Posted September 21, 2011 Book: My Other Self: Conversations with Christ on Living Your Faith Author: Clarence J. Enzler Ave Maria Press. Notre Dame, IN. 2011. Pp. 232 An Excerpt from the Jacket: Clarence Enzler ---- author of the multi-million copy seller Everyone’s Way of the Cross — guides readers in prayerful conversation with Christ wherein the reader is personally addressed as “my other self” and is challenged to be Christ’s presence of love and service in the world. Modeled on the fifteenth-century classic The Imitation of Christ, this intimate guide to the spiritual life leads the reader through the journey of the Christian life, beginning with the call to live in friendship with Christ. An Excerpt from the Book: Patience with Oneself Wait on God with patience Ecclesiastes 2:3 If it is hard to be patient with others and with your circumstances, it is far harder to be truly patient wit yourself. Does this seem illogical? Do you think nothing could be easier than to be patient with your own failings? To be truly patient with yourself is extremely difficult. It means being humble enough to accept your limitations, being willing to serve me day after day despite your falls, being content for the time being with your discontents. It means, with Paul, glorying in your weakness. It means recognizing with Philip Neri that the harder you sweep the more dust you raise. It means understanding with Francis of Assisi your own utter nothingness. Patience with yourself is not thinking too much of your own miseries, but correcting yourself in gentleness, even as you would correct me in your neighbor. Recognize your faults. More than this, recognize your nothingness; but do not give way to anger at yourself. Be gently firm and firmly gentle, as you resolve with my help to do better in the future. Should your imperfections momentarily gain the upper hand, you do well to be displeased at your faults, but you do even better to tell me that you are glad to learn your weakness. Since you are full of imperfections, you must expect to be guilty of them over and over. When you allow yourself to become dejected over your involuntary faults, it is because you think you are better than you really are. And once, you allow your imperfections to upset you, you are likely to find yourself in a sharp-tongued, irritable mood in all that you do. When will you learn that of yourself you can do nothing? Table of Contents: Part 1: The Call 1. The goal of life 2. Abandonment 3. Be what I desire 4. Christ in us Part II: The Means 5. Detachment 6. Virtue 7. Prayer 8. Avoidance of sin 9. The Mass and the Eucharist Part III: The End 10. The final goal