He translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into English and wrote numerous spiritual books including The Hidden Stream, The Belief of Catholics, Captive Flames, and Pastoral and Occasional Sermons. Ronald Knox, a convert from Anglicanism and a well-known Catholic priest and author in England from 1920 to 1960, was educated at Eton and Oxford. He spent his life reading, writing, and copying manuscripts. Agnes, a monastery near Zwolle, where he was twice elected superior and once made procurator. He lived for seventy years among the Canons Regular of Windesheim at Mount St. Thomas à Kempis (1379–1471) was born in the diocese of Cologne and educated by the Order of Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life at Deventer, in the Netherlands. This beautiful translation by Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley is considered by many teachers, writers, and readers to be the best English translation ever, and one that greatly enhances the life-changing insights of Thomas à Kempis. Drawing on the Bible, the Fathers of the early Church, and medieval mysticism, his four-part treatise shrugs off the allure of the material world, blending beauty and bluntness in a supremely spiritual call-to-arms. Even today, the soul-searching words of the fifteenth-century cleric Thomas à Kempis continue to resonate, unbounded by time or geography. The spiritual classic The Imitation of Christ, the second most widely-read spiritual book after the Bible, has had an astonishing impact on the spiritual lives of countless saints, peasants, and popes for centuries.

They’ll give you years of solid help in overcoming sin so that, finally, you’ll live more fully with others and more fruitfully in God’s love. If you want to make progress in the spiritual life, you can’t afford to miss the bracing insights in this handbook for souls who yearn to be kinder.

You’ll find simple, step-by-step, and spiritually crucial directions for who to overcome the habitual unkindnesses that creep-undetected-into the behavior of even the most careful souls. These pages show you how to become ore aware of even your most offhand daily actions. There’s nothing complicated or magical about learning to be kinder it just takes greater attention to the things that you do and how you do them.

That’s why The Hidden Power of Kindness is such a godsend. Probably you just can’t find the time-and can’t ever seem to develop the patience-that you need in order to be consistently kind amidst the irritations that afflict you daily. You’re almost certainly not as kind as you ought to be-and your relationships with God and those you love may be suffering as a result.

An introduction to the devout life