Spiritual Life

The Spiritual Life and How To Be Attuned To It by St Theophan the Recluse, translated by Alexandra Dockham, 320 pages

In the middle of the nineteenth century, a young Russian woman in the grips of a profound spiritual crisis approached a holy monk for advice.  The resulting correspondence was preserved and collected in this book, which quickly became a Russian Orthodox classic.  St Theophan's balance of holy zeal and humane sympathy fully justifies this judgement of posterity.

For Latins, the obvious comparison is with St Francis de Sales, and indeed The Spiritual Life closely resembles the Introduction to the Devout Life in its attempt to chart a path to God for those living in the secular world.  If the Frenchman's work is more developed, the Russian's is more accessible, at least partially due to having been written two centuries closer to our own time.