Patron Saints: A Feast of Holy Cards and Holy Cards

In the tradition of Abrams' successful "Holy Cards and Saints: A Year in Faith and Art", comes "Patron Saints: A Feast of Holy Cards". From the thousands of Catholic Saints, authors Calamari and Di Pasqua have chosen more than 120 who are beautifully portrayed in rare antique holy cards, and whose particular role as patrons is explained by reference to their inspiring lives. The book is divided into five sections: there are patrons of occupations, of nations, of health, of states of life and of nature, animals or natural disasters. Each section includes a list of significant Saints, along with illustrated biographies of the ones selected for the book. Most readers will find here Saints whose patronage is relevant to their own lives.For hundreds of years, holy cards have offered comfort, consolation and encouragement to Catholics, who often carry these portable images of their favourite saints with them and use them in daily religious ritual. Given as remembrances at wakes and funerals, communions and confirmations, holy cards are also a widely popular - and highly collectible - form of folk art.
$27.50

Holy cards offer comfort, consolation, and encour­agement to Catholics, who often carry these portable images with them and use them in daily religious rituals. Given as remembrances at wakes and funerals, Communions, and confirmations, holy cards are also a widely popular—and highly collectible—form of folk art. This handsome volume is both a richly illustrated survey of this devotional art and a gallery of saints organized thematically along with brief biographies, attributes, and powers. Prophets and angels, disciples and evangelists, martyrs and hermits, visionaries and mystics are among the religious figures in Catholicism represented here—in exquisite depictions that are at times dramatic and disturbing, at times moving and comforting. This book explains the often enigmatic symbolism in these cards in a beautiful package that makes an ideal gift for first Communion, confirmation, or graduation.
$19.95

My Best Teachers Were Saints: What Every Educator Can Learn from the Heroes of the Churc

Discipline problems, self-doubt, tense meetings, classroom stress . . . Couldn’t every teacher use some saintly help?

Every teacher can think of at least one mentor who has served as an inspiration over the years. However, many teachers—even those with a Catholic faith—might not have considered that saints can serve as mentors. Author and teacher Susan H. Swetnam believes that saints aren’t only good teachers—they’re the best teachers.

In My Best Teachers Were Saints, Swetnam focuses on fifty-two saints—many of them teachers—who faced challenges similar to those that nearly all educators face today, from indifferent students and recalcitrant colleagues to their own limitations and feelings of isolation. With the examples of saints such as Augustine, Ignatius of Loyola, and Scholastica, Swetnam eagerly shares how their words and deeds helped immensely in her own career as a teacher and how they can aid and inspire other educators as well.
Anyone involved in education—whether teaching religion or mathematics, kindergartners or graduate students—will discover within these pages a treasure trove of saintly help that is sure to prove that the best teachers are in fact saints!

$15.95

Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal

This is the story of the saint through whom we received the Miraculous Medal. No sacramental since the Rosary has had such an impact on the Church, and none has ever been diffused in such incredible numbers, with many millions of people all over the world wearing the Medal within a few years. Since 1933, when it was exhumed and found miraculously preserved, the body of St. Catherine Labouré (1806-1876) has lain incorrupt at 140, rue du Bac, Paris, in the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, venerated by thousands of pilgrims each year.

Who was this St. Catherine Labouré who during her lifetime chose to remain entirely unknown, except to her confessor, as the visionary of the Miraculous Medal? To answer this question, the author spend ten years in research, studying many documents never before available to her biographers and carrying out his investigation in Paris, Rome and Catherine's own village. What he has produced here is a definitive life of the Saint which is at once highly readable and inspiring.

Emerging from his work is the fact that Catherine Labouré was no accidental saint -- that, to launch the Miraculous Medal devotion, Heave chose its seer well. The reader will come to love St. Catherine Labouré  will see in her a woman of incredible strength and character, of unbelievable constancy, of kindness, humility, obedience and self-effacement.

$16.95

Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church

“Humanity, take a good look at yourself. Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world—everything is hidden in you.” —St. Hildegard of Bingen

She was a Benedictine abbess, artist, composer, dietician, naturalist, poet, traveling preacher, mystic, and political consultant. Meet the incomparable St. Hildegard of Bingen, recently proclaimed a “Doctor of the Church.” Nourishing, challenging, and idea-bursting, her writings will stir and awaken your soul.

