The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality

Description:

Channeling the deep, mysterious desires of our hearts, Ronald Rolheiser leads readers from restlessness to peace, showing a contemporary path to authentic and healthy spiritual life—now featuring a new reader’s guide!

In The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser probes the question “What is spirituality?”, cutting through the misunderstanding and confusion that can often surround this subject with his trademark clarity. Using examples and stories relevant for today, and with great sensitivity to modern challenges to religious faith, he explains the essentials of spiritual life, including the importance of community worship, the imperatives surrounding social action, and the centrality of the Incarnation, to outline a Christian spirituality that reflects the yearning and search for meaning at the core of the human experience.

Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what Christian spirituality means and how to apply it to their own lives, The Holy Longing translates the universal struggle for love and integration of spirit into a language accessible to all, explaining God and the Church for a world that more often than not doubts the credibility of both.

Review

“One of the best books on Christian spirituality ever written. I have recommended The Holy Longing to literally dozens of people–from the devout believer to the doubtful seeker–and all have found it a great help in moving closer to God. Rolheiser's introduction to the spiritual life is accessible, inviting, useful, insightful and wise. And his chapter on sexuality is one of the best essays I've read on the topic–anywhere.”
– James Martin, SJ,author ofThe Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

“A master weaver is at work here–I found my soul on every page. At last we have a guide who helps us know what to do with the fire of desire within us. At last a comprehensive, life-giving approach to sexuality. At last a dynamic understanding of how the paschal mystery plays in our own lives. At last a way to weave love for the poor and struggling people with the highest mystical love of God...I love this book.”
–Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

“Rolheiser dares to ask the hard questions but they are our questions–the deep ones we are slow to let surface. Then he dares to answer them with clear answers delivered in simple, straightforward language. But he doesn't corner us with his clarity. He lets us look at different spiritualities, even a spirituality of sexuality. This is a book that engenders hope because it shows there are paths for each one of us.”
–Rev. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O.

“Spiritual books abound but few hit the mark. Ronald Rolheiser's latest book is one of the few. Sound good sense and insight are combined with genuine sympathy and understanding for the majority of us who struggle spiritually.”
–Alban McCoy, The Tablet

“Spirituality is often given a bad name because it can mask a damaging sentimentality. The Holy Longing is a bracing alternative to religious posturing. Truly incarnational, Ronald Rolheiser grounds his vision of the spiritual life in hard real-life experiences and tells tough truths. In the end, it is the hard truths of compassion, forgiveness, and action in the world, that give us a true and lasting hope. A much needed antidote to the consumerist view of religion, this book is both a delight and a challenge to read.”
–Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral and author of The Soul's Journey

“He writes clearly and engagingly, his language can at times be lyrical. He is never sentimental--and all the time he is absolutely grounded in reality.”
–Herbert O'Driscoll, author of A Doorway in Time

“Without doubt, Ronald Rolheiser's The Holy Longing is one of the best books about Christian spirituality that has been published in many a year. Its insights are just what all of us need at this moment of history. It blends the old and the new in ways that few other authors can do.”
–Most Reverend Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B., Archbishop Emeritus of Milwaukee

About the Author

RONALD ROLHEISER, O.M.I., a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, and the author of the books The Restless Heart, Forgotten Among the Lilies, The Shattered Lantern, and Against An Infinite Horizon. He is a community-builder, lecturer and writer, and his weekly column appears in more than 90 Catholic publications. More information on his work can be found at ronrolheiser.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

What Is Spirituality?

"We are fired into life with a madness that comes from the gods and which would have us believe that we can have a great love, perpetuate our own seed, and contemplate the divine."

Desire, Our Fundamental Dis-Ease

It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction.

Put more simply, there is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. We are not easeful human beings who occasionally get restless, serene persons who once in a while are obsessed by desire. The reverse is true. We are driven persons, forever obsessed, congenitally dis-eased, living lives, as Thoreau once suggested, of quiet desperation, only occasionally experiencing peace. Desire is the straw that stirs the drink.

At the heart of all great literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion lies the naming and analyzing of this desire. Thus, the diary of Anne Frank haunts us, as do the journals of Therese of Lisieux and Etty Hillesum. Desire intrigues us, stirs the soul. We love stories about desire--tales of love, sex, wanderlust, haunting nostalgia, boundless ambition, and tragicloss. Many of the great secular thinkers of our time have made this fire, this force that so haunts us, the centerpiece of their thinking.

Sigmund Freud, for example, talks about a fire without a focus that burns at the center of our lives and pushes us out in a relentless and unquenchable pursuit of pleasure. For Freud, everyone is hopelessly overcharged for life.

Karl Jung talks about deep, unalterable, archetypal energies which structure our very souls and imperialistically demand our every attention. Energy, Jung warns, is not friendly. Every time we are too restless to sleep at night we understand something of what he is saying. Doris Lessing speaks of a certain voltage within us, a thousand volts of energy for love, sex, hatred, art, politics. James Hillman speaks of a blue fire within us and of being so haunted and obsessed by daimons from beyond that neither nature nor nurture, but daimons, restless demanding spirits from beyond, are really the determinative factors in our behavior. Both women's and men's groups are constantly speaking of a certain wild energy that we need to access and understand more fully. Thus, women's groups talk about the importance of running with wolves and men's groups speak of wild men's journeys and of having fire in the belly. New Age gurus chart the movement of the planets and ask us to get ourselves under the correct planets or we will have no peace.

Whatever the expression, everyone is ultimately talking about the same thing--an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia,a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience and is the ultimate force that drives everything else. This dis-ease is universal. Desire gives no exemptions.

It does however admit of different moods and faces. Sometimes it hits us as pain--dissatisfaction, frustration, and aching. At other times its grip is not felt as painful at all, but as a deep energy, as something beautiful, as an inexorable pull, more important than anything else inside us, toward love, beauty, creativity, and a future beyond our limited present. Desire can show itself as aching pain or delicious hope.

Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality. Thus, when Plato says that we are on fire because our souls come from beyond and that beyond is, through the longing and hope that its fire creates in us, trying to draw us back toward itself, he is laying out the broad outlines for a spirituality. Likewise for Augustine, when he says:

"You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Spirituality is about what we do with our unrest. All of this, however, needs further explanation.

What Is Spirituality?

Few words are as misunderstood in the contemporary English language as is the word spirituality. First of all, in English, this is a relatively new word, at least in terms of signifying what it does today. That is not the case in the French language, where the word has a much longer and richer history. However, in English, it is only within the last thirty years that this word has become part of our common vocabulary. Thus, for example, if one went to an English library and checked the titles of books, he or she would find that, save for a few exceptions, the word spirituality appears in those titles only published within the last three decades. It is also only within these years that the concept of spirituality has become popular, both within church circles and within the population at large. Today bookstores, church and secular alike, literally teem with books on spirituality.

A generation ago, with some notable exceptions, this was not the case. The secular world then had virtually no interest in the area. This was also true for most of the churches. What we would call spirituality today existed, but it had a very different face. In the Christian churches it existed mainly within certain charismatic prayer groups and theologies of the Pentecostal churches, the social action of some Protestant churches, and the devotional life within the Roman Catholic Church. In secular bookstores you would have found very little in the area of spirituality, other than a section on the Bible and some books on the merits of positive thinking. In ecclesial bookstores, since this was considered an area distinct from strict, academic theology, you would have found very little as well, save for Roman Catholic bookstores where you would have found devotional literature and some books labeled ascetical theology.

