cover image Holiness: A Guide for Beginners

Holiness: A Guide for Beginners

Hubert Van Zeller. Sophia Institute Press, $9.95 (112pp) ISBN 978-0-918477-45-3

According to van Zeller, holiness is ""what God wants out of you."" While van Zeller indicates that the path to true holiness means to strive to become more like Christ, the central point of this little meditation seems to be that holiness does not depend upon the extraordinary but may be found in the ordinary. As he writes, ""Holiness is an attitude of mind and not a list of holy achievements."" God looks into our hearts and sees our motives, not just our actions. While this may be true, van Zeller's work-abstract, schoolboyish in tone, filled with vague hypotheses-lacks concreteness and immediacy. Live your quiet, ordinary life divinely, and you will have reached sanctity, he writes. But since the book lacks any clues to how to go about living divinely, it is, in the end, frustrating. While many will find this an uplifting, if slightly bewildering, piece of writing, anyone looking for paths to a deeper spiritual journey will be rewarded better by reading Henri Nouwen. (Mar.)