Life with the Saints

I just finished reading a book by a Jesuit priest called My Life with the Saints by James Martin, SJ. Very, very good book.

It tells the story of his own life, from a lukewarm Catholic upbringing, to college and a job in corporate America, to his own conversion of heart which led him almost directly to the Jesuit order, and learning about himself and his faith along the way. He describes how the saints popped up in his more or less secular early life—learning French as a child, travelling as a student—and played a huge role in his eventual conversion of heart after a few stressful years of working in corporate America after college. It follows him entering the Jesuits with an, at best, fair understanding of the nuts and bolts of being Catholic, and growing in his faith and vocation, all through the while describing how each particular saint had a profound impact of his life. (My Catholic friends, be advised: not all of the people he refers to are canonized yet.)

Joan of Arc, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Bernadette Soubirous come up in his early life, beginning when he learned the French language and travelled to France after college, then returning on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. He attributes his conversion of heart to Thomas Merton, and how he found the monk by mere chance—he came home from a particularly stressful week of work and flipped on PBS, when he caught the last few minutes of a documentary on the monk. Intrigued by the look of serenity on Merton’s face in one of the photos, Martin went out and found Seven Storey Mountain, Merton’s autobiography, which lit the flame in his heart to consider life in a religious order. Ignatius Loyola, naturally, came up when he entered the Society of Jesus. Pope John XXIII’s sense of humor and capacity for love led him to a surprising lesson in chastity, particularly concerning how to chastely handle falling in love after he made his first vows. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Dorothy Day lead him to a better understanding of how to care for the poor. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas are two diasperate, but no less holy, examples of priests. Mary, Mother of God (she's the last chapter-- for me, this was something of a hunk of cheese at the end of the maze) provided a beautiful example of trust in God and what it takes to follow God's will.

Martin gives an introduction of how he first comes into contact with each saint—a movie, painting, or documentary are often his only window to the saints in his early life, and later on he learned of them from fellow Jesuits or other Catholics in his life, or from his own studies. Then he gives a biography of each saint and explains how and why their lives influenced his own. He also observes how each saint’s example can inspire the rest of us mere mortals. Better yet, the saints sympathize with the struggles that we go through here on earth—they have struggled through the same frailties of being human. We can see ourselves in them because they’ve been through it before.

But best of all, Martin unearths one of the best pieces of advice about the contemporary quest for sainthood that I have ever read:

Each saint was holy in his or her own unique way, and revealed God’s way of celebrating individuality. As C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity: “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints!”

This gave me, and gives me, enormous consolation. For I eventually realized that none of us are meant to be Thérèse of Lisieux or Stanislaus Kostka or Pope John XXIII. “For me to be a saint means to be myself,” wrote Thomas Merton. Each saint lived his or her call to sanctity in different ways, and we are called to imitate them in their diversity. There is no need for anyone to do precisely what Mother Teresa or St. Francis of Assisi did. Instead, we are called to lead holy lives in our own places and own times and own ways. And that meant that my own quest for holiness was, ultimately, a quest to be myself.

Pope John XXIII meditated on this truth in an entry recorded in 1907. Reflecting on the lives of the saints, Angelo Roncalli notes that he is not meant to be a “dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, no matter how perfect.” He is meant rather to find sanctity in his own life, according to his own capacities and circumstances. “If Saint Aloysius had been as I am,” he concluded, “he would have been holy in a different way.”
– James Martin, S.J.

It is funny that I should have stumbled upon this book, because Martin works as the cultural editor of America: The National Catholic Weekly. One of the perks we enjoy as a JV community is that we receive a free copy of the magazine each month. I really enjoy this new Jesuit connection in my life! For some reason, having gleaned a little more about this priest’s life from this book, I feel distinctly more connected to the Jesuits. We learned all about Ignatius at Orientation, and it’s really cool to feel so connected to one of his priests all these years later via JVC and America.