In June of 2020, Elliot, the proprietor of the YouTube channel, Mauritian Struggle, posted a video in which he critiqued the last half-hour or so of a video by Steve Franssen. I think anyone would benefit from watching Elliot's video, but I was intrigued enough to consider Franssen's video from my own Augustinian-Calvinist perspective.


Link to Franssen's video: https://youtu.be/lQn1zrl1nAk


Link to Eliot's video: https://youtu.be/dRELYRy9RY8

Eliot's Recommendations (to be the sort of politically-involved Christian who can confront power, for example Moses, Elijah):

  1. Going to church

  2. Being men and women of prayer, especially saying, chanting or singing the psalms.

  3. Praying the Rosary

  4. Meditative/Spiritual Reading, the Scriptures, daily, of course, but also:

  5. The Preparation For Death by St Alphonsus Ligouri, which is intense but really puts life into perspective

  6. The Philokalia, or Love of beauty. This'll teach you the way the earliest monks struggled to fight against this themselves. Volume I is particularly good

  7. The Sayings of The Desert Fathers, which are a set of short stories about these monks

Scriptural Order:

  • Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Maccabees, Luke, and Acts.

His recommended reading list:

  • The Preparation For Death by St Alphonsus Ligouri, which is intense but really puts life into perspective

  • The Philokalia, or Love of beauty. This'll teach you the way the earliest monks struggled to fight against this themselves. Volume I is particularly good

  • The Sayings of The Desert Fathers, which are a set of short stories about these monks

Scriptural Order:

  • Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Maccabees, Luke, and Acts. This is the story

  • John, Ecclesiastes, Job and The Song of Songs


My suggestions:

-Thomas Watson’s Body of Divinity

-John Murray’s, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied

-John Owens, The Mortification of Sin in Believers

-Matthew Henry, A Church in the House

  • Nathanael Ranew’s Solitude Improved

Link to Anglican BCP (1979): https://www.bcponline.org/

Link to Anglican BCP (1928): http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1928/BCP_1928.htm

Link to the Office of Compline: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1892/Compline_1892.htm


Link to instructions for the Lutheran Rosary: http://www.giftsofaith.com/Files/lutheranrosary.pdf


Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jf-sols/message