The Sufferings & Glory of Christ: A Meditation on Holy Week to Ascension

The inaugural 2022 publication of the Albertus Magnus Institute Press & ordinarily available exclusively to Fellows of the Albertus Magnus Institute, our Shrine shop was given the opportunity to order copies of this beautiful text.

About the Author

Fr. Owen Carroll (b. 1930), is a priest of the Latin and Melkite rites ordained under patrimony. After graduate and priestly studies in Canada, Paris, and Rome, he taught philosophy and theology for over fifty years at Saint Mary’s College and the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in California.

Having prayed to remain deeply hidden from the world in Christ, Fr. Carroll has until now been known almost exclusively by his students. Readers are invited to discover a living master of the Catholic intellectual tradition whose teaching has formed three generations of undergraduate and graduate professors as well as clerics and laymen from every walk of life.

In these meditations, the fruit of a life devoted to the contemplation of the Blessed Trinity, we find a rich, comprehensive vision of the whole of Catholic theology and a faithful appropriation of the Thomist tradition. His penetrating insight into the heart of the Christian mysteries through the discipline of St. Thomas Aquinas is as inexhaustible as it is accessible.

In his ninetieth year, Fr. Carroll has entrusted an entire library of unpublished manuscripts to the Albertus Magnus Institute.

From Magnus Press - Announcing The Inaugural Publication

From Albertus Magnus Institute's inception, we sought to launch a publishing wing of the foundation with one simple but herculean goal: to print new books that people would still be reading in 100 years.

After years of work, very Italian printing delays, and lots of learning, we are honored to unveil our first title: The Sufferings and Glory of Christ: A Meditation on Holy Week to Ascension. By Fr. Owen Carroll. Forward by Steven Cortright. Introduction by Anthony Lilles.

If you haven't yet heard of Fr. Carroll, it's because he has prayed his whole life to remain hidden in Christ - until now - quite successfully. But you have heard of his students. Fr. Carroll has formed generations of professors, clerics, and laymen from every walk of life. Fr. Carroll is a Catholic priest of the Roman and Melkite rites - perhaps the last priest in the world ordained under the medieval statute of Patrimony. He has taught philosophy and theology for over 50 years at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Though he would reject the label, he has been heralded by many as the greatest living Thomist. In his ninetieth year, Fr. Carroll has seen fit to entrust an entire library of unpublished, hand-written manuscripts to the Albertus Magnus Institute for future publication. In The Sufferings and Glory of Christ, readers will find a rich, comprehensive vision of the whole of Catholic theology and Thomist tradition.

Here are just a few of the reviews the book has received:

"Rare indeed is it for a man to be both poet and theologian; and rarer still for a man to be a mystic of the Divine Being whose mysticism takes flight from the salvific Sufferings of the incarnate Lord. The book will introduce you to a poet, theologian, and mystic whose heart beats for the deepest and truest things. To dip into this book is to begin to experience the holy and wondrous mystery of the Crucified Lord."

—Matthew Levering,
James N. and Mary D.Perry Jr. Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

"Father Carroll gives us a poetry of Christ crucified that reveals to us the heart of reality itself. A Stoic endures suffering, and is proud to do so, but when it is done, it is done. We Christians are not called to mere endurance, as Father Carroll shows. We are called to the only life there really is, a life of love, and the ultimate act of love in human history, ultimate then and now and forever, is Christ’s love upon the Cross. We then are glad to be crucified with Him, because in God, for whom there is no shadow of transience and to whom all times are present, that invitation to love, to be imitators of Christ not by mimicry but by the real union God brings about, brings us into the very life of the Trinity."

—Anthony Esolen, Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts