The first book I started and finished in 2012 is Why do we Believe?: Strengthening Your Faith in Christ by Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR.
Groeschel, a priest who is pretty popular in certain Roman Catholic circles, is both a Franciscan friar and a psychologist. This little book of his — which ends, if you don’t count the appendices (and I don’t), on page 103 — is divided into four parts: Faith in God, Faith in Christ, Faith in the Church and How to Grow in Faith. Groeschel gets to the point pretty frankly and pretty quickly and so, I will do the same. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
Father Scheeben says, ‘The greater, the more sublime, and the more divine Christianity is, the more inexhaustible, inscrutable, unfathomable and mysterious its subject matter must be.’ He goes on to point out that Jesus would give a very poor account of Himself as the Son of God if He revealed to us only things that we could have deduced by our own minds.” – page 25
“Many people get involved in that useless old argument over faith and works. I never met good Protestants who didn’t think they should obey God’s will, and I never met good Catholics who thought they would get to heaven just by doing good works, such as giving away turkeys at Thanksgiving.” – page 33
“Taken together with the mystery of the Cross, the glorious Resurrection is both the summit and the great test of faith, as summits test the stamina of mountain climbers.” – page 56
“The Church is a collection of poor sinners. The Catholic Church is a collection of 1.1 billion very poor sinners. … it is no wonder we have trouble.” – pages 63-64