The King of the Golden City is an allegorical tale which has stood the test of time because of the beauty of its symbolism and the richness of its spiritual advice. Written for children yet beloved by all, the only complaint lodged against it has been that its main character is female, leaving many boys to feel that this tale is better suited for girls.

Encouraged by the original French translators of this book, who created parallel editions for boys and girls, we have now remedied this single fault

In this brand new edition adapted especially for boys, readers will find the tale of Dilectus and his friends every bit as charming and instructive as before--and now boys as well as girls will find it easy to become the hero of the story and make it their own

Around the year 1890, a rather extraordinary nun began writing a very extraordinary book: one that would help children prepare for the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist. It would revolutionize children's catechesis by making the teachings of the Catholic Church both accessible and appealing, and in just over 10 years, its popularity would make her one of the best-known and best-loved Catholic authors of her time, with over two dozen works for both children and adults to her name. Mother Mary Loyola's work has been reintroduced to a new generation through her book The King of the Golden City, and now modern readers can access the brilliant and engaging works upon which she drew to write that book, especially the one that started it all: First Communion. This brand new, newly typeset version is dedicated to Mother Loyola in gratitude for her tireless efforts and the fruit they have borne in the lives of countless Catholics the world over. In a contemporary review of this book, The Rosary Magazine said, This book is intended to prepare children for First Communion by giving them an insight into our Lord's life and mission on earth. Its aim is to fill the heart of the child with a true and earnest love for our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, a strong love which the struggles of later life will not weaken, a love which cannot be inspired by the dry, dogmatic facts of the catechism...Although written for children, it is not childish, and persons of any age will find it interesting and profitable reading, and especially suited as a preparation for Holy Communion

The greatest challenge in preparing young children for the sacrament of Penance is in making confession a habit to which they will be voluntarily attracted. We can require their presence at catechism class, and compel them to go to confession, but without this crucial ingredient, we cannot hope to dispel the all-too-common view that it is an onerous task to be studiously avoided.

It is precisely this difficulty that Mother Mary Loyola addresses with this book. She knew children's minds so well-that they crave being treated like adults-and thus she avoids all that is oversimplified or saccharine, a quality which gives all of her work such broad appeal, even to adults. Her vivid storytelling brings to life an irresistible feeling of the comfort and joy the child will find in the forgiveness of their loving father. Who, then, would dream of ever avoiding such sweet medicine?

Any book on the sacrament of Confirmation can explain what Confirmation is, but this is the only book that explains, in the most original and engaging manner, what Confirmation does. It is both a dialogue and a travelogue, taking the reader on a journey from the Crusades to the Crimea; from medieval ceremonies of Knighthood to early modern methods of warfare.

What does it mean to be a Soldier of Christ? For the true child of God, life is a daily battle against a well-concealed foe-that is, our own flaws and failings-and Mother Mary Loyola proposes to arm young recruits adequately for this task, leaving no stone unturned in her quest to root out this 'enemy at home'. This is the sort of basic training no young Catholic should be without.

Please note: this is considered a revised edition due to the correction of errors in the original text, the addition of selected footnotes, and minor clarifications in punctuation or phrasing. No material has been removed or rewritten.

Any book on the sacrament of Confirmation can explain what Confirmation is, but this is the only book that explains, in the most original and engaging manner, what Confirmation does. It is both a dialogue and a travelogue, taking the reader on a journey from the Crusades to the Crimea; from medieval ceremonies of Knighthood to early modern methods of warfare.

What does it mean to be a Soldier of Christ? For the true child of God, life is a daily battle against a well-concealed foe--that is, our own flaws and failings--and Mother Mary Loyola proposes to arm young recruits adequately for this task, leaving no stone unturned in her quest to root out this 'enemy at home'. This is the sort of basic training no young Catholic should be without.

Please note: this is considered a revised edition due to the correction of errors in the original text, the addition of selected footnotes, and minor clarifications in punctuation or phrasing. No material has been removed or rewritten.

