An Introduction to the Liturgical Year [Hardcover]

Inos Biffi (Author), Franco Vignazia (Illustrator)

Book Description

This book was created to help young readers understand the celebrations of the liturgical year and to inspire a desire to partcipate in them. The text describes these events briefly and explains their significance. Full color illustrations throughout.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gr. 5^-9. Biffi contributes a first-rate introduction to the Catholic liturgical year to celebrate the life of Christ as a living presence and mystery. Readers, along with their parents or catechists, are invited to tread the path Jesus took--from his birth to Pentecost--so that they may discover his surprising ways and see his kingdom in the world. Despite some advanced vocabulary and ambiguities resulting from a sometimes inelegant translation from the Italian, the book helps clarify the church calendar and its annual cycle of dates. The many illustrations, executed in glowing watercolors, resemble medieval manuscripts, though the lavishly embellished scenes are still informal enough in style to save the text from overt religiosity. The table of contents appears on the back endpapers and the liturgical calendar on the front ones. Shelley Townsend-Hudson

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

Product Details

• Hardcover: 100 pages
• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co (February 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802851037
• ISBN-13: 978-0802851031
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,620,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeous book, January 8, 2010

By 

Elly (NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Introduction to the Liturgical Year (Paperback)

Beautiful illustrations, almost like icons---moving, thoughtful text, although not for little children. Perhaps teens or young adults, as well as adults. And you can buy it for $16.95 from Liturgy Training Publications, the publisher,at their website.PB

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A visual and textual feast, November 7, 2009

By 

Rich Leonardi (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: An Introduction to the Liturgical Year (Hardcover)

With Advent and the beginning of the next liturgical year coming at the end of the month, I bought a used copy of Inos Biffi and Franco Vignazia's An Introduction to the Liturgical Year. Much like their delightful An Illustrated Catechism, this book is a visual and textual feast. Biffi is one of the Pope Benedict's favorite theologians who frequently "ghostwrites" draft texts for him, and he writes with an economy of style that still manages to be comprehensive. Vignazia's watercolor illustrations resemble icons and help convey the liturgical truth expressed in Biffi's text. You can view sample pages via Google books, and the introduction is reprinted immediately below. Highly recommended.

"The events of the life of Jesus are not definitively passed: they live again in the liturgical year. The Church relives them with loving and grateful memory, and appreciatively receives the infinite blessings that come with them. In every Christian celebration the gift of salvation is renewed.

This book was created to help readers understand these feasts as they appear one after another in the missal, and to inspire a desire to participate in them. The illustrations evoke the events of Christ's life, doing so with the incisive and suggestive power of images. The text describes these events briefly, and above all explains their significance.

With the wisdom and further explanation of parents or catechists (who are called to be companions on this wonderful journey through the sacred year), this book can help children begin to feel the attraction of the life of Jesus, and to discover it in the memorials and solemnities of the Church, which mark Christian time and enrich it with grace and beauty. This book will also be helpful to converts.

But readers will not only be instructed in the liturgical calendar and its annual cycle of dates; with persuasive and careful invitation they will be introduced to the celebrations themselves, in which the dates on dates on the calendar are transformed into words, gestures, symbols, and songs; in which faith continuously rediscovers its origins and life regains its vitality.

In this way not even a single hour will be wasted, but all time will be spent in the secure company of Jesus, who leads us from the fleeting days of earth to eternity."