The Saints' Guide to Happiness
Everyday Wisdom from the Lives and Love of the Saints
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A noted spiritual writer seeks answers to life's big questions in the stories of the saints
In All Saints---published in 1997 and already a classic of its kind---Robert Ellsberg told the stories of 365 holy people with great vividness and eloquence. In The Saints' Guide to Happiness, Ellsberg looks to the saints to answer the questions: What is happiness, and how might we find it?
Countless books answer these questions in terms of personal growth, career success, physical fitness, and the like. The Saints' Guide to Happiness proposes instead that happiness consists in a grasp of the deepest dimension of our humanity, which characterizes holy people past and present. The book offers a series of "lessons" in the life of the spirit: the struggle to feel alive in a frenzied society; the search for meaningful work, real friendship, and enduring love; the encounter with suffering and death; and the yearning to grasp the ultimate significance of our lives. In these "lessons," our guides are the saints: historical figures like Augustine, Francis of Assisi, and Teresa of Avila, and moderns such as Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, and Henri J. Nouwen. In the course of the book the figures familiar from stained-glass windows come to seem exemplars, not just of holy piety but of "life in abundance," the quality in which happiness and holiness converge.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It takes a gifted writer to engage readers in a book of insights from men and women commonly understood to have spent their lives so close to God that they were unusual in almost every way. In this eloquent, seamlessly woven and delightfully readable book, Catholic convert Ellsberg, editor-in-chief of Orbis Books, makes the spiritual struggles and triumphs of sanctified men and women accessible and relevant to believers who grapple with the tension between the desire for earthly pleasure and the call to leave all behind and follow Jesus Christ. Giving this series of life lessons a vivid immediacy is the fact that Ellsberg ranges far and wide in his choice of saintly examples, including some non-Catholics and many modern icons of holiness. In the chapter on learning to suffer, for instance, 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich and 20th-century Catholic writer Henri Nouwen fittingly illustrate Ellsberg's point that affliction can become an instrument of grace and transfiguration. What unites all the saints, he argues, is their ability and decision to see God's hand at work in the whole composition of their lives. Interwoven with moments of gentle homage to his mentor, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, this volume suggests to Catholics and other Christian readers the possibility that happiness can come by using the lens of holiness to illumine their lives, both remarkable and ordinary.
Customer Reviews
Waynegretzky
Great book!