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In God's Holy Light: Wisdom from the Desert Monastics
In God's Holy Light: Wisdom from the Desert Monastics
The Desert Monastics, thousands of monks and nuns who lived in the Egyptian wastelands between the third and fifth centuries, have come to be seen as the Olympians of the spiritual life. Renowned spiritual writer Joan Chittister explores the sayings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers, finding wisdom from that ancient tradition that speaks to your life today. This popular introduction to a powerful source of Christian wisdom can be a companion to your own spiritual journey.
What Readers Say...
“One of the most well-known and trusted contemporary spiritual authors.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Meditate on these sayings, listen, then take action.
— Sister Meg Funk, O.S.B. Beech Grove Indiana
“This book raises a weighty question: whether spirituality really has anything to do with modern life in a pluralistic world..."
— Brother David Steindl-Rast
Reader Resources
Read an Excerpt
Beneficial temptations
All things are from God. All things. Both good gifts and beneficial temptations. Neither of them guarantees spiritual doom. Nor does either of them guarantee wholeness. It all depends on what we do with each of them—both the gifts and the temptations—as they come.
Temptation is the gift of possibility. It takes us to the crossroads of life and requires us to choose a direction rather than simply fall into one. It makes virtue—spiritual strength—a reality rather than simply a word. Most of all, for those for whom the choice is a long and painful one—years of addiction, a lifetime full of delusions of grandeur, the continuing plague of unsatisfied lust without the calming antidote of real love—there is, at the same time, another kind of gift. It is the gift of going on.
The gift of perseverance in the journey to wholeness is the treasure trove of the human spirit. Sanctity, like everything else in life, is not an event. It is a process of coming to know the clay of the self and then shaping it into a thing of beauty. This thing called union with God, sanctity, holiness, is not a matter of going through religious hoops. It is a matter of winning the contest with the self that leads us to the best in us. Becoming holy is not an attempt to become someone else. It is about becoming the fullness of ourselves.