Every person who came before you — through plague, war, famine, and flood — lived long enough to pass forward what was necessary for you to exist. You did not begin when you were born. You began when humanity began.

Everything that happened between that beginning and this moment is not the past in any abstract sense. It is the story of the making of you.

Cluny Abbey, Burgundy. 1088.

Three hundred monks. One stone enclosure. Seven offices a day and one in the deep of the night. No instruments. No harmony. No individual voice permitted to rise above the rest. Only unison — one long unbroken melodic line, three hundred throats becoming one throat, the sound held by the vault for eight seconds after the last note ceased. The largest monastery in Christendom was not building a cathedral. It was building a silence large enough to hold something it could not name.

What does it cost a man to erase his own voice?
What remains when the self goes quiet?
What were they actually singing toward?

The Opus Dei places you inside that question.

Not as an abbot. Not as a pope. But as the ordinary monk — the young singer who spent eleven years learning the chant, who one cold February morning opened his mouth in the choir and heard, for the first time, that his voice wanted to be heard — and understood that this wanting was the one thing his world had no place for.

The facts are extraordinary enough.

Cluny's monks sang up to 215 psalms in a single day at certain seasons — close to ten hours of continuous chant.
Before Guido d'Arezzo's staff notation (c. 1025), a cantor spent ten years memorizing the full repertoire. Guido reduced that to one.
The eight church modes were not musical categories. Medieval theologians described them as eight temperaments of the soul — eight different ways a human being could stand in the presence of God.
Cluny III, begun in 1088, became the largest church in Christendom. It was demolished for building stone in 1811. A single transept survives.
Pope Urban II — who preached the First Crusade in 1095 — had been a monk of Cluny. The crusade was announced. The choir sang that evening's Vespers unchanged.

History is not a sequence of dates.

It is billions of lives lived forward through a present as urgent as your own.

A bell at two in the morning. Bare feet on cold limestone. Frankincense still in the walls from the night before. A vault thirty meters above, dark except where seven candles reached. They built something that dissolved into air every single day — and passed it forward anyway. The Opus Dei is the attempt of one ordinary witness to understand why.

For homeschooling families: You are already doing the most important thing — putting the story of humanity directly into your children's hands. The Beyond His Story We Stand series was written for you. Each book takes one moment in human history and makes it lived rather than memorised, felt rather than filed away. Not a textbook. Not a syllabus. A story your child will not want to put down — and that will leave them asking the questions that no curriculum can generate for them. The questions that only wonder produces.

The Opus Dei of the Beyond His Story We Stand series — a chronological journey through human history, told through the eyes of the people official history forgot to record.

The chant survived. It survived in breath — passed from one throat to the next for a thousand years. Open your mouth. It is still moving through you.

"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

PBShop.store US

Wood Dale, IL, U.S.A.

5-star seller

AbeBooks seller since April 7, 2005

Shipping rates within U.S.A.

Item	7 to 14 business days	7 to 14 business days
First item	£ 0.00	£ 0.00

Delivery times are set by sellers and vary by carrier and location. Orders passing through Customs may face delays and buyers are responsible for any associated duties or fees. Sellers may contact you regarding additional charges to cover any increased costs to ship your items.

Payment methods

Store description

We first started out as “The Paperback Exchange,” a chain of physical bookstores where we would part exchange your beloved books for new stories to transport you to faraway places. However, as shopping started to evolve to online shops and marketplaces, we bid our stores goodbye to become “PBShop.” This transition has only allowed us to blossom as we now ship thousands of titles to book lovers across the globe. We pride ourselves in being a community of local book lovers which allows our passion and devotion to shine in everything we do. In 2020 we not only celebrated our 20th birthday but our 1st birthday as being completely employee owned after becoming an E.O.T in September 2019. We are proud to be different and embrace standing apart on a book mountain by working from a virtual inventory which allows us to provide thousands of books that may be difficult to get for your bookshelf or your studies. Working with a number of different suppliers allows us to explore other avenues such as puzzles, sheet music and even stationery so we really do have something for everyone. Life is about being versatile in all realms of existence. If this is your first visit or you are a returning customer, we would like to welcome you to the PBShop family, for there is no friend as loyal as a book. We are a company who put our customers at the centre of everything we do as we understand the importance of reading because once you learn to read, you will forever be free. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that we are yet to explore, which is why we will forever inspire curious minds.

Specialty

Hardbacks, Paperbacks

Seller's business information

Pbshop.co.uk Ltd

Unit 22 Horcott Industrial Estate, Horcott Road
Fairford, United Kingdom GL7 4BX

Contact sellerView this seller's itemsView seller's storefront

Terms of sale

Returns Policy
We ask all customers to contact us for authorisation should they wish to return their order. Orders returned without authorisation may not be credited.
If you wish to return, please contact us within 14 days of receiving your order to obtain authorisation.

Returns requested beyond this time will not be authorised.

Our team will provide full instructions on how to return your order and once received our returns department will process your refund.
Please note the cost to return any unwanted order to us is borne by the buyer.

Should your order arrive damaged, not as advertised or faulty, we must be advised of this within 14 days of delivery. Please contact us so we can find the best solution for you.

Our Customer Care Team can be contacted via emailing paperback-us@paperbackshop.co.uk, or by calling our UK Office on +441285 712 917. We are available 9:00am till 5:30pm GMT weekdays and 9:00am till 1:00pm GMT on Saturdays.

Right of withdrawal

If you are a consumer you can withdraw from the contract in accordance with the following. Consumer means any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business, craft or profession.

Information regarding the right of withdrawal

Statutory right to withdraw

You have the right to withdraw from this contract within 14 days without giving any reason.

The withdrawal period will expire after 14 days from the day on which you acquire, or a third party other than the carrier and indicated by you acquires, physical possession of the last good or the last lot or piece.

To exercise the right of withdrawal, electronically fill in and submit a clear statement on our website, under "My Purchases" in "My Account". We will communicate to you an acknowledgement of receipt of such a withdrawal on a durable medium (e.g. by e-mail) without delay.

To meet the withdrawal deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right of withdrawal before the withdrawal period has expired.

Effects of withdrawal

If you withdraw from this contract, we will reimburse to you all payments received from you, including the costs of delivery (except for the supplementary costs arising if you chose a type of delivery other than the least expensive type of standard delivery offered by us).

We may make a deduction from the reimbursement for loss in value of any goods supplied, if the loss is the result of unnecessary handling by you.

We will make the reimbursement without undue delay, and not later than 14 days after the day on which we are informed about your decision to withdraw from this contract.

We will make the reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of such reimbursement.

We may withhold reimbursement until we have received the goods back, or you have supplied evidence of having sent back the goods, whichever is the earliest.

You shall send back the goods or hand them over to PBShop.store US, Springfield Gardens, New York, U.S.A., +44 1285 712917, without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days from the day on which you communicate your withdrawal from this contract to us. The deadline is met if you send back the goods before the period of 14 days has expired. You will have to bear the direct cost of returning the goods. You are only liable for any diminished value of the goods resulting from the handling other than what is necessary to establish the nature, characteristics and functioning of the goods.

Exceptions to the right of withdrawal

The right of withdrawal does not apply to:

The delivery of newspapers, journals or magazines with the exception of subscription contracts; and
The supply of digital content which is not supplied on a tangible medium (e.g. on a CD or DVD) if you accepted when you placed your order that we could start to deliver it, and that you could not withdraw once delivery had started.

Shipping terms

Books are shipped from our US or UK warehouses. Delivery estimates allow for delivery from either location.

The Opus Dei

Item description from seller

Bibliographic details

Synopsis