The Saints' Guide to Happiness - Hardcover

Ellsberg, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374253536 ISBN 13: 9780374253530

Publisher: North Point Press, 2003

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

""What is happiness and how can I find it?" may be one of the most frequently asked questions there is. Perhaps that's because it is so hard to experience lasting happiness.
In "The Saints' Guide to Happiness, Robert Ellsberg suggests that some of the best people to show us are holy men and women throughout history--from St. Augustine to Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton to St. Theresa of Avila and Mother Theresa.
These people weren't saints because of the way they died or their visions or wondrous deeds. They were saints because of their extraordinary capacity for goodness and love, which--in the end--makes us happy.

PRAISE FOR "THE SAINTS' GUIDE TO HAPPINESS
"Robert Ellsberg regards saints as friends worth knowing . . . for their uncommon wisdom as people who discovered that happiness and holiness are the same thing."
--Kenneth L. Woodward, author of "Making Saints
." . . neither a quick-fix nor a stiff tone, but a modern, refreshing guide to a true life and the kind of happiness that lasts."
--Nora Gallagher, author of" Practicing Resurrection

About the Author:

Robert Ellsberg, a native of Los Angeles, became a Catholic in 1980 while a member of the Catholic Worker house in downtown Manhattan. He now serves as editor-in-chief of Orbis Books. Married with three children, he lives in Ossining, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0374253536
• ISBN 13: 9780374253530
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248