Fr. Tonne's Masterpiece on the Feasts of Mary

Louis Tofari recently asked me to review and recommend the 2019 reprint by Romanitas Press of a classic:

Feasts of Our Lady 

Talks on Fifty Feasts of Mary Throughout the Year 

With Two Talks For Mother’s Day

by Fr. Arthur Tonne, O.F.M. Missionary and Retreat Master.

I am so glad he did!

Romanitas Press made me a marvelous gift in sending me the pdf of the book and inviting me to give it a read. Despite family connections to the State of Kansas, I had never heard of Father, nor had I seen the original printing from 1951. All I can say is that Romanitas Press has done the world an inestimable service in bringing this little book to print again. 

Father Tonne is eloquent in a most modern and reserved kind of way. His prose style is well ordered, yet both light and profound. This book is a joy to read. My guess is that I will never tire of Father Tonne nor cease to gain from his insights into the Mother of God and her feasts and apparitions (such as at Lourdes and Fatima and their consequences for the faith life of God's people).

This is one of those books that belongs on that table by your easy chair or on your nightstand, to be read by the calendar most surely, but also topically by themes or specific mysteries from the life of the Blessed Mother. Father has left for all times a book enriched  with accounts of other great saints and personalities who can smooth our path to deeper appreciation of Mary's true greatness from her childhood to womanhood and her motherhood of the Son of God.

All I will say is take and read! You will be doing yourself a favor, especially in times of uncertainty or confusion. Father Tonne has done greatly. He has presented the Mother of God, yes, with tenderness, but I would like to say above all with a life-giving clarity, capable of carrying us in dark days certainly, but of generally buoying us up and urging us on!

God bless Romanitas Press!