This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on The Year of Faith. The Catholic Company is a great resource for tools to help you participate in the Year of Faith, including Year of Faith bible studies and exclusive Year of Faith personalized gifts. The Catholic Company also has all your Advent needs in stock, such as Advent calendars and Advent wreaths.

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Have you heard? The Year of Faith, as proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, starts TOMORROW October 11, 2012 and runs thru November 24, 2013. The opening of the Year of Faith also happens to be the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Vatican II council, a council that would bring about changes but NEVER changes to doctrine or anything to do with faith or morals. Today, now more than ever, we need our faith in God, in His Church and His servants here on earth. We need to understand that our faith is not just rules but is actually a rational, reasonable and wonderful way for us to live our lives, looking to the reward of eternal life.

So what are we doing for The Year of Faith? Lucky for me, I was able to obtain a review copy of Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s The Year of Faith: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics. This little volume (only 94 pages) is a wonderful walk through the Scriptures, our Catholic faith and how the two interact to help us achieve our goal of knowing, loving and serving God on earth.

Broken into six “units”, Pacwa’s book guides the reader through a greater understanding of:

• belief in Jesus Christ (as THE Son of God, as our Redeemer)
• assent to the Creed (which is a codification of all that Catholics believe)
• conversion (of heart and mind and body to the Truth through our everyday lives)
• witness of charity (all that has been done, from the sun rising in the morning to the Son rising from the dead to save us from our sins, has been done because of God’s great love for us. This is a love we must pass on to all)
• celebrating faith (actively living our faith is enriched and expanded by our actively participating in the liturgy and the liturgical celebrations packed into every year of our lives. This is more than attending Mass on Sundays; this is about permeating our lives with the faith and sharing that with others)

and

• faith and the New Evangelisation (because there’s no point to us keeping our faith under a bushel, but rather, God wants us to go out into the world and spread the good news, converting through our words and actions.)

This book will prove a priceless aid in our home — we’ll take each unit, spending at least a month on each, and delve deeper into our Catholic faith and how we can answer the call to know, love and serve God with our whole hearts, our whole minds and our whole bodies!

I highly recommend this book. Fr. Pacwa includes notes at the beginning for how this could be used as a group Bible study course.

EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT!