Tag: Consolation

Free Download St. John Chrysostom, "Consolation to Stagirius "
English | ISBN: 0813239222 | 2024 | 176 pages | PDF | 1289 KB
John Chrysostom (d. 407) was first a priest in Antioch and later the short-lived archbishop of Constantinople. Although best known as a preacher, throughout his career he also wrote a number of letters and treatises, primarily to ascetic and clerical audiences. The Consolation to Stagirius is one of these treatises, written early in his career. Over three books, Chrysostom seeks to comfort his acquaintance, Stagirius, both for the suffering experienced at the hands of a demon – manifesting in nightmares and seizures – and for the melancholy he was experiencing due to estrangement with his father. The sources that Chrysostom draws on for this consolation are primarily biblical narratives: the lives of the scriptural saints. The first book comprises mainly arguments for God’s providence over Stagirius’ life and the lives of all the saints. Stagirius is to find comfort in the fact that God directs all things―including those that seem evil―for the benefit of those whom he loves. The second and third books are then extended narrations of the sufferings of the patriarchs and the prophets and, much more briefly, the apostles. Stagirius is to compare his sufferings to those who went before and to learn that suffering is no indication of a lack of God’s providential care. This treatise thus contributes to our understanding of early Christian attitudes towards the problem of suffering and the means of God’s providence in the lives of the saints.

Free Download Of Consolation: To Marcia, to Helvia, to Polybius (Audiobook)
English | July 20, 2023 | ASIN: B0C9KSG6JR | M4B@128 kbps | 3h 58m | 220 MB
Author: Seneca the Younger | Narrator: Mike Rogers
These three ‘Consolations’, written by Seneca to his mother and two friends, have been described as ‘the crowning achievement in the canon of ‘consolation letters’. But sentimental they are not, for they emerge from the writer’s deep-seated commitment to Stoicism, where individuals are exhorted to inhabit qualities of virtue, positivity, resilience, and indifference. This recording opens with Seneca’s consolatory letter to Marcia, who, after three years, was still mourning the death of her son. He recognizes her exceptional personal qualities and what benefits she has brought to her family, having rescued her father’s legacy as a historian following his death. He cites other noble Roman mothers who lost their sons, and enjoins her to adopt a more Stoic attitude of mind: we are all destined to die, he declares.
The second letter is to his mother sent after he had been exiled to Corsica by Emperor Caligula. He counsels Helvia not to mourn his absence-not least because he himself does not feel grief at the prospect of his own exile. He acknowledges the trials of his mother during her life, remarking ‘ill-fortune has given you no respite’. But her grief at the absence of her son may be put to one side in the knowledge that as he has ‘never trusted in Fortune,’ she can be comforted that her son is not discommoded. And history points to far harsher separations.

Free Download Living with Our Dead: On Loss and Consolation (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CY3DDH8Z | 2024 | 5 hours and 36 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 314 MB
Author: Delphine Horvilleur, Lisa Appignanesi
Narrator: Jenna Rose Stein
A timely, powerful reflection on our relationship to death and an invitation to accept loss and vulnerability as essential and enriching parts of life, from France’s most prominent female rabbi and a leading intellectual. Living with Our Dead is a profoundly humanist, universal, and hopeful book that celebrates life, love, memory, and the power of storytelling to inspire and sustain us. In this moving book by the leader of France’s Liberal Jewish Movement, Delphine Horvilleur recounts eleven stories of loss, mourning, and consolation, collected during the years she has spent caring for the dying and their loved ones.

Free Download R.W. Sharples, "Cicero: On Fate: & Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy IV.5-7 and V "
English | ISBN: 0856684767 | | 208 pages | PDF | 46 MB
Cicero and Boethius did more than anyone else to transmit the insights of Greek philosophy to the Latin culture of Western Europe which has played so influential a part in our civilisation to this day.