Spiritual Conferences

Spiritual Conferences by Frederick William Faber, 472 pages

Spiritual Conferences collects a dozen conferences delivered by Fr Faber in the middle of the nineteenth century, designed to guide the reader on his quest for holiness, a holiness which Faber states "consists simply of two things, two endeavors - the endeavor to know God's will, and the endeavor to do it when we know it."  The conferences focus on topics ranging from self-deceit, wounded feelings, and the value of reading in the spiritual life to the four last things - death, judgement, heaven, and hell.

Both hard-headed and soft-hearted, Fr Faber brings to his talks a wealth of experience as a spiritual director.  Nowhere is he more timely than in his condemnation of the craze for novelty that can infect the spiritual life as easily as it has the culture, which embraces every fad, charitable as well as devotional.  The continued vitality of his own work reinforces his claim that "each century makes too much of itself, and is mistaken both in thinking itself so very peculiar and in considering its peculiarities to be of much consequence... while times change very much, souls change very little, and God not at all."