I read My Life with the Saints by James Martin, SJ during the first three weeks of October 2012. We had been given the book several months prior when we went to a small reception for us and other new members of our church. I had already heard of James Martin, SJ as the author of The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything and Between Heaven and Mirth. I didn't start reading the book until we read in our church bulletin that the young adult group planned to discuss the book on Sunday, October 21.
My Life with the Saints does not seem like an excessively long book at about 330 pages. However, it has very small type and contains a lot of information. There are 18 chapters with 16 each focusing on different saints that have influenced Father Jim Martin's life. Combined with stories of the saints are stories from Father Martin's own life as he went from working for General Electric, to preparing for priesthood as a novice, to his ministries in different parts of the country and the world. He has worked with gangs in Chicago, helped refugees in Kenya, traveled to sacred places in Europe and Africa, ministered to prisoners, suffered from crippling repetitive motion problems. The book probably contains more about his life than any one of the saints mentioned, but it's still interesting. He also delves into some deep spiritual matters, mentions many other saints, and discusses the role of saints in general. Not every saint featured has yet been officially canonized. Some such as Pope John XXIII and Mother Theresa are beatified with the title Most Blessed. On the cover is an image of John Nava's "Communion of the Saints" tapestries for the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in L.A., CA.
Despite being a religious book, I found the writing to be very accessible. Even though Father Martin often jumps back and forth between his life and the lives of the saints. He even includes some humor and makes it a very personal account. I believe it was written in the order that he discovered the saints. I only came across one word I did not know in the sentence Father Martin quotes from Lawrence S. Cunningham's Francis of Assisi,
Such an understanding (of St. Francis as a dopey well-meaning hippie who talks to birds) is coterminous with what I would call spirituality lite. (p. 236)
According to my Random House dictionary, the definition of coterminous is "conterminous." The same dictionary defines conterminous as "having the same boundary." I could see both words showing up in an NPL flat.
I found many relatable references in the book. Since Joan of Arc helped free the captured Orleans from the English in 1429, she is known as the "maid of Orleans," also the name of an OMD song. Incidentally, they also have a song called Joan of Arc and The Smiths had a song "Bigmouth Strikes Again" that included the line "now I know how Joan of Arc felt." Father Martin doesn't have anything nice to say about his Probability and Statistics professor in business school, only that he was the dullest he ever had and employed the same example throughout:
Imagine two urns, one contains green balls and the other contains red balls... (p. 42)
Thomas Merton's book Peace in the Post-Christian Era was forbidden by his Trappist superiors in 1962 and not published until 2004. I wonder if we could read that in the banned books club. Father Martin visits the town of Assisi in Italy where the great basilica contains a cycle of frescoes of Francis' life painted by Giotto and a "separate portrait of Francis by Cimabue" that is "almost life-sized, with Francis's feet painted very near the floor" (p. 249). I remember studying the works of Giotto and Cimabue in my Renaissance art history class in college.
Soon after college I got involved with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC). As a novice Jesuit, Father Martin worked in ministry at the Nativity Mission School in NYC where many of the teachers "were recent college grads and members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps" (p. 192). As a Jesuit Volunteer (JV) I lived in a community with other JVs and from the book it seems like Jesuit priests also live in communities where the houses have names such as Casa Arrupe after one of the saints in the book, former Jesuit Father General Pedro Arrupe. Father Martin quotes St. John Berchmans "Vita communis est mea maxima penitentia":
Life in community is my greatest penance. Now there was someone to whom a novice could pray. (p. 285)
And I would say someone to whom a JV could pray as well. I've been hearing about Perugia, Italy lately. That's where Amanda Knox was convicted of murder, later overturned. The next book I read was Ratking by Michael Dibdin that took place in Perugia and Dibdin was also a professor at the University of Perugia. Father Martin mentions that
At the age of twenty, (later St.) Francis was taken prisoner during a war between Assisi and Perugia, a neighboring town. (p. 237)
If I ever visit Italy I know where I'm not going.
