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My Life with the Saints
James Martin, SJ
Loyola Press, 2006.
Reviewed by John Leech
My Life with the Saints comes to us from one of the best teams in Roman Catholic publishing, Loyola Press of Chicago. Humorous in his self-revelations, and pious, properly so, in his discussion of grace mediated through human lives, James Martin, SJ, has given us a devotional example that leads its reader deeper into their own explorations of life in the Spirit. (After 87 pages I was on the phone to San Francisco to hook up with a Jesuit spiritual director.) This reader, an Episcopal priest in Sacramento, missed more reference to saints outside denominational boundaries. (There is a reference to the Anglicans’ shrine for the 19th century martyrs of Uganda.)
James Martin, a Jesuit priest, serves as associate editor of America magazine. Within the context of North American Roman Catholic piety, this text does a terrific job of blowing away the plaster dust so we can see saints' faces revealed in their blessed humanity.
From the hey, Jude, help me out, of early childhood, through traditional figures and modern martyrs, Father Martin introduces his saints with felicitous personal responses and thorough research. Pointing beyond his own books’ covers, the author commends to our attention Robert Ellsberg’s All Saints (Crossroad, 1997), the counter-reformation classic Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and writings on the subjects of his individual chapters.
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