Today there are books on spirituality everywhere. However, despite the virtual explosion of literature in the area, in the Western world today, especially in the secular world, there are still some major misunderstandings about the concept. Chief among these is the idea that spirituality is, somehow, exotic, esoteric, and not something that issues forth from the bread and butter of ordinary life. Thus, for many people, the term spirituality conjures up images of something paranormal, mystical, churchy, holy, pious, otherworldly, New Age, something on the fringes and something optional. Rarely is spirituality understood as referring to something vital and nonnegotiable lying at the heart of our lives.

This is a tragic misunderstanding. Spirituality is not something on the fringes, an option for those with a particular bent. None of us has a choice. Everyone has to have a spirituality and everyone does have one, either a life-giving one or a destructive one. No one has the luxury of choosing here because all of us are precisely fired into life with a certain madness that comes from the gods and we have to do something with that. We do not wake up in this world calm and serene, having the luxury of choosing to act or not act. We wake up crying, on fire with desire, with madness. What we do with that madness is our spirituality.

Hence, spirituality is not about serenely picking or rationally choosing certain spiritual activities like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicit spiritual quest. It is far more basic than that. Long before we do anything explicitly religious at all, we have to do something about the fire that burns within us. What we do with that fire, how we channel it, is our spirituality. Thus, we all have a spirituality whether we want one or not, whether we are religious or not. Spirituality is more about whether or not we can sleep at night than about whether or not we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with Mother Earth or being alienated from her. Irrespective of whether or not we let ourselves be consciously shaped by any explicit religious idea, we act in ways that leave us either healthy or unhealthy, loving or bitter. What shapes our actions is our spirituality.

And what shapes our actions is basically what shapes our desire. Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds, and bodies--and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, others, and the cosmic world. The habits and disciplines we use to shape our desire form the basis for a spirituality, regardless of whether these have an explicit religious dimension to them or even whether they are consciously expressed at all.

Spirituality concerns what we do with desire. It takes its root in the eros inside of us and it is all about how we shape and discipline that eros. John of the Cross, the great Spanish mystic, begins his famous treatment of the soul's journey with the words: "One dark night, fired by love's urgent longings." For him, it isurgent longings, eros, that are the starting point of the spiritual life and, in his view, spirituality, essentially defined, is how we handle that eros.

Thus, to offer a striking example of how spirituality is about how one handles his or her eros, let us compare the lives of three famous women: Mother Teresa, Janis Joplin, and Princess Diana.

We begin with Mother Teresa. Few of us would, I suspect, consider Mother Teresa an erotic woman. We think of her rather as a spiritual woman. Yet she was a very erotic woman, though not necessarily in the narrow Freudian sense of that word. She was erotic because she was a dynamo of energy. She may have looked frail and meek, but just ask anyone who ever stood in her way whether that impression is correct. She was a human bulldozer, an erotically driven woman. She was, however, a very disciplined woman, dedicated to God and the poor. Everyone considered her a saint. Why?

A saint is someone who can, precisely, channel powerful eros in a creative, life-giving way. Sren Kierkegaard once defined a saint as someone who can will the one thing. Nobody disputes that Mother Teresa did just that, willed the one thing--God and the poor. She had a powerful energy, but it was a very disciplined one. Her fiery eros was poured out for God and the poor. That--total dedication of everything to God and poor--was her signature, her spirituality. It made her what she was.

Looking at Janis Joplin, the rock star who died from an overdose of life at age twenty-seven, few would consider her a very spiritual woman. Yet she was one. People think of her as the opposite of Mother Teresa, erotic, but not spiritual. Yet Janis Joplin was not so different from Mother Teresa, at least not in raw makeup and character. She was also an exceptional woman, a person of fiery eros, a great lover, a person with a rare energy. Unlike Mother Teresa, however, Janis Joplin could not will the one thing. She willed many things. Her great energy went out in all directions and eventually created an excess and a tiredness that led to an early death. But those activities--a total giving over to creativity, performance, drugs, booze, sex, coupled with the neglect of normal rest--were her spirituality. This was her signature. It was how she channeled her eros. In her case, as is tragically often the case in gifted artists, the end result, at least in this life, was not a healthy integration but a dissipation. She, at a point, simply lost the things that normally glue a human person together and broke apart under too much pressure.

