The best clerical formation today prepares men to be divinely loved in their humanity. In Configured to Christ: On Spiritual Direction and Clergy Formation, Deacon James Keating shares what makes a priest or deacon peaceful, personally happy, and—to the extent he keeps receiving the love of God in prayer as a man of interiority and sacrament—a minister of God’s love to his people.

This volume includes the following essays:

Part I: The Interior Life of the Cleric

• Theology as Thinking in Prayer
• Newman: Theologian of Prayer
• I Will Not Leave You Orphans
• Spiritual Direction: Navigate Your Life Toward God

Part II: The Formation of the Cleric

• The Seminary and Western Culture: Relationships That Promote Recovery and Holiness
• From Fantasy to Contemplation: Seminarians and Formation in a Paschal Imagination
• Christ Is the Sure Foundation: Priestly Human Formation Completed in and by Spiritual Formation
• Human Formation and Communion with Christ
• Seminary Formation and Interior Silence
• Beyond Schooling: Seminaries, Integral Formation, and the Role of Academics
• Teaching Seminary Theology
• Real Celibacy Is an Invitation from Divine Beauty
• The Deacon: Identity and Holiness

Part III: The Pastoral Mission of the Cleric

• Contemplative Homiletics
• Contemplative Homiletics: Being Carried into Reality
• Growing in Love of the Lay Life: Evangelizing Martyrs
• Teaching Parishioners to Pray
• The Eucharistic and the Healing of Affection for Sin