The Virtues of Holiness offers a road-map for navigating our everyday activities: work, family, leisure pursuits. It shows how we can reach the heights of Christian life in and through these activities. For many people this is unfamiliar territory, and the author has written this book just for them. Fr. Lorda offers his readers a daily spiritual plan and describes strategies for gaining the virtues needed for following Christ closely. The next steps are familiarity with the life of Christ and developing a deep interior relationship with Him. Although its path is challenging, The Virtues of Holiness leaves no doubt that the struggle to stay close to Christ lies within the reach of every Christian. The author draws on a wide range of Christian apologists from the Church Fathers to St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as the 16th century Spanish mystics, John of Avila, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila. The result is a book that is accessible to readers of all ages, and especially young believers.

We are called to excellence in all aspects of our lives and activities, and not least in our character. Andreas Köstenberger summons all Christians, and especially aspiring pastors, scholars, and teachers, to a life of virtue lived out in excellence. Köstenberger moves through Christian virtues chapter by chapter, outlining the Bible's teaching and showing how Christ-dependent excellence in each area will have a profound impact on one's ministry and scholarship. Virtues covered include grace, courage, integrity, creativity, eloquence, humility, diligence, and service. This unique book is an important character check for all Christians engaged in teaching and ministry, and especially for those in training. Köstenberger's thoughtful volume will be a valuable touchstone for readers, for one's character is a critical matter in both scholarship and ministry.

May the words and images in this book inspire you to demonstrate God's virtues in your own life so you can inspire others.

"This comprehensive exploration of Thomas Aquinas's theology of habit takes habits in general as a prism for understanding human action and its influences and provides a unique synthesis of Thomistic virtue theory, modern science of habits, and best practices for eliminating bad habits and living good habits"--

The author of the bestselling celebration of discipline explores the great traditions of Christian spirituality and their role in spiritual renewal today. In this landmark work, Foster examines the "streams of living water" –– the six dimensions of faith and practice that define Christian tradition. He lifts up the enduring character of each tradition and shows how a variety of practices, from individual study and retreat to disciplines of service and community, are all essential elements of growth and maturity. Foster examines the unique contributions of each of these traditions and offers as examples the inspiring stories of faithful people whose lives defined each of these "streams."

Before living waters can flow, we must admit our thirst. One morning, in a hermitage nestled in California's lovely Big Sur country, Paula Huston read a Scripture verse that she had read hundreds of times before: "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink." This time, however, the verse penetrated her heart as never before. Much had happened to her in the preceding years: a return to Christianity, a conversion to Catholicism, a choice for a radically simplified life, an increasing hunger for prayer and the Eucharist. Now, Huston understood that all these things were just the beginning. God was calling her to a deeper experience of holiness, an experience that would require arduous work-and the simplest surrender. By Way of Grace is Huston's beautifully written and compelling account of what she learned during her journey into a deeper faith. She gained a keen sense of the profound challenge that orthodox Christianity presents to the secular mind-set she had uncritically absorbed. Her journey also took her deep into a study of the lives and writings of the great saints of the Catholic mystical tradition, where she was spiritually strengthened by the Christian virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, humility, faith, hope, and love. Most important, she discovered that Jesus' call to "come to me and drink" is an invitation that will fully satisfy a yearning heart. This book reveals the essential simplicity of holiness and how we can-by way of grace-know, love, and serve God. Faith through Grace I felt sad about the years I'd spent trying to cobble together a belief that I could "live with." . . . I'd been predisposed to unbelief, and as with all types of unexamined cultural mind-sets, I was blind to this fact until I began to compare my way of thinking with the thinking of orthodox Christianity. Only then did I discover the truth: religious faith is not comforting, as atheists so often accuse, but hard. . . . In order to keep it, we must nourish it and protect it; otherwise, it will be blown away by the changing winds of fashion. More, we must never forget that this virtue . . . comes through grace. . . . The beauty of faith is its deep root in love-the very love I'd been so fervently seeking when I set out on my six-year spiritual search, and the love I'd met in person at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In that moment, I'd been brought face-to-face with the witness himself, whose testimony undergirds twenty centuries of Christian belief. And I'd found him to be just as described: slow to anger and abounding in love. -From By Way of Grace Saints and virtues in this book: • St. Basil on prudence, the art of seeing clearly • St. Gregory on temperance, the art of holding a balance • St. Bernard of Clairvaux on fortitude, the art of courageous continuing • St. Thomas Aquinas on justice, the art of forgiving • St. Teresa of Ávila on humility, the art of honest self-appraisal • St. Francis de Sales on faith, the art of believing in things unseen • St. ThÉrÈse of Lisieux on hope, the art of patient waiting • St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) on charity, the art of loving the enemy