Book: Saints for the Family

Saints for the Family by Father John Murray - Messenger Publications...

Best-selling author of Saints for Our Time and Saints for the Journey Fr John Murray introduces us to a selection of saints for the family, to mark the World Meeting of Families in Dublin. Among those included are traditional Biblical figures like Joseph, husband of Mary as well as Elizabeth and Zechariah. There are classical saints, but the author wanted to show that many came from difficult families - Laura Vicuna who suffered abuse and Antonia Brenner who had two failed marriages before befriending prisoners in a maximum security complex.

There too is Sr Ignatia who helped in the founding of the AA organisation and Bartolo Longo who at one time was a Satanist priest but became in time a great devotee of the Rosary. There are couples included like the parents of St Therese of Lisieux as well as the parents of Pope Saint John Paul and couples like Felip and Maria Barreda who died during the Nicaraguan civil war.

No human heart is immune to God's love revealed in Jesus Christ. We may resist that love but in the end, no matter what, it will conquer all. We can neither hide from God' love or run from it. Nobody knew this better than the poet Francis Thompson. His life experience is expressed in that beautiful ode ' The Hound of Heaven ' (God's Love.)

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind....

After a life of much failure and suffering Thompson loses but 'The Hound of Heaven ' takes all.

Holiness is about being open to God's love..Sin is rejecting it. Fr Murray's beautifully framed book is about that. I think it would unfair to single out any one chapter for praise since they are all rich in content. However since Fr Murray aims his book at 'Christian Family Life' the first few pages need comment.

The families of Mary and Elizabeth are in a way prototypes of the ideal that Christ will outline in Matthew Ch. 19 v 5...6. v5..and He added." That is why a man leaves his father and mother, and is united to his wife, and the two become one flesh. v6 " It follows that they are no longer two individuals ; they ae one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, man must not separate."

There would be great holiness and terrible suffering in those two families. Mary would witness her son being crucified and Elizabeth's son would be beheaded. No family is without pain and it love gives strength.

The parade of human beings that Fr Murray gives is indeed painful. There is addiction, abuse, mental trials, doubt, humiliation, fear and more. But! and it is an important But! Father Murray gives us magnificent human effort that is open to God's healing love. In the end with these people the 'Hound of Heaven ' wins.

We have been blessed in Ireland with the visit of Pope Francis. In his letter ' Laetitia Amoris ' Pope Francis has given the Church and the World a document that will influence, in a very positive way, for centuries to come, the future of Family and Love as Christ would wish it to be. After the euphoria of the visit, the Irish Church will have much praying, much thinking, and much action to do. If you read Fr Murray's book....you will know what I am on about. The 'Hound of Heaven' is there.