James Cardinal Gibbons was Archbishop of Baltimore when he asked Mother Loyola to write this story of the Life of our Lord. As a revered author himself, and considering the number of such stories available even then, we can only imagine the admiration he must have held for Mother Loyola's rare talent for narrative. She does not disappoint in this story, for as always, she brings to life the most vivid images of our Lord, such that the children who read it will feel almost as if they were following the dusty paths our Saviour trod.

Now enhanced with an abundance of contemporary engravings and lithographs, this newly typeset edition is an invaluable means of impressing upon the minds of young children the reality of our God become Man.

This prayer book strives to instill in young Catholics not only a love of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist but also a love of prayer and a practical knowledge of the art of meditation.

As examples of the many ways to pray, this book contains prayers to pray out loud (vocal prayer) or in the silence of your heart. It shows how you can talk with God, and more importantly, how you can love God. It shows how to use pictures and images-like holy cards and the Stations of the Cross-to help you pray and meditate. This book also shows you how to use Bible stories to meditate on the lessons Jesus taught. You will see how you can talk with God silently in the quiet of your room, in church, outdoors in His wonderful creation-at all times, in all places.

As you progress through this book-from discovering what prayer is to reading and reciting simple prayers to understanding meditation and then to helps for deeper meditation-you will see that prayer and meditation often go together. Meditation is described by the big Catechism of the Catholic Church as nothing more than prayerful reflection or holy thinking. You can use books, devotions, pictures, holy cards, and images (such as the stained glass windows in church) to help you think or meditate on holy people, events, and ideas.

This book gives many suggestions about how to talk with God so that each day you can love Him more and become closer friends. Learn to hear His loving voice and follow His holy will.

Now for the first time in nearly a century, this classic set of meditations on the Liturgical Year are back in print! Written while Mother Loyola was bedridden with a hip fracture, these devotions bring us the urgency of living our life With the Church, for we know not the day nor the hour.

The Irish Monthly back in 1924 had this to say about With the Church:

Father Thurston tells us that forty years ago Mother Loyola, when bringing out anonymously her first book on Holy Communion, and being anxious to get ecclesiastical recommendation for it, asked him to write a short preface. The favourable reception accorded by the Catholic public to the numerous books which she has brought out since that time has amply justified Fr. Thurston's judgment in recommending the authoress's work. This latest book of hers consists of a series of reflections on the feasts of the year from Advent to the Ascension. Her thoughts are always well-grounded and ingenious, and their expression is clear and graceful, with a strong personal charm. They are musings jotted down just as they occur to her devotional spirit and not simply as dictated by a resolution to follow a certain line.

When writing the first volume of With the Church, Mother Loyola took care to focus on the meat of the Church Year. Bedridden and suffering one illness after another, she could not take for granted that she would finish both volumes. How grateful we are that God allowed her the time to complete not only this book, but another--her swan song, Trust.

While this volume focuses no less on what our Lord has done for us, it does so always in the context of the burning question: what have YOU done for HIM lately? This is perhaps the most personal and immediate of her writings, with many reflections showing her readiness for death and a remembrance of those who had played a significant part in her life, such as her early mentor, Fr. John Morris, Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, both a driving force behind the Catholic Evidence Guild, and especially Fr. Herbert Thurston, her longtime friend and editor, who at the time was in the midst of his colossal revision of Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints--which no doubt explains why this is the only one of Mother Loyola's major works that does not list him as editor.

This treasure of a book, originally published in 1921, was written in response to a student's appeal for instructions along with little stories to help her prepare for Holy Communion. To fulfill this request, Mother Loyola of the Bar Convent in York, England, wrote a simple story that illustrates Jesus' desire to share an intimate relationship with each one of His children. Although written many years ago for a young child, this book remains a masterpiece of timeless Catholic literature suitable for all ages. This edition has some updated language, but quite deliberately, does not contain any pictures. Readers, as they progress through this story, will form a mental image of their King, one as unique and personal as their own relationship with Him. The study sections assist with the allegory, connect to Scripture as well as to the Catechism, and--for parents and older children--explore the art of prayer in the spirit of the three Carmelite Doctors of the Church. Let us all--young and old alike--enter into Dilecta's world to ponder the ways of our King. May the message of this beautiful story enkindle our love for Jesus, deepen our prayer lives, lead to the conversion and transformation of hearts, and build up the Kingdom of God.

In Hail Full of Grace, Mother Loyola brings her full talent for storytelling to bear on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. Like a tourguide to the Holy Land, she brings the reader along on a journey through the lives of our Lord and of his Blessed Mother. We experience, through her vivid illustration, the breathless anticipation, the drudgery and hardship, the depths of sorrow and despair, and the heights of joy unimaginable. No detail escapes her notice as she travels on, until her readers feel less that they have meditated upon the mysteries of the Rosary, and rather more that they have experienced them firsthand.

The unassuming title Home for Good and the original motivation Mother Loyola had in writing this book-that is, to help young ladies who were finishing boarding school to make the right choices in life-both utterly belie the groundbreaking significance of its content. While Mother Loyola's King of the Golden City is charming and entertaining; while her catechesis books are both informative and inspiring; and while her devotional works are unparalleled in their ability to reach the hearts of their readers, Home for Good is a rock on which an unshakable faith can be built amidst the storms and calms of everyday life.

Having spent most of her adult life in educating young ladies, Mother Loyola was intimately familiar with the character of youth as well as the challenges young people face when confronted with the temptations of worldliness. Though this book was written with her young charges in mind, it is no less relevant to young men, who endure the same enticements-and in our own culture, perhaps even greater ones. It is a clarion call to young Catholics to hold fast to their faith and morals in a world that seeks to destroy that faith at every opportunity. Readers of all ages, both male and female, have equally to gain by reading from this book regularly.

By the early years of the twentieth century, Mother Mary Loyola had cemented her reputation as one of the best Catholic writers of her generation, but the First World War prompted her to write a book of consolation for the innumerable mothers, wives and others who had lost loved ones to its ravages. Her intimate knowledge of the subject matter gave her unique insight, for she had lost so many in the course of her long life, beginning with both of her parents and two siblings when she was just nine years old, and recently including several of her own beloved students who were fighting in the trenches of the Great War. She knew only too well the need for a strong faith in these times of intense suffering and loss, and this she amply illustrates in Blessed are they that Mourn.

Forty Hours.
One Guide.
In these meditations before the Blessed Sacrament, Mother Mary Loyola's distinctive style skillfully guides the reader toward prayerfulness without supplying any preformulated prayers.

From Catholic World, May 1901: There is nothing exaggerated, artificial, or impossible in the pages before us; they contain merely a collection of musings and devotional monologues written with a directness and spontaneity that will appeal strongly to many who can get little profit out of less natural and more fervent writing.

From The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, January 1902: ...Mother M. Loyola is as much at home when depicting the trials, the aspirations, and the consolations of adults as in leading little children along the road of true penance. Each visit seizes, generally with thrilling vivacity, one idea; the subject is weighed in the presence of our Lord, the conclusions are always practical. -

This last of Mother Mary Loyola's full-length works is an object lesson in learning to trust implicitly in God for all things, especially when it is most difficult to do so. Who better than she to lead us on this path-having begun her long life as an orphan, and now patiently awaiting eternity, bedridden with a broken hip for 5 years? Her firsthand experience tells in this intimate portrait, as she extols the rewards inherent in the very struggle in which she found herself enmeshed. Amidst her trials, she holds up for us the examples of the saints and the martyrs, the faith of the Patriarchs, and the solicitousness of our Father in Heaven, Whose gifts to us are without number, and in return asks of us what any loving parent longs for: the unconditional love and trust of His child.

It is our lot to journey to heaven backwards, so to speak, with our face to the enemy. It is not an easy journey. There is not a little danger that, while we drive off successfully many violent attacks, we may be brought to earth by obstacles that crop up in our path unseen....Heavenwards brings out for us many of these dangers, diagnoses them, and shows us a way out of the difficulty; it puts into words many a source of disquiet that we feel but cannot quite express....There is about it a certain air of cheerfulness and encouragement that is very helpful. We feel driven to strive after holiness, and to trust what is past to God's Providence.
-from a review of Heavenwards in The Tablet, October 1910

Never was there a period when young Catholics in their journey heavenward could count less upon public opinion and the force of good example to keep them in the right path, says Father Herbert Thurston in his preface to this book. Thus while Mother Loyola teaches us how to find 'ladders' to scale Heaven, she lets us see that the most arduous part of the task lies in the simple resolution to fix our eyes steadily upon the welcome that awaits us. These 52 meditations--one for each week of the year--are intended to do just that.

