Saints for Today: Reflections on Lesser Saints & Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes. (Book Review).

Ivan Innerst, Saints for Today: Reflections on Lesser Saints, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2000, 107 pages, $16.50 (Cdn.); and Ronald Knox, Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2001, 184 pages, $21.50 (Cdn.).

The title Reflections on Lesser Saints has one wondering just who these "lesser saints" are. Innerst seeks to draw us toward a door of hope that we too might be able to walk through to holiness and sainthood as we reflect on certain virtues in these minor heroes. Many of the saints in this book have left scant record of their lives. Often, legends and hearsay aside, there are only a few lines. But these say it all. Saint Isidore, a simple farm labourer of the eleventh century and a married man, left the earth still poor in material goods but rich in piety. Saint Rosalia came from a royal Sicilian family, but chose a life hidden with Christ. She simply disappeared from her castle in the flower of maidenhood to spend her life in a cave.

What else she did we do not know. She prayed and died in obscurity, but left a bit of heaven behind on earth. Margaret Clitherow was a dedicated and loving wife and mother, actually a convert, when this was quite unsafe in Elizabethan England. She harboured priests and had Mass said in her home, and sent her children to Catholic school. She was caught and sentenced to torture and death and was indeed quite frightened. Even for love of her husband and children, though, she did not hesitate to leave this world proclaiming the Catholic faith while embracing unimaginable stuffering.

At times the author seems to be giving too much editorial comment with homiletic and literary flourish, but too few details about the saints' lives (when these details do actually exist). To return to the book's title, however, it does indicate that these biographies are designed as reflections". The author ably moves us to think more deeply on some predominant false values of our own culture and to resist them in favour of the timeless virtue and truths embraced by these lesser known saints.

Msgr. Ronald Knox had previously produced a series of reflections that Ignatius Press has thankfully republished from the original 1940 edition. His acerbic wit can be delightful when he makes a jab at some foible or weakness, such as the historian's brutal disdain of any legends or uncertain records of the saints that are not one hundred percent verifiable. So he is reduced to saying, "I do not mean to derive any lesson from the life or the martyrdom of St. George [patron saint of England], because it appears that nothing whatever is known about either."

So he proceeds to preach on the second half of "St. George for merry England!" and convincingly proposes that England will only be truly merry when she returns to the Catholic fold! Each chapter on a saint was originally a preached sermon by this highly esteemed convert and apologist. The reader feels transported to Britain, her history, culture, and concerns, and the language itself is eloquent and edifying English at its best.

We hear of the common attacks against Catholics and the best of calm, often humorous, cutting edge apologetics. Knox has some brilliant insights throughtout. In his discussion of St. Anselm, he carefully analyzes why the saint resisted accepting the archbishopric. "It was only the use of physical force," Knox writes "that they dragged the Saint to the King's bedside; and there, pressing the crosier against the knuckles that would not open so as to hold it, they elected the Archbishop of Canterbury. After some analysis, Knox concludes, "He has been with God, and in seeing, as we do not see, the greatness of God, he has seen, as we do not see, his own smallness." He goes on to contrast practical modesty with true saintly humility. "For modesty is only the disinclination to hear our own praises sounded above other men; by humility man learns that simply because he is man he is nothing." Both books boast short, well rounded chapters on a particular saint that leave you asking for more, yet still somehow satisfied and edified. They offer many a superb became story that will enhance prayer and moral resolve.

Ann Wilson is a teacher and a catechist and resides in Toronto.