Blessed Among Us

Companion volume to Robert Ellsberg’s bestselling resource Blessed Among Us offers even more reflections on inspiring if also eclectic Cloud of Witnesses.

Since the early centuries, Christians have held up saintly people as models of living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While the Church o­fficially recognizes a relatively small number of saints, the actual roster is infinitely wider. Blessed Among Us explores this eclectic “Cloud of Witnesses”—lay and religious, single and married, canonized and not, and even non-Christians whose faith and wisdom may illuminate our path. Brought to life in the evocative storytelling of Robert Ellsberg, they inspire the moral imagination and give witness to the myriad ways of holiness.

In two stories per day for over a full calendar year, Ellsberg sketches figures from biblical times to the present age and from all corners of the world—ordinary figures whose extraordinary lives point to the new age in the world to come. Blessed Among Us is drawn from Ellsberg’s acclaimed column of the same name in Give Us ­This Day, a monthly resource for daily prayer published by Liturgical Press.

Robert Ellsberg is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Orbis Books, and the author of several award-winning books, including All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time; Blessed Among All Women; The Saints' Guide to Happiness; and A Living Gospel: Reading God's Story in Holy Lives. From 1975-1980 he was part of the Catholic Worker community in New York City, where he served as managing editor of The Catholic Worker and worked closely with Dorothy Day. He has edited six volumes of her writings, including Dorothy Day: Selected Writings; The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day; All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day; and Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings. He has written and edited many other volumes, including (with Sister Wendy Beckett) Dearest Sister Wendy . . . A Surprising Story of Faith and Friendship. Since the first issue in 2011, he has contributed the “Blessed Among Us” feature for every issue of Give Us This Day. A previous collection of these entries, Blessed Among Us, is also available from Liturgical Press.