One Ordinary Sunday

Award-winning writer Paula Huston offers a rich spiritual reflection on the origin and meaning of the Catholic Mass.

For Catholics, the Mass is the "source and summit of the Christian life," as the documents of the Church put it. Yet many Catholics might confess to not understand in any depth what goes on in a typical celebration of the Eucharist. In One Ordinary Sunday Paula Huston guides us through a Mass at her home parish in a rural California town. Huston's personal and spiritual reflections offer fresh and often unexpected insights into the profound mystery at the heart of the Catholic faith.

A natural storyteller, Huston deftly illuminates what might seem either mysterious to those unfamiliar with the Mass or overly familiar to those who have lost an appreciation of its mystery. In the Mass "we are healed and restored and spiritually fed," she writes. "We are unified and made whole as a people and as a Church. We get a little taste of heaven."

National Endowment of the Arts Fellow Paula Huston is a longtime oblate of New Camaldoli Hermitage. She is the author of two novels and eight works of spiritual nonfiction, including The Hermits of Big Sur, published by Liturgical Press. She lives with her husband Mike on four acres eighty miles south of Big Sur, where they grow olives, keep bees, and raise vegetables. Endlessly inspired by two devoted dogs and five fascinating grandchildren, she spends her days in the garden, the kitchen, and her writing studio.