The Beggar’s Banquet Takes the Prize

This summer, at the 2015 Catholic Press Association Awards, one of Emmaus Road Publishing’s books—The Beggar’s Banquet: A Personal Retreat on Christ, His Mother, the Spiritual Life, and the Saints by Regis Martin—took second place for Best Books on Spirituality. 

Based upon a series of private retreats Dr. Martin led for a group of Cistercian monks in Utah, the book meditates on questions of the utmost importance: the mystery of God’s love for his people, the suffering required of love, the intersection of time and eternity, the wonder of the Incarnation, the great grace of the Immaculate Conception, the holy folly of the saints, and so much more.     

In the citation, honoring the book, the CPA wrote: 

How rare to find a book that’s—all at once—poetic, theologically rich, entertaining, and accessible.  Martin draws from voices as diverse as Eliot, Pascal, Dickens, Balthasar, Barth (and countless canonized saints) to make his points.  But he’s always telling stories, and always relating his reading to his own struggles, and so the book never feels academic.  His humor is a singularity in the Catholic world and should probably be protected by UNESCO.  He uses it to good effect and for the best purposes.