My Life With the Saints
by James Martin, S.J.
Loyola Press, 411 pages, $22.95

An account of spiritual peregrinations that is as delightful as it is instructive. In My Life with the Saints, Fr. Martin describes with a light touch his encounters with a wide range of saints from the Catholic past and present (not all of them canonized) and how they profoundly changed his thinking, his life of prayer, and his way of being a Christian. He succeeds in making “the cloud of witnesses” persuasively present. Readers familiar with current conflicts and controversies in the Church will raise an eyebrow at the author's occasional partisanship, including his roseate view of all things Jesuit. But it is worth a measure of patience to join in Martin's reflections on living with the saints as one's intercessors, companions, and friends.