The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk with Us toward Holiness

by Christine Valters Paintner

Overview

Is it possible that angels, saints, and even our departed ancestors support and inspire us throughout our lives? How can we connect with them in a real way?

Christine Valters Paintner, popular spiritual writer and abbess of the online Abbey of the Arts, says these sacred beings are paving the way for our journey toward God’s love, even as we pass through a world rife with struggle, discord, and violence. In The Love of Thousands, she helps us open up our spiritual imagination to encounter our heavenly helpers, allowing us to become everyday mystics.

Paintner describes saints, angels, and our ancestors as sacred beings who surround us like concentric circles, watching over us with compassion and offering us spiritual guidance throughout our lives.

In The Love of Thousands, she guides us to see the ways these beings support us, from the care of our guardian angels, to the wisdom of the mystics, to the witness of our loved ones who have crossed the threshold to the light of God’s presence.

Paintner’s gentle guidance reveals that we can be inspired and sustained when we are open and attentive in exploring our connections to these holy companions walking alongside us. Transformed by the encounter, we can grow into the kinds of ancestors—part of the Communion of Saints—who offer spiritual support and wisdom to others in turn.

Throughout The Love of Thousands, we are led to explore and better understand

• the teachings from scripture and tradition about the four archangels, the protection offered by our guardian angels, and what it might look like to wrestle with angels as Jacob did in the Old Testament;
• the witness of the saints and mystics, with an exploration of how we are all called to be mystics;
• the tradition of relics and the practice of pilgrimage;
• the presence of our ancestors, inviting us first to claim the blessings of our family heritage and then to embrace grief and explore healing the wounds of our lineage.

 

Each chapter includes a reflection, practice, meditation, and creative exercise that will help cultivate an ongoing relationship with angels, saints, and our ancestors. Paintner also suggests various ways to engage with this book to reflect more deeply on the spiritual content, such as reading it over the course of a year or with others as a form of spiritual pilgrimage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781932057331
Publisher:	Ave Maria Press
Publication date:	08/18/2023
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Christine Valters Paintner is the online abbess for Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery offering classes and resources on contemplative practice and creative expression. She earned a doctorate in Christian spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and achieved professional status as a registered expressive arts consultant and educator from the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association. She is also trained as a spiritual director and supervisor.

Paintner is the author of numerous spirituality titles, including The Love of Thousands; Birthing the Holy; Sacred Time; Earth, Our Original Monastery; The Soul’s Slow Ripening; The Wisdom of the Body; Illuminating the Way; The Soul of a Pilgrim; The Artist’s Rule; Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire; and three collections of poetry.

She is a Benedictine oblate living in Galway, Ireland, with her husband, John. Together they lead online retreats at their website AbbeyoftheArts.com.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Reading a book by Christine Valters Paintner is like going on a retreat in your own home.”—Carl McColman, author of The Big Book of Christian Mysticism

“Christine Valters Paintner gently pulls back the veil of both time and space that we might see all those who have come before us looking lovingly upon us in the shadow of every tree, in the echo of every bird’s song.” —Cameron Bellm, Catholic author and speaker

“The Love of Thousands is actually a retreat on knowing life more richly.” —Robert J. Wicks, author of Riding the Dragon

“Reading TheLove of Thousands is like gathering around a campfire on a clear starlit night or plunging into a cold refreshing stream. It awakens what we know by heart, lifting up simple practices that help us cultivate mystical presence.” —Dori Grinenko Baker, coauthor of Another Way

“Christine Valters Paintner invites us to experience a more authentic way of being and teaches us how to live from there. Warm-hearted, its wisdom keeps us company whether we are in grief’s wilderness, a joyful time, or another liminal place. Making space for our true, loving self to awaken and reawaken, it shares ways to travel soulcraft’s healing path together and walks us home.” —Carmen Acevedo Butcher, poet and translator of The Cloud of Unknowing and Practice of the Presence