Book 21 of 23 is finished! Modern Saints, Book Two is an inspirational non-fiction collection of short biographies of Catholic saints. Aimed at primary or lower high school students, this book (and it’s proceeding volume) are perfect for teaching children about the inspiring lives of the saints, while also showing them that saints are really just ordinary people like us.
Plot summary
This book contains 45 short biographies of saints. This second volume covers saints who lived from the late 1700s through to mid 1960s. Each story comes with photos or portraits of the saints. Especially for the saints that lived closer to now, there are more photos, sometimes from childhood through to their death. The photos help to make the saints feel like the real people they are.
This is a very Catholic book, but I think Christians of all creeds could find inspiration in these pages. All of these people loved God deeply and strove to do His will. But they were also very ordinary. Most lived quiet and little known lives, until their death brought to light their heroic virtue and closeness to God.
Sweetly inspirational
Each little biography is a nice little burst of inspiration for those trying to live out their Catholic faith. Since these are aimed at children, they aren’t particularly complicated or detailed. But they contain a neat summary of the person’s life and why they are considered worth of canonisation by the Catholic Church.
I chose to add this book to my 23 in 2023 list after I finished reading Vol I last year. I was looking for some spiritual reading that I could take on in small amounts each day. The short biographies were perfect for that. They allow you to reach a short summary of an inspirational person, which you can reflect on over the course of the day, or as part of your evening prayer. Vol II was equally good for this, although I did have to push through a more than one saint a day this year. This is my own fault, as I got very off track during the first few months of the house move.
This is an easy read. IF you’re looking for something to read aloud to children, I would highly recommend. But it’s not bad for adults either. I found myself reflecting on the lives of these extraordinary, ordinary people quite a lot. I resonated with some more than others. There were times that a certain saint would inspire my prayer for a few days or help me try to work a little harder on the weaknesses in my life. That’s not bad for a few hundred words!
In the home stretch for the reading challenge
There was a point this year where I honestly thought I wouldn’t finish the reading challenge this year. I think it was the moment when the outstanding books I ordered arrived and the pile looked like this:
I worked out the that I had to read 35 pages a day every day until the end of December to make it to the end. At the time, that felt so overwhelming, especially since I was still slogging through by Dante and Plato. But here we are at the end of October and there are only one and a half books left! It turns out that I have really enjoyed all of the books and blasted through them.
My next review will be a classically massive Solzhenitsyn. Keep an eye out for that in the new few weeks.
