer, publisher, and speaker, widely recognized as one of the most important Christian intellectuals of the twentieth century. With his wife, Maisie Ward, he founded the publishing house of Sheed & Ward, which revived the Catholic literary movement and promoted innumerable intellectual, literary, and artistic treasures of the Catholic Church.

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Paperback: 266pp.

ISBN: 978-1685952945