From a review of Welcome! in The Month, September 1904:

Welcome is the title of Mother Mary Loyola's new book, and that is also the term with which the many readers of her former works will greet its appearance. It is, as the secondary title declares, an aid towards the art of using well the times before and after Communion, and the title of Welcome is in itself an illustration of the writer's felicitous power-to which Father Thurston calls attention in a short editorial preface-of giving expression to thoughts one has been long feeling but has not been able exactly to define. For what this one word Welcome does is to single out and set strikingly before us the underlying disposition which, whether in other respects we be joyous under consolation or dry and distracted under desolation, makes the one essential difference between a fervent and a lukewarm Communion.

Working on these lines Mother Mary Loyola arranges her chapters to accord with the different aspects under which the soul may need and desire to welcome its Lord in Holy Communion. Thus we have the Welcome of Mary as the grand example for us to follow, the Welcome of Faith, of a Creature, of a Child, of a Sinner, of a Friend, of a Patient, of Trust, of a Toiler, of Love, of a Cross-bearer, these and others of a similar kind-and finally the Last Welcome. Under each heading we have half a dozen pages of appropriate thoughts for the times before and after Communion, consisting partly of self-communing, partly of prayers; which last, however, are by no means cast in the rigid moulds so familiar to us in our prayer-books-of Acts of Contrition, of Desire, of Love, of Self-oblation-but range freely and naturally among the various affections of the soul.

Mother Loyola's work on the subject of Confession is not merely groundbreaking, but seems to form one of the most crucial of her strengths, given that the Sacrament of Penance has always been the most avoidable and avoided of all; most Catholics express a distaste for it akin to torment. For her readers, however, such angst is inconceivable, as she does not merely help to remove all fear and discomfort associated with the Confessional; she also enkindles a deep sense of appreciation for the gift of the sacrament. This, in turn, fosters an eager anticipation of the grace it confers. Those who make use of Forgive us our Trespasses--whether children or adults-will find themselves seeking this healing Sacrament with regularity.

Please note: this is considered a revised edition due to the correction of errors in the original text, the addition of selected footnotes, and minor clarifications in punctuation or phrasing. No material has been removed or rewritten.

St. Alphonsus writes: a single bad book will be sufficient to cause the destruction of a monastery. Pope Pius XII wrote in 1947 at the beatification of Blessed Maria Goretti: There rises to Our lips the cry of the Saviour: 'Woe to the world because of scandals ' (Matthew 18:7). Woe to those who consciously and deliberately spread corruption-in novels, newspapers, magazines, theaters, films, in a world of immodesty We at St. Pius X Press are calling for a crusade of good books. We want to restore 1,000 old Catholic books to the market. We ask for your assistance and prayers. This book is a photographic reprint of the original The original has been inspected and many imperfections in the existing copy have been corrected. At Saint Pius X Press our goal is to remain faithful to the original in both photographic reproductions and in textual reproductions that are reprinted. Photographic reproductions are given a page by page inspection, whereas textual reproductions are proofread to correct any errors in reproduction.

By itself, Mother Mary Loyola's first book, First Communion, stands as a monumental achievement in catechesis, in that it teaches children the crucial truths of our faith in a way that is equally understandable and appealing, despite the fact that more than a century has passed since it was written.

This book of questions, written by Mother Loyola as a supplement to First Communion, takes this achievement one step further, by facilitating classroom discussion of the material found in each chapter. Each lesson provides discussion questions, tied to page references in the source material, as well as additional stories designed to reinforce the concepts learned. Both catechists and parents alike will find this volume helpful in preparing children to receive the Blessed Sacrament.