My Life With the Saints
James Martin, SJ
ISBN-13: 978-0829420012

Having been inspired in the past by reading biographies of the Saints, I decided to check out from the library My Life With the Saints by Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest.  On the surface, the book appealed to me because it covered several saints, a few of whom I had no previous experience with.

While this book is an interesting spiritual memoir, and Fr. Martin is a very compelling writer, this book was somewhat of a disappointment to me.  It was a disappointment not because it was a poor book, but because it was not what I was expecting.

While scanning through the table of contents, I got pretty excited because it appeared that there would be quite a bit of information about a fairly diverse group of saints.  Fr. Martin has chapters about saints from Francis of Assisi to Thomas Aquinas to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Strangely though, he also had chapters about people such as Thomas Merton, who appeared to be one of Fr. Martin’s favorites, and Dorothy Day.

Once I started reading this book, I came to see it for what it really is, and perhaps I should have deduced this from the information on the cover.  This book is essentially about Fr. Martin.  In each chapter he writes (beautifully, I might add) about different chapters in his own life.  During these recollections, Fr. Martin talks a little bit about the saint after whom he titled the chapter.  He manages to squeeze in a little biographical information, and then he ties the saint of note together with the chapter in his life, showing the reader why this particular saint has become important to him over the years.

This book is well written, no doubt, and Fr. Martin’s experiences will certainly appeal to some.  I however, am much more inspired by biographical information that portrays the real life heroics that surround many of the saints.  I would only recommend this book to people looking to pass the time by reading about the somewhat interesting life of a well-traveled Jesuit priest.

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(3/5 Crosses)