Excerpts From a Holy Life By: Melody Henderson Little did she know what she was missing. She thought she was living a good and almost perfect life. She’d been deceived into thinking the one thing she lacked was a nice husband. She self-appointed herself sovereign over her little kingdoms of her inner and outer lives. She focused on becoming more of what she could be in the world. She hoped to contribute in some way to making Earth a better place. As a young adult, she wrote her own moral code and labeled herself agnostic, living with that designation for decades. She was her own God-substitute, full of self-reliance, self-confidence, and instilled with a fiercely competitive spirit. She trusted her own wisdom and natural gifts. She sought a glory that was not hers to have. (Do you, beloved?) God had another plan. This is the story of His recognized activity in her life, of His mercies, and, ultimately, a radical conversion from that which is NOT into that which IS.

Apart from being a scholar and theologian, Rowan Williams has also demonstrated a rare gift for speaking and writing plainly and clearly about essentials of the Christian faith. In the chapters of this book he writes with profound perception about the life of holiness to which we are called. The range of Williams' frame of reference is astonishing – he brings poets and theologians to his aid, he writes about the Rule of St Benedict, the Bible, Icons, contemplation, St Teresa of Avila and even R. D. Laing. He concludes with two chapters on the injunction 'Know Thyself' in a Christian context. Throughout, Williams points out that holiness is a state of being – it is he writes 'completely undemonstrative and lacking any system of expertise. It can never be dissected and analysed.'

This pocket-sized book, originally published in Russian in 1904, is a short but comprehensive work offering guidance to the Christian on how to conduct himself through the course of the day. In a eminently straightforward manner the author describes how to conduct oneself in the morning, in relation to God, in common situations of life, in daily work, during meals, during the afternoon rest, in the evening, before sleep, and during sleeplessness. He concludes with a consideration of prayer and guidance and on how to spend Sundays. A biography of the author, Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg (1784-1860), concludes the work.

Popular author and columnist Winn Collier invites readers to hear Jesus's persistent questions, to allow them to penetrate the soul, and to be called to the untamed life that Jesus offers.

This is intended to be a very simple book, an elementary treatment of a few basic ideas in Christian spirituality. Hence it should be useful to any Christian, and indeed to anyone who wants to acquaint himself with some principles of the interior life as it is understood in the Catholic Church. Nothing is here said of such subjects as “contemplation” or even “mental prayer.” And yet the book emphasizes what is at once the most common and the most mysterious aspect in the Christian life: grace, the power and the light of God in us, purifying our hearts, transforming us in Christ, making us true sons of God, enabling us to act in the world as his instruments for the good of all men and for his glory. This is therefore a meditation on some fundamental themes appropriate to the active life. It must be said at once that the active life is essential to every Christian. Clearly the active life must mean more than the life which is led in religious institutes of men and women who teach, care for the sick, and so on. (When one is talking of the “active life” as opposed to the “contemplative life,” this is the usual reference.) Here action is not looked at in opposition to contemplation, but as an expression of charity and as a necessary consequence of union with God by baptism.