I share Father Martin's lack of familiarity with Catholic Pop Culture. For Jesuit novices, television watching is popular pastime "on a thirty-five dollar monthly stipend. Our TV room consisted of 15 individual recliners lined up in front of a large television” (p. 111) They watch the Catholic Pop Culture film The Song of Bernadette about Saint Bernadette Soubirous. Father Martin also hadn't heard of the films Thérèse (about St. Thérèse of Lisieux), Going My Way, The Nun's Story, and The Trouble with Angels that most of the other Jesuit novices had seen by age 10. My wife is familiar with Catholic Pop Culture, in particular the film Brother Sun Sister Moon about St. Francis of Assisi. Father Martin doesn't mention the film, but does mention an event depicted in it where "as a symbol of his renunciation of his father's wealth and of his own reliance on God, Francis stripped himself naked before (his father) Pietro in the town square and returned his clothing to his father" (p. 218). Brother Sun Sister Moon also stars Judi Bowker as Clare, later St. Clare. Judi Bowker went on to play Andromeda in Clash of the Titans. Father Martin mentions that Clare founded a women's division of the Franciscans "known as the Poor Ladies of San Damiano, called today the Poor Clares" (p. 248). I have seen one Catholic Pop Culture film. Father Martin writes that the "movie Black Robe loosely based on the life of Isaac Jogues and his companions" (p. 233).
My Life with the Saints mentions other saints in addition to the ones covered in each chapter. The saints on the cover mentioned include St. Paul Miki (Japan 1597) and Blessed Miguel Pro (Mexico, 1927). They both followed St. Ignatius of Loyola's spiritual exercises among others. Father Martin includes a simple prayer to St. Anthony of Padua, finder of lost things:
St. Anthony St. Anthony, please come around. Something is lost and cannot be found. (p. 100)
While on a trip to Lourdes he spends a few hours in a building labeled Confessions.
In front of the building is a statue of a kneeling St. John Vianney, the nineteenth century French priest known for his compassion in the confessional (he was said to spend upwards of 18 hours a day hearing confessions). (p. 129)
While working as secretary to the bishop of Bergamo, Father Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) "stumbled upon the archive of papers of St. Charles Borromeo, the Milanese archbishop who was active in the Council of Trent" (p. 159) When he was 12 years old, Luigi Gonzaga met Cardinal Charles Borromeo who helped Gonzaga prepare for his first communion.
In this way a future saint received his first communion from another. (p. 159)
Gonzaga also had a future saint and famous name for his spiritual adviser: Father Robert Bellarmine.
Naturally I learned much about many saints from the book. Not every saint featured in a chapter is a canonized saint. Some such as Pedro Arrupe, Pope John XXIII, and Mother Theresa have been declared Blessed or "Beatified." We once heard that a TV news anchor said it as "Beautified." Father Martin mentions the "companionship model" "where the saints are our friends, those who have gone ahead of us and are now cheering us on...This is a more egalitarian notion of sanctity and sainthood. St. Paul, for example, speaks for all the Christian faithful as saints." (p. 99) I learned that saints also struggle with their faith. Father Martin writes,
We're sure that all saints had to do was close their eyes to be instantly rewarded with warm feelings of God's presence. But the example of Mother Theresa...shows us that the saints really are like the rest of us and struggle in every way we do, even...in the spiritual life. (p. 149)
Saints have patronages such as St. Thomas Aquinas whose sister was killed by lightning. He was always terrified of thunder and is the patron saint for those in danger of thunderstorms and those facing certain death. My wife knew that St. Clare was the patron saint of television and St. Lawrence was the patron of comedians. We learned that Charles Borromeo is the patron saint of those suffering from digestive disorders. St. Monica was the mother of St. Augustine. She had prayed fervently for the conversion of her young and wayward son and is considered the patron saint of persistent prayer. As a character in an off-Broadway play about Judas Iscariot she says,
You should try giving me a shout if you ever need it, cuz my name is St. Monica, and I'm the mother of St. Augustine, and ya know what? my a-- gets results. (p. 318)
Father Martin also addresses what he calls the "bizarre piety surrounding the cult of the saints.
