Sursum Corda!

It is said that when Mozart died at the age of 35, he had written over 600 complete pieces of music, and left several more unfinished.  And while Mother Mary Loyola had considerably more years than this in which to work, when we take the number of her published works and add it to those which were never published, including a Church History, several papers on education, journal articles, and the mountains of correspondence which she is said to have carried on right up until her last days, it seems as if she must have been continuously writing from the time she began in the late 1880s until her death in 1930.  This despite her duties as the Mistress of Novices for the Bar Convent during those same years.

Twenty full-length books were published in her name during this span of years, and to the extent of our knowledge, another 14 shorter works were printed by such apostolates as the Catholic Truth Society, the Catholic Evidence Guild, The Convert’s Aid Society and others.  Many of these publications included no author’s name, nor has any record of their authorship survived to this day, and thus there may be numerous works penned by her which we will never know.

Thirteen of those fourteen known shorter works are contained in this volume, making this the first and most complete collection of Mother Loyola’s briefer writings.  As these ephemeral booklets disappear more and more quickly from collections around the world, it is our fond hope that by assembling them here, they may be preserved to future generations.