Looking at Joplin's life, and at our own lives, there is an interesting reflection to be made on Kierkegaard's definition of being a saint--someone who can will the one thing. Most of us are quite like Mother Teresa in that we want to will God and the poor. We do will them. The problem is we will everything else as well. Thus, we want to be a saint, but we also want to feel every sensation experienced by sinners; we want to be innocent and pure, but we also want to be experienced and taste all of life; we want to serve the poor and have a simple lifestyle, but we also want all the comforts of the rich; we want to have the depth afforded by solitude, but we also do not want to miss anything; we want to pray, but we also want to watch television, read, talk to friends, and go out. Small wonder life is often a trying enterprise and we are often tired and pathologically overextended.

Medieval philosophy had a dictum that said: Every choice is a renunciation. Indeed. Every choice is a thousand renunciations. To choose one thing is to turn one's back on many others. To marry one person is to not marry all the others, to have a baby means to give up certain other things; and to pray may mean to miss watching television or visiting with friends. This makes choosing hard. No wonder we struggle so much with commitment. It is not that we do not want certain things, it is just that we know that if we choose them we close off so many other things. It is not easy to be a saint, to will the one thing, to have the discipline of a Mother Teresa. The danger is that we end up more like Janis Joplin; good-hearted, highly energized, driven to try to drink in all of life, but in danger of falling apart and dying from lack of rest.

Janis Joplin is perhaps an extreme example. Most of us do not die from lack of rest at age twenty-seven. Most of us, I suspect, are a bit more like Princess Diana--half-Mother Teresa, half Janis Joplin.

Princess Diana is worth a reflection here, not just because her death stopped the world in a way that, up to now, few others ever have, but because is interesting to note that in looking at her, unlike either Mother Teresa or Janis Joplin, people do spontaneously put together the two elements of erotic and spiritual. Princess Diana is held up as a person who is both, erotic and spiritual. That is rare, given how spirituality is commonly understood. Usually we see a person as one or the other, but not as both, erotic and spiritual. Moreover, she deserves that designation for she does reflect, fairly clearly, both of these dimensions.

Review:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual Masterpiece

C.D.A. · May 27, 2025

Brilliant book that does a great job of keeping deep spiritual principles quite practical. A definite must read and re-read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good for a deeper dive into Christian faith

M. · November 3, 2025

Very deep for the intellectual wanted to dive deeper into Christian faith. Suitable for book or group study.

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a really great book for thinking people

P.C. · January 22, 2004

This is a really great book for thinking people who want to improve the deep roots from which they live their lives. It is also a great book for wounded people who may be ready to leave behind more of the baggage from their lives and move on. Fr. Rolheiser writes two chapters later in the book which will be my reasons for keeping it for many years to reread. This is not a Catholic book. It is a book for human beings no matter what their belief system. He writes about how each of us has a responsibility to work for peace and justice in whatever ways we can in a world that seems obsessed with greed and power but doesn't much care who gets stepped on in the process as long as "I get what I want when I want it." The second chapter I found powerful was the chapter on sexuality approached from a reverent perspective that gets to the heart of who each of us is as a person and how we should act if we truly respect the sexuality of another, not from the genital perspective of which we are bombarded daily. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Way for the Longing to Follow

