Seasons of the Soul: An Intimate God in Liturgical Time, by Carla Mae Streeter OP. Chalice Press, 2004.

Streeter begins this small book with comments on the church being a woman in love. She explains each of the major seasons of the church year as a remembrance of the church's Beloved, Jesus. She sees each season as a spiritual pilgrimage filled with the love of a very intimate God. She wishes her readers to recognize this God as a companion and life partner.

Noting that the seasons of the natural year concur with the current church calendar, she sees nature as the stage for our lives. The longings of the Advent season lead to the light of Christmas; this is followed by the discovery of Epiphany, the housecleaning of the Lenten season, the promise of new life at Easter and the coming of spring, followed by the nurturing and harvesting of the fruits of the earth in Ordinary time. All the seasons are given as guides into a deeper relationship with God.

In accord with the usual four seasons of the year, Streeter says nature sets the pattern for the seasons of the soul. Spring presents newness and beauty; summer celebrates fruitfulness; autumn has its own muted beauty. Winter presents dull and frozen beauty while recalling the tomb, the waiting, and heaviness of death's sleep.

Advent offers a season of longing, a season of hope. Christmastide is the season of wonder, of surprise, the season of gifts. Epiphany is the season of revelation and prepares for the season of Lent, a time to plant seeds in hard soil amid weeping and mercy. This time is capped by the Triduum, a time to look into the face of the Love rejected. Resurrection is God's answer to the stranglehold of death and despair. Easter season in the spring is the time of promise, victory, and glory. Pentecost rushes in close behind, with special feasts honoring Trinity, Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, and looking forward again after the summer to the hints of Advent beginning all over again. "With her eyes on the One she loves, the church prepares to begin again, to return to Advent and its longing." The pilgrim walks again  the year long journey with the lover God, an exciting journey that never grows old. 

   One of Ambrose's biographers observed that at the Last Judgment people would still be divided between those who admired Ambrose and those who heartily disliked him. He emerges as the man of action who cut a furrow through the lives of his contemporaries. Even royal personages were numbered among those who were to suffer crushing divine punishments for standing in Ambrose's way.
   When the Empress Justina attempted to wrest two basilicas from Ambrose's Catholics and give them to the Arians, he dared the eunuchs of the court to execute him. His own people rallied behind him in the face of imperial troops. In the midst of riots, he both spurred and calmed his people with bewitching new hymns set to exciting Eastern melodies.
   In his disputes with the Emperor Auxentius, he coined the principle: "The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church." He publicly admonished Emperor Theodosius for the massacre of 7,000 innocent people. The emperor did public penance for his crime. This was Ambrose, the fighter, sent to Milan as Roman governor and chosen while yet a catechumen to be the people's bishop. . . 
   The influence of Ambrose on Augustine will always be open for discussion. The Confessions (of Augustine) reveal some manly, brusque encounters between Ambrose and Augustine, but there can be no doubt of Augustine's profound esteem for the learned bishop.