Foreword by Fr.
This book is your invitation to set out..
All you have to do, is respond to the call of the Master, putting one foot in front of the other, following Him.
And there is always that comforting "law of graduality" to fall back on, we are on a pilgrim journey, returning to our Father, so it is a progress, a process, not all to be achieved at once.
But if you have found the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field, if you have found Christ, everything falls into place.
The demands of the Gospel can seem frighteningly uncompromising, costing not less than everything.
He draws his teaching from the Scriptures and the writings of the saints, the Fathers and doctors, who have followed the same paths and so are reliable guides for us.
As Salman says, this book "is the final stage of Stolz\'s journey towards perfection." It is, as Abbot Ogliari says "intended to provide inspiration for living with inner freedom and joy the following of Christ and his Gospel." So, in a succession of chapters, Stolz offers advice on the means to come closer to Christ, and, more importantly, to removing obstacles to Christ coming closer to us.
Stolz taught that mysticism, in the sense of having a deep personal relationship with Jesus, was for everyone, not just the preserve of a spiritual élite - in this he was a precursor of the Second Vatican Council\'s emphasis on the universal vocation to holiness.
Sent to minister to typhus patients in hospital, he caught the disease, and died of it, giving his life for others.
The end of Stolz\'s life was of a piece with this.
This gesture of kindly fraternal charity by a professor to a new student inspired him.
A lifetime later, another Benedictine professor, Gerardo Békés, would recall how, when he arrived from his Hungarian monastery as a new student, his confrères left him to his own devices, and as he stood there in the dark, alone and somewhat bereft in a strange house and country, Anselm Stolz came up and greeted him - in Hungarian! - and made him feel welcomed and at home.
In his life and teaching, as his confrère Elmar Salman points out, he united Christian belief and Christian living, he not only talked the talk in books and lectures, he walked the walk, in his life and death.
He was called to Rome to teach theology at Sant\'Anselmo, the Roman Benedictine college, until his early death from typhus in 1942.
Roberto Ferrari, OSB (Researcher in Mystical and Monastic Spiritual Theology) Anselm Stolz , the author of this book, was a Benedictine monk of the German abbey of Gerleve.
Foreword by Fr