What (do I think of) the tradition of burying statues of St. Joseph in the ground in order to get a house sold?...If such practices help people feel closer to their favorite saint, and that in turn helps them feel closer to God, than that's terrific–as long as people remember that it is God to whom they are praying and that devotion to a saint should never blind them to the centrality of Jesus in their lives. (p. 319)
The book introduced me to some holy orders I hadn't heard of before. While in Kenya Father Martin met some Catholic sisters called the Little Sisters of Jesus. The order was inspired by Charles de Foucald whose insight was that before Jesus was baptized and started his ministry, he was a poor man who worked as a carpenter in his hometown. This "hidden life" of Jesus lasted for longer than his three years of active ministry. The vocation of the Little Sisters of Jesus means that they "typically engage in menial labor–working in factories, in hospital, and on farms–choosing to insert themselves into places overlooked and neglected by many in the church, and to do so joyfully" (p. 257). They reminded us a bit of the nuns in the film Change of Habit (see earlier review). Another order I learned of was the Grey Nuns, an order that tends to the seriously ill. They run Youville Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts where the patients suffer from a variety of diseases: cancer, dementia, degenerative muscular diseases.
Other things I learned from the book include that the word angel is taken from the Greek angelos and simple means "messenger." The top three Gospel passages that are subject of artistic renderings (paintings, sculptures, mosaics, frescos) are the Nativity, the Crucifixion and the Annunciation. During a side trip to Rome, Father Martin visited the Jesuit church there, the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, nicknamed "Il Gesù." He writes,
Legend has it that when the devil and the wind were walking together in the plaza, the devil asked to drop into the church and left the wind outside waiting. The wind has been there ever since. Apparently, this is supposed to say something about the Jesuits and their diabolical ways, or their propensity to talk. Having first heard this tale in the novitiate, I was immensely pleased when I finally reached the piazza and was nearly knocked down by the wind. (p. 287)
Father Martin goes into depth on some spiritual topics, often mentioning them in different chapters on different saints. He states that
Something like a serious illness, a family crisis, or a crushing disappointment can help us recognize our dependence on God. (p. 213)
A new concept to me is spiritual indifference introduced by Ignatius Loyola. An example is when someone might say, I'm not going to visit my friend in the hospital because I might get sick.
Ignatius would say in that case you may not be indifferent enough, health has become a sort of god, preventing you from doing good. (p. 76).
Later Father Martin defines this indifference as "having an interior freedom to go wherever one is most needed and do whatever seems best: one is open to follow the word of God, wherever it may lead" (p. 252). He finds himself to be indifferent when trying to decide between doing his required ministry at an American middle school or with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Africa.
A frequent in-depth topic in the book has to do with individuality and conscience. Father Martin emphasizes early on that we are not called to copy the lives of the saints but rather "we're meant to be ourselves, and allow God to work in and through our own individuality, our own humanity" (pp. 11-12). Much later he states that God awakens our vocations primarily through our desires just as the desires of the saints led them to an individual brand of holiness. Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises included an examination of conscience also called the "examen." The Second Vatican Council declared that
In all his activity man is bound to follow his conscience faithfully, in order that he many continue to know God. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience. (p. 109)
At that council, Pope John XXIII affirmed the right of every person "to worship God in accordance with the rights of his conscience" (p. 167).
My Life with the Saints contains a lot of information about James Martin's life, the saints he has so far met along the way, the journey to become a Jesuit priest, Catholic spirituality, and more. I wondered what aspects of the book we would discuss with the young adults age 21-39. We ended up not discussing anything because we couldn't find where they were meeting on the 21st. We went to several different possible places near the church. It turned out that they had postponed the discussion to November 18. We haven't decided 100% if we plan to attend. Even if we don't I still got a lot out of reading the book.
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