P.M.D. · August 10, 2009

Though I found a some important things with which to disagree in this book, overall I found it a very compelling and enriching approach to Christian spirituality. Rolheiser's writing is very lucid and wise. He defines spirituality along the lines of things all people experience within themselves. It's "more about whether or not we can sleep at night, than about whether or not we go to church." It's what shapes our actions, what we do with our desire (eros), whether or not we can shape it in a creative, life-giving way; whether "the disciplines and habits we choose to live by ... lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our bodies, minds and souls, and ... in the way we are related to God, others and the cosmic world." "The opposite of being spiritual is to have no energy, is to have lost all zest for living..." Rolheiser says that, "Our soul is not something we have, it is more something we are. It is the very life pulse within us, that which makes us alive ... It is also the adhesive that holds us together, the principle of integration and individuation within us." I couldn't help but notice the similarity between this and the way Dallas Willard describes the soul in his book Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ.I'm always a little annoyed when Christian writers on spirituality seem to apologize for their Christian point of view as Rolheiser seems to do on p. 41 when he says that, "God speaks in many and diverse ways and no one person or religion has a monopoly on the truth." This statement is fine with me on the face of it. There are plenty of things one can learn from other religions. But I wonder how far people who talk like this take this reasoning in practice. Does he think he has good reasons for being a Christian and not a Buddhist or Muslim? Would he suggest that adherents of other religions take a similarly relativistic view of their own faith? While it's all fine and humble not to think of one's religion as having a complete monopoly on the truth, I wouldn't care much to listen to anyone who didn't have at least enough confidence in their religion to believe that it's the hub of truth, if not the whole wheel. It may be difficult to place a high value on both the pursuit of truth and a loving acceptance of others who don't accept our view of it, but that's the line I see Jesus walking in the Gospels. The way in following him is a narrow one. Whether or not Rolheiser believes this, his book is very valuable for Christians who do. His nonnegotiable essentials of Christian Spirituality describe a very balanced and mature spirituality with Christ as the center and the incarnation of Christ in the lives of believers as the vehicle of his ministry in the world today.Rolheiser helpfully applies Christian spirituality to several areas of life that are "key spiritualities within a spirituality. In these he illuminates how we can work out our spirituality in our relationship to the church, in the face of suffering and death, in doing justice and peacemaking, in our sexuality, and in caring for our own spiritual life. I found the chapters on suffering and death and sexuality to be especially helpful and insightful. There are some very good words in the chapter on justice and peacemaking, but I had a little bit of trouble with Rolheiser's faith in the transformation of systems to accomplish those aims. To me, all systems seem inherently flawed and limited. The transformation of systemic evil into good depends more on the health of the moral fiber of the community and the character of the individuals who make it up. It's easy to see examples systemic injustice. I don't think I've ever seen systemic justice. A system can't make us good. How can a system change the inherent problem that Rolheiser sees with abortion (p. 171) where "a whole culture ... has chosen to dissociate sex from marriage and procreation ... wherein sex is an extension of dating, abortion will always happen."?In spite of minor reservations, I value Rolheiser's perspective on Christian spirituality very much. This is a book I will turn to again for refreshment and spiritual sustenance.

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Primer on Christian Spirituality

R.L.J. · December 25, 2022

While the author is a Catholic and is approaching this topic from that perspective, I believe that anyone who longs to go deeper into Christian spirituality will benefit from this book. It is a very deep book with difficult concepts but they are explained in digestible ways that feed the soul. Strong recommend.

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal God

W. · July 30, 2008

"unrest... [it] is about what we do with that incurable desire," This sums up perfectly my current definition of "spirituality". As a 75 year old Cahtolic who waded,stumbled, rose and fell in my unsuccessful search for a meaningful relationship with my God, this book has shown me the way. It showed me that I had been a child in the church all these many years, expecting and allowing the "church" to make decisions for me. I bought hook, line, and sinker what "sister said" or what "the church dictated."There was little if any personal resposibility and I did exactly as I was told by "the church." I made no mature choices for myself. That way I didn't have to assume responsibility for my relationiship with God ... . thus the "longing", the "incurable desire". It wasn't until reading this book and understanding that it was my personal responsibility to asssume a relationship with my God and that the "church" wouldn't do it for me that I finally grew up and became an adult. I no longer look to the "church" to find it ... I now call upon my God. He pushes me forward toward spirituality more than the "Church" ever could. He and I are better friends now than ever before and I now depend upon Him and not "the church." I'm all grown up now and He and I together are working to calm "my madness" with increasing success as I continue to grow.

