Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Now in paperback, the first full-scale compendium of the lives of the saints since the classic 17th-century Butler's! Respected Notre Dame theologian and historian, McBrien provides a contemporary account of all the saints that provide models of Christian living for today's believers.
An authoritative successor to the multi-volume Butler's Lives of the Saints. Although Butler's still is available in various editions, there has not been a new, expert compendium from a fresh, contemporary viewpoint in a long time. McBrien, one of our leading authorities on Catholicism, presents inside information on:
. how saints are chosen
. great Christians who may not become saints (e.g., Dorothy Day, who had an abortion and an illegitimate child before her dramatic conversion to Catholicism and serving the poor )
. likely new saints (Mother Teresa, etc., including many Americans)
. the story of the huge number of recently named saints (many from Africa).
'This one-volume treatment provides, in portable and more affordable form, the quality otherwise found only in the 12-volume, 1995 Burns edition of Butler's Lives of the Saints.' - America Magazine
Celebrated by the breadth of Catholic readers in hardback, this new paperback edition will be the only complete,
contemporary, one-volume Lives of the Saints available in the marketplace. This affordable, fresh alternative to
Butler's famous edition will succeed as both a gift book and an accessible reference guide for years to come.
Amazon.com Review
Lives of the Saints is a go-get-it-now book, an I've-been-waiting-for-this book, a thank-God-it's-on-good-paper-cause-I'll-still-be-reading-this-10-years-from-now book. Believers are drawn to saints because their witness and their teachings are inseparable: saints are the ones who lived what they believed. And we hope that, by learning about saints and meditating upon them, our own beliefs and actions will become more integrated. Author Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and author of the equally indispensable Lives of the Popes, is particularly interested in the relationship between the lives of individual saints and the life of the Church. In his preface to Lives of the Saints, and in its excellent essays about the history of sainthood, veneration, and the process of canonization, he repeatedly asks: "What do the saints tell us, individually and collectively, not only about the character of Christian discipleship, but about the meaning of human existence itself? And what does the action of the Church in proclaiming or canonizing various types of Christians as saints disclose about the fundamental religious values of the Church itself?" Lives of the Saints also includes biographical sketches organized by feast day (January 1 is Mary, Mother of God; December 31 is Pope Sylvester I). The book's clear structure and simple style ensure that it will serve many readers' needs: it may be used as a reference or as a devotional, or it may be read straight through. In any case, it will help Christians (or any interested reader) address what McBrien calls "the question of sanctity," a question that lies at the heart of all of our lives: "In what does a human life fully consist?" he asks. "What does it mean not only to be 'good,' but to be 'really good,' even outstandingly so?" --Michael Joseph Gross
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