Since the early centuries, Christians have held up the saints as models of living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While the church officially recognizes a relatively small number of saints, the actual roster is infinitely wider. Blessed Among Us explores this eclectic 'cloud of witnesses': lay and religious, single and married, canonized and not, and even non-Christians whose faith and wisdom may illuminate our path. Brought to life in the evocative storytelling of Robert Ellsberg, they inspire the moral imagination and give witness to the myriad ways of holiness. In two stories per day for a full calendar year, Ellsberg sketches figures from biblical times to the present age and from all corners of this world, ordinary figures whose extraordinary lives point to the new age in the world to come. Blessed Among Us is drawn from Ellsberg's acclaimed column of the same name in Give Us This Day, a monthly resource for daily prayer published by Liturgical Press.
"Saints are the living Word of God, the Word made flesh, but their biographies are often too encrusted within sentimentality and piety to serve as an inspiration for us. Ellsberg gives us their essence in this treasure of a book! Nobody writes better about the lives of the saints than Robert Ellsberg."
Ronald Rolheiser OMI
"Robert Ellsberg is way up there in my pantheon of spiritual writers. He's especially good at connecting us with the divine spark in practitioners of every spiritual tradition. These very human stories of the holy ones among us have a special knack of enlivening my spirit."
Helen Prejean, CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking
"This delightful book reminds us how blessed we are, in every age, to have people of good faith who are called to love and serve people in need. They call us all to a greater purpose."
Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk and Acedia and Me
