Giving Universalis for Christmas

The easiest way to give Universalis is in the form of a Universalis registration code. A registration code really is a gift for life.

A Universalis registration code costs £19.99, which at today’s exchange rates is $24.54 or €23.30. It gives the recipient all the Mass readings for every day, forever, and all the Hours of the Liturgy of the Hours for every day, forever. There are also benefits such as the daily ‘About Today’ pages, with their stories of the saints and their illustrations. The registration code works on whatever devices your friend has – Android and iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and Mac and Windows – and also for making personal e-books.

“Resurrection is Now”

The book Resurrection is Now, by Dom Aelred Watkin, has been the “sleeping hit” of the Daily Books feature in the Universalis apps. You, the readers, have been so enthusiastic in your response to it that there are now plans to re-publish the printed book. Limited stocks of the original edition have been discovered so that you can buy it now if you don’t want to wait. The remaining and rediscovered stocks of the first edition sold out within 24 hours of this blog post being published!

December 2020 newsletter

Happy Advent, and happy Christmas in advance!

There are no new features this month, and no new bugs, so this newsletter is devoted entirely to what so many of us are thinking about at the moment: Christmas presents.

It has been an odd year, and it will be an odd Christmas too. We may well not be seeing a lot of people we do see usually, and even Christmas shopping isn’t the same when one may not be able to get out and do it. So here are some ideas for Christmas presents from Universalis

Giving New Every Day for Christmas

“New Every Day 2021” e-book

Sample page: click to enlarge

“New Every Day” came out for the first time last year, and it was a success, so here is a new edition.

Giving Universalis for Christmas

The easiest way to give Universalis is in the form of a Universalis registration code. A registration code really is a gift for life.

A Universalis registration code costs £19.99, which at today’s exchange rates is $26.69 or €22.15. It gives the recipient all the Mass readings for every day, forever, and all the Hours of the Liturgy of the Hours for every day, forever. There are also benefits such as the daily ‘About Today’ pages, with their stories of the saints and their illustrations. The registration code works on whatever devices your friend has – Android and iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and Mac and Windows – and also for making personal e-books.

Christmas presents

The two safest kinds of present to give at Christmas are the kind that lasts no time at all (it gets eaten or drunk, so you don’t have to keep on being grateful for it) and the kind that lasts for ever – such as Universalis. Universalis is a present that will be with the recipient for life, through the pious times and the pagan ones, through the dry seasons and the fruitful ones.

This year we also have our new “New Every Day 2020” e-book. It has its own web page, but you can also read more about it below.

New ebook: “New Every Day”!

Sample page: click to enlarge

We have just brought out a new e-book, in time for Christmas.

It is the sort of book you will want to keep with you all year, to read or just dip into. Your friends will love it too. It is the perfect present.

“New Every Day” has 366 chapters, one for each day of the year. It celebrates not only every day but also a huge number of saints: over 600 of them. There are spiritual readings for every day and for many of the saints. There are biographies of the saints and over 300 illustrations.

The readings come from all periods, from the early 2nd century to the end of the 20th. Some of the authors are famous, like St Augustine. Some are great orators, like St Leo the Great. About others, nothing at all is known, like the anonymous ancient author (11 April) who imagines Jesus going down into the underworld and meeting Adam face to face. There are readings by the saints and readings about them. St Peter Claver (9 September) describes the arrival of a slave ship in Colombia and what has to be done for its passengers. Mr Masten, Protestant chaplain of Newgate prison, writes (23 June) about the last night and morning of the martyr St Thomas Garnet: “I never saw him so full of life, and almost miraculous cheerfulness”. St Thérèse of Lisieux (1 October) lays out her unique spirituality, which changed our notions of sainthood for ever and led her to be acclaimed as a Doctor of the Church.

Sample page: click to enlarge

“New Every Day” is not a prayer-book. That is good, because a prayer-book is like a gym subscription – it carries an obligation with it (and, if you give it to someone as a present, there is more than a hint that you’ll be asking them how the exercise programme is going!).

“New Every Day” is more human and delightful than that. It is a treasury of spiritual uplift and refreshment. You can dip into it most days, or look through and explore whenever you need it, or just feel like it.

And your friends and family will love it as well.

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Price: £7.99 (UK), $9.99 (USA). Available worldwide.

ePub: · Get it on Apple Books

Kindle: Get it from Amazon UK · USA · Australia · Brazil· Canada · France · Germany · India · Italy · Japan · Mexico · Netherlands · Spain

See also: How to give e-books as presents.

How to give e-books as presents

Both Apple Books and Amazon make it easy to give our e-books as presents to your friends and family.

Amazon Kindle e-books: see Purchase a Kindle Book as a Gift on Amazon’s site.

Apple Books: see Apple’s Send a Gift page. You can send gifts from the Books app on your device or from the Apple Books web site on your computer.

Liturgy of the Hours (UK & Ireland) available in the Kindle Store

There was an awkward period during which the new Liturgy of the Hours e-book for the UK and Ireland (“2019 High Seasons”, which means Advent 2018 to Pentecost 2019) was not available in the Kindle Store. This was the fault of Amazon’s systems.

The problem has now been resolved, just in time for Advent. The e-book is now available and here is its page in the Kindle Store.

Here is a full list of all the Kindle Store e-books from Universalis, for the UK and Ireland, the USA, and Australia.

November 2018 newsletter

The next great feast, only a few days away now, is the feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. This is glorious. It is also a little embarrassing for those of us discreet Christians who like to present ourselves to others as “just as normal as everyone else except we go to this funny place called ‘church’ on Sunday mornings.” But there is no getting away from it: each of us has been anointed with holy oil at baptism, as priest, prophet and king. The feast of Christ the King is thus a good moment to reflect on our kingship and on what “kinging” means and how to do it.