7 Quick Takes: Great News & French Saints edition, 7/24/14

First, with some fantastic news: 

Thanks be to God!  We're very excited and incredibly happy; our prayers have been answered!  15 weeks and all is well.  Please keep us in your prayers as our baby & my wife grows bigger and cuter.  

When we pray a litany of saints after the rosary, we (=I) sometimes go on and on.  Recently, I noticed how many saints on our list are French.  And I says to meself, says I, what a good 7QT that would be!  The title links for each saint go to the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on newadvent.org.

--- 1 ---
St. Joan of Arc

I've written about her before, here.  A great book on her life is by the French historian Regine Pernoud, The Retrial of Joan of Arc.  Lighthouse Catholic Media just started selling copies of Mark Twain's biography of St. Joan, for $5 (plus shipping)!  Well, it is abridged, I just discovered.  :(  Anyway, it's worth reading this brief Wikipedia page.  Mark Twain was fascinated with St. Joan and put a lot of work and research into this book.  


--- 2 ---

St. Bernadette
Extra points for St. Bernadette, a close, personal friend of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Her life was marked by a great degree of suffering, both from her health and from her religious superior.  As a nun, her superior felt it was her mission to constantly tear down and humble the terrible pride she saw in  Bernadette.  I've come to appreciate this more as I've grown older: it's very difficult to be graceful/grace-filled in humbling situations.  I'm much more inclined to justify myself, get angry, etc. and those situations can completely ruin my day.  And there's St. Bernadette, who faced that on a near-daily basis, who responded by deepening her love for others.

--- 3 ---
St. Genevieve
St. Genevieve lived at the end of the 5th century and a little bit into the 6th century, and was awesome.  In addition to having a beautiful name (the frontrunner if we have a baby girl), she had a hand in saving Paris.  Twice!  The first was when Attila the Hun was approaching with his army; Genevieve exhorted the city to pray, fast, and trust in God as opposed to getting the heck out of there.  The residents did, and the Huns left Paris alone.  Next, when the city was under siege by Merowig (two kings before Clovis), Genevieve's influence caused Merowig and his successors to deal very kindly with the inhabitants of Paris.  (which would not have been a common thing in those days)

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St. Martin of Tours
I've written about him before as well, and like St. Joan, there's a great book on him by Regine Pernoud.  His zeal for the faith--as well as his care of souls--drove him to preach the Gospel everywhere he could.  He risked death many times to convert the villages he visited, and the Lord was with him.  

--- 5 ---

St. Therese
Her spiritual autobiography is very well known; The Story of a Soul is a step inside the mind of a saint.  Another interesting read is a lesser-known book that was popular when I was in the seminary, Maurice and Therese.  St. Therese corresponded with a seminarian who was studying to be a missionary in Africa.  Worth picking up for any Therese-o-phile!

--- 6 ---

St. John Vianney
In English we know his French title, and St. John is commonly known as the Cure of Ars.  Ever notice?  St. John was so extraordinary that he was widely known in France as "the priest of Ars."  Nothing else needed saying; his reputation for sanctity spoke for him.  Wow.

--- 7 ---
So many saints are needed in every age, but ours especially.  It's sad that the Catholic faith is dying in France, as it is in many countries in the West.  For anyone that reads this: please say a prayer for the nation of France.  There is such a rich heritage of French saints, from the earliest days of the Church (e.g. St. Irenaeus who served there as a priest & bishop in the 2rd century).  May it please God to send more saints to France in our day!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!