Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life.

Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life Mary Margaret Funk Continuum, $19.95, 165 pp.

Margaret Mary Funk is a Benedictine monastic who serves as the executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue--an organization of Christian monks who pursue dialogue with other monastics, mainly those of the Buddhist tradition. As a former prioress, she is well equipped to share the wisdom of this ancient school of spirituality.

In her earlier work, Thoughts Matter (1998), Funk explored the famous eight logismi--the "afflicted thoughts" (her usage), misnamed the "seven deadly sins" in the West--which the old monastic tradition taught as barriers to the purity of heart which, Jesus says, lets us "see God." In her new book, she discusses the tools needed to advance in the Christian life. Her title refers to the fourth chapter of Benedict's Rule, "Tools (instrumenta) for Good Work." Funk's book is inspired by that source, but is hardly a gloss on it.

Her negative tools come from the monastic tradition: guarding the heart, watchfulness of thoughts, fasting, dreams, and repentance. Her positive tools: ceaseless prayer, manual labor, the cell, vigils, manifestation of thoughts. There are, in addition, social tools: humility, ministry, and the common table. There is an unbroken assumption that contemporary readers who wish to make use of these ancient monastic tools are sympathetic to the insights of the monastic tradition. Readers may enjoy contrasting her approach with that of Paul Mariani's recent Thirty Days, a personal introduction to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Chapter six of Funk's book offers a brief introduction to various forms of prayer, including the Jesus prayer, the method recommended by The Cloud of Unknowing, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection's practice of the presence of God, and the prayer of Saint Teresa of Avila. This chapter is more suggestive than complete. Some may wonder at her somewhat facile distinction between apophatic and cataphatic prayer, as well as her surprising omissions.

Her good final full chapter speaks of tools for discernment and offers practical examples. The omission of Ignatian discernment, though, is odd.

The many rich traditions of Catholic spirituality--Franciscan, Carmelite, etc.--have distinguishing characteristics, but no rigid boundaries. Funk shows how a person might borrow from one form of spirituality in order to enrich another.

Still, there is a lack of any sustained consideration of how spirituality relates to concern for the world. An added chapter on "tools for service" might have strengthened the volume. The core of such a chapter is already present in Funk's excellent but brief reflection on ministry.

That quibble aside, this is a rich work. Funk, like the householder of the gospel, is able to draw out both old things and new.

The Abbreviated Psalter of the Venerable Bede Translated by Gerald M. Browne Eerdmans, $18, 92 pp.

I am always on the lookout for good resources on the Psalms. The psalter is at the heart of Christian prayer, and I use it when teaching about prayer in the classroom. Gerald Browne's good idea was to translate the abbreviated psalter of the Venerable Bede (died 735), one of the earliest devotional manuals.

Bede was offered as an oblate to the monastery of Wearmouth when he was only seven years old and spent his whole life as a monk. He probably knew the psalter by heart; it was the core of the monastic office. Bede had the fine idea of excerpting a verse or two from each of the Psalms, presumably indicating the essence of each, and compiling them into a single book. Browne, following the great monastic scholar Benedicta Ward, thinks that this kind of book was meant both as a manual of prayer and a summary of the meaning of each individual psalm.

As I worked through this short but handsomely produced volume, I realized it might be used as an instructional tool: one could look at Bede's choice of a verse, and then ask, is this the verse I would choose? Does my choice or Bede's better capture the tone of a given psalm? That is probably the way I will use this slim volume, but it would also make a wonderful gift to someone who loves the Psalms. I am greedy for books, though: for the time being, I shall keep it on my shelf.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.