Robert Ellsberg - All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time

Acclaim for All Saints:

In these short, splendidly wrought profiles, Robert Ellsberg gives us a vigorous cloud of witnessesmystics, martyrs, social activists, artists, writers, composerswho do what all saints do: mediate the many and surprising ways in which grace makes discipleship possible. John Paul II has called for a millennial martyrology of unofficial witnesses to the faith who died in this century; he should start with this book. The Maritains, Bloy and Bernanos, Mozart, Bach and Barth, Heschel and the Baal Shem Tovall find their places in this richly imagined collection of mediating figures in a spiritual communion of many faiths.

K ENNETH L . W OODWARD, Religion Editor, Newsweek, author of Making Saints

A wonderfully broad, knowing, and narratively compelling look at human goodness as it has been tested by life. This book will give all of us the very best kind of moral and spiritual education.

R OBERT C OLES, author of The Moral Life of Children

A Calendar of Saints for our time. An invaluable book.

S ALLY F ITZGERALD, author of The Habit of Being: The Letters of Flannery OConnor

This book should be in every home, on every shelf, in every library. It raises the standards of life. It is the kind of book which, if read to our children, could change the tone of the next generation. All Saints is a gift of unusual proportion, a tour de force of both history and insight.

J OAN C HITTISTER, author of The Psalms

Ellsberg proves that we do not have to search far for heroes and saints. They are in our midst. Some have been canonized, many have not been; many never will be. What brings them all together is love of God and love of neighbor, high ideals, and a willingness to sacrifice self for others. Ellsberg brings all these heroes of our tradition, even those who may seem peripheral to it, to life again.

M OST R EVEREND R EMBERT G . W EAKLAND, O.S.B., Archbishop of Milwaukee

Remember when you read Butlers Lives of the Saints and you felt guilty about falling asleep after the third page? Relief is here, thanks to Robert Ellsberg. When you read All Saints you will not only stay fully awake but youll be hyperactively telling everyone you meet to read it. Make a nuisance of yourself. Its not a sin, its fun.

C OLMAN M C C ARTHY, columnist, The Washington Post

Each entry in All Saints is as crisp as freshly picked lettuce. Robert Ellsberg has a rare gift for getting a great deal into a small space and always getting to what matters most.

J IM F OREST, author of Living with Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton

Take and read, said the voice reaching St. Augustine from a neighboring house. He took up Scripture and what he read transformed his life. This is one of the accounts in All Saints, a book telling of 365 holy ones, compiled by Robert Ellsberg. Take and read these vibrant accounts. You may not be transformed, but you will be enriched, your heart moved and exhilarated, and your mind delighted.

E ILEEN E GAN, author of Such a Vision of the Street

What a rich compendium, a vade mecum for every day of the year! Where else but in this wise and generous book would one find a famed modern theologian side by side with a first-century woman, a Christian Zen monk near a Quaker artist, a mystic of the Holocaust and then a desert hermit? Here we meet the capacities and, yes, the glories of humankind.

D ANIEL B ERRIGAN, S.J., author of Isaiah

Well-suited for daily prayerful reading, Robert Ellsbergs reflections help us to enter into the mystery of the communion of saints. These 365 cameos are crafted by a verbal artist who has the vision of a prophet and a scholars eye for the important details. Because All Saints includes those at the margins as well as in the mainstream of the Christian tradition, it offers both invitation and challenge to reexamine our understanding of holiness and to think anew about what it takes to be a saint.

M ICHAEL D OWNEY, editor, The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality

Ellsberg makes the biblical cloud of witnesses come alive in these sharply etched portraits. This is a sanctoral cycle for the twenty-first century. Highly recommended.

L AWRENCE S . C UNNINGHAM, author of The Catholic Heritage

We are essentially imitative creatures. We cannot imagine it until we see it in the real. Robert Ellsberg has put some fine lamps on the lampstand for all of us to seeand catch the light. No theory here, only human lives in all their dignity.

R ICHARD R OHR, author of Job: The Mystery of Suffering

A richly diverse spiritual banquet generously laid before us, offering daily sustenance for the searcher and the pilgrim. Who cannot benefit from this book? I plan to make it part of my individual and family prayer.

P AUL W ILKES, author of The Good Enough Catholic

This book is a great treasure. Though not pious it is spiritually evocative; though untraditional, it is consistent with the larger Catholic tradition. While broadening the traditional vision of sanctity it calls us to explore our own ways of becoming a saint. I consider Robert Ellsberg to be one of the most significant spiritual writers in the United States, and this book puts him right into the center of contemporary spiritual literature.

H ENRI J . M . N OUWEN (in response to proofs of All Saints; after Nouwens death the author devoted a chapter to his life)

ALL SAINTS

ALL SAINTS

Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time

With a New Study Guide

ROBERT ELLSBERG

A Crossroad Book

The Crossroad Publishing Company

New York

Cover art copyright by Robert Lentz. Reproductions of his artwork are available from Natural Bridges, P.O. Box 91204, Albuquerque, NM 87199-1204.

This printing: 2004

The Crossroad Publishing Company

16 Penn Plaza, 481 Eighth Avenue

New York, NY 10001

Copyright 1997 by Robert Ellsberg

Study Guide copyright 2004 by Robert Ellsberg

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ellsberg, Robert, 1955

All saints : Daily reflections on saints, prophets, and witnesses for our time / Robert Ellsberg.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-8245-1599-4 (hc). ISBN 0-8245-1679-6 (pb)

1. Religious biography. I. Title.

BL72.E44 1997

242.37dc21 97-6263

To

Nicholas, Catherine, and Christina

There is no way of telling people

that they are all walking around

shining like the sun.

THOMAS MERTON

Contents

ALL SAINTS