The Fulfillment of all Desire: A Guidebook for the Journey to God Based on the Wisdom of the Saints

by Ralph Martin

Emmaus Road

, 2006

496 pages, $27.95

(800) 693-2484

emmausroad.org

Ralph Martin — author, speaker, TV host, theology professor and a leader in the charismatic-renewal movement for many years — examines seven doctors of the Church and shows how their writings contribute to the Catholic understanding of life as a spiritual journey.

The reader is introduced to the three stages he can expect to pass through as he progresses: the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways. To each of these stages is dedicated a section of the book.

Along the way, we drink directly from the insights of seven strong sources — Sts. Catherine of Siena, Bernard of Clairvaux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Augustine, Francis de Sales and Therese of Lisieux. In fact, around one third of the book is made up of quotations from these great thinkers. In this way, Martin helps us delve deeper into their dense thought than we would have without the light of his teacherly guidance.

Indeed, the strength of this work is its deft touch. It makes a tasty treat of “good-for-you” nourishment.

Martin takes us on a journey through the saints’ lives — and through our own.

“What really holds us back from a wholehearted response to the call of Jesus, of Vatican II, of the repeated urgings of the Spirit, is not really the external circumstances of our lives, but the interior sluggishness of our hearts,” he writes. “We need to be clear that there will never be a better time or a better set of circumstances than now to respond wholeheartedly to the call to holiness. Who knows how much longer we’ll be alive on this earth? We don’t know how long we’ll live or what the future holds.

"Now is the acceptable time. The very things we think are obstacles are the very means God is giving us to draw us to depend more deeply on him.”

The book is designed to help us overcome our inertia, especially if we’ve been lulled into laziness by our torpor-inducing culture of endless entertainments.

Martin shakes us awake, drawing us away from what distracts us and into what, from the perspective of eternity, matters.

“To be holy is not primarily a matter of how many Rosaries we say or how much Christian activity we’re engaged in; it’s a matter of having our heart transformed into a heart of love,” he writes. “It is a matter of fulfilling the great commandments that sum up the whole law and the prophets: to love God and our neighbor, wholeheartedly. Or, as Teresa of Avila puts it, holiness is a matter of bringing our wills into union with God’s will.”

In some places, where Martin yields the floor to a saint for an extended run of thought, I felt a little let down. I wanted more of his contemporary voice and figured that, were I interested in reading the saints, I could easily enough do so unaided. Gradually I realized that his introductions, interjections and transitions illuminated facets of these saints’ writings that I would not have otherwise seen.

Read this book and let seven old acquaintances become new best friends — and trusty traveling companions.

Steven McEvoy writes from Waterloo, Ontario.