Teologia spirituale. La scienza dei santi

This volume offers a systematic journey that combines history, doctrine and lived experience to rediscover spiritual theology as the authentic ‘science of the saints’. In the first part, Ezio Bolis traces the discipline’s development from its patristic and monastic roots to the contributions of contemporary human sciences, showing how mystical experience and sociological and psychological research shed light on the nature of the encounter with God. In the second part, thirteen “dynamic nodes” of Christian experience – from the calling of Abraham to the eschatological dimension of the “spiritual body” – are presented through biblical texts, passages from the lives of the saints and theological-practical reflections: not abstract principles, but paths of spiritual growth. This perspective, which takes its starting point from the lives of the saints, constitutes the book’s original contribution: their lives become a true “theological locus”, capable of speaking directly to today’s context, offering critical tools against any form of psychological or purely subcultural reductionism. Readers will find here solid content, expressed in rigorous, up-to-date language rich in interdisciplinary references, to guide personal research and pastoral practice: from the liturgy to service to the poor, right through to addressing the digital and social challenges of our time. To view holiness not as an escape from the world, but as a horizon of truth and humanity for every believer.