5.0 out of 5 stars used product was in great condition

r. · December 17, 2022

I have not finished reading the book yet. The first two chapters were confusing and not well written, I was tempted to give up but as I got into the next chapter is was much better. I have not finished reading it yet but I think it was worth while.The seller represented the product well and it was in better condition then I expected. It arrived in a timely manner.

3.0 out of 5 stars A little LONG

J.C. · June 28, 2011

I think this book has changed my life. It is a wonderful book on spirituality and I was zipping along for the first 100 pages. I just finished the book and will need to reread it for a better understanding of what exactly I do with this new outlook on my spirituality. In book reviews, some people gave this book a 5 star, but I think is was a little redundent after awhile. I enjoyed the stories, the examples the author gave, but I think it could have been completed in 150 pages. the other 75-100 were fluff.

Soul touching

S.M. · June 18, 2020

Excellent spiritual book

As expected

J. · November 2, 2024

I bought it for my parish priest and he appreciates it

"oh if only someone had explained it like this when I was younger

B.W. · July 23, 2014

I do not come from a Catholic background, in fact, was a pastor serving an Evangelical Protestant denomination for 17 years. The Holy Longing was given to me by a friend and then sat on my self for 2 years. At the right time, I picked up the book and began to read. Ron Rolheiser has speaks to the spiritual realities behind their external expressions. So many times throughout the book I found myself saying, "yes, this is what I've been trying to say," or when reading the chapter "The Spirituality of Sexuality with my wife, "oh if only someone had explained it like this when I was younger." Rolheiser is well versed in literature, philosophy, psychology as well as theology and brings a wealth of knowledge to the spiritual journey in a warm and accessible way. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to make the inward journey that moves beyond knowing and accumulating information ABOUT God, to actually EXPERIENCING his love as life.

Nice

g. · August 13, 2025

Nice reading

For me Ronald Rolheiser is one of the best writers on Christian Spirituality writing today

A.C. · December 3, 2016

For me Ronald Rolheiser is one of the best writers on Christian Spirituality writing today.I myself and others to whom I have recommended the book, have found it very helpful. In simple, yet very profound ways the author traces out what is asked of those who wish to be disciples, followers of Jesus in today's world.

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The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality

Product ID: U038549419K

Condition: New

4.6

(787 ratings)

Type: Paperback

^BHD9⁵³

Price includes VAT & Import Duties

Availability: In Stock

Quantity:

Order today to get by

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Imported From: United States

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Review:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual Masterpiece

C.D.A. · May 27, 2025

Brilliant book that does a great job of keeping deep spiritual principles quite practical. A definite must read and re-read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good for a deeper dive into Christian faith

M. · November 3, 2025

Very deep for the intellectual wanted to dive deeper into Christian faith. Suitable for book or group study.

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a really great book for thinking people

P.C. · January 22, 2004

4.0 out of 5 stars A Way for the Longing to Follow

P.M.D. · August 10, 2009

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Primer on Christian Spirituality

R.L.J. · December 25, 2022

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal God

W. · July 30, 2008

5.0 out of 5 stars used product was in great condition

r. · December 17, 2022

3.0 out of 5 stars A little LONG

J.C. · June 28, 2011

Soul touching

S.M. · June 18, 2020

Excellent spiritual book

As expected

J. · November 2, 2024

I bought it for my parish priest and he appreciates it

"oh if only someone had explained it like this when I was younger

B.W. · July 23, 2014

Nice

g. · August 13, 2025

Nice reading

For me Ronald Rolheiser is one of the best writers on Christian Spirituality writing today

A.C. · December 3, 2016

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