This essential reader captures the vibrant spirit and intelligence of Hildegard with selections from her songs, theological texts, liturgical music, and letters. Combined with an introduction to St. Hildegard’s life and era, a map of her Germany, a chronology of her life, and a thorough bibliography/discography, St. Hildegard of Bingen is the ideal doorway into this fascinating medieval mystic.

$16.99

Saint Gianna Molla: Wife, Mother, Doctor

This is the inspiring story of a newly canonized contemporary woman. Gianna Molla (1923-1962) risked her life in order to save her unborn child. Diagnosed with uterine tumors during her fourth pregnancy, she refused a hysterectomy that would have aborted the child, and opted for a riskier surgery in an attempt to save the baby. Herself a medical doctor, Molla did give birth to the child, but succumbed to an infection.

An Italian woman who loved skiing, playing piano, attending concerts at the Milan Conservatory, Molla was a dedicated physician and devoted wife and mother who lived life to the fullest, yet generously risked death by cancer for the sake of her child.

A unique story, co-authored by her own husband, with his deeply moving personal insights of the heroic witness, love, sacrifice and joy of his saintly wife. A woman for all times and walks of life, this moving account of the multi-faceted, selfless St. Gianna Molla, who made the ultimate sacrifice to save her unborn child, will be an inspiration to all readers.

$11.95

Lily of the Mohawks: The Story of St. Kateri

Even before Kateri Tekakwitha’s canonization on October 21, 2012, many had been inspired by the story of the young Native American mystic who lived in the Mohawk Valley during the seventeenth century. With Emily Cavins's skill for weaving together historical facts and a compelling story, readers will discover Kateri’s path to sainthood against the backdrop of her life as a Native American in New York. These pages will reveal:

• What led to Kateri’s desire to become a Christian
• Her piety and self-denial in the face of persecution and illness
• Her impact on the Catholic Mohawk community
• The long road to sainthood, including two miracles attributed to Kateri

More than just a compelling story of Kateri’s short life, readers will also learn how to avail themselves of Kateri’s intercession, why Kateri has become known as the patron saint of the environment, and of her connection to St. Francis of Assisi.

$14.99

St. Rose of Lima : Patroness of the Americas

St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617), Patroness of the Americas, is the first canonized saint of the New World. She was the tenth of thirteen children, and her mother experienced no pain at her birth. Though exquisitely beautiful (hence her nickname, Rose), she refused to marry, and while helping support her family by needlework and growing flowers, she practiced heroic charity and lived as a Dominican Tertiary in her parents home. Rose tenderly cared for the sick, even those with repulsive wounds, and she often obtained miraculous cures for people from the Child Jesus. On other occasions, she worked miracles in order to feed the members of her family, and became known as Mother of the Poor. Rose continually prayed and offered her sufferings for the conversion of the idolatrous Incas. In the year 1615, through her prayers, the Blessed Sacrament and the people of Lima were spared attack by savage pirates. St. Rose was a friend and confidant of St. Martin de Porres, who lived in the same city. Her mystical experiences caused an ecclesiastical inquiry. Though dead at only 31, St. Roses love of God was so intense that she was recognized as a saint in her own time and was canonized by the Church just 54 years later, in 1671. St. Rose of Lima has captured the imagination of the world and stands as one of the most popular saints in the history of the Church.

$19.95

Bakhita: From Slave to Saint

When she was about nine years old, Josephine Bakhita was kidnapped near Darfur, Sudan, by Arab slave traders. For several years she was subjected to brutal and humiliating treatment until she was ransomed and taken to Venice, Italy, where she became a Catholic and a nun.

Joyfully and serenely Bakhita served in a convent, school and infirmary run by Canossian sisters in a small, obscure town in northern Italy until her death in 1947. Then something even more remarkable than her redemption happened.

Hundreds of ordinary people came to see Bakhita lying in state, and along with these visits came stories about how the simple nun had given comfort, advice and encouragement as she went about her tasks as cook, doorkeeper, nurse, etc. Almost immediately graces and miracles attributed to Bakhita's intercession began to be reported.

Ever since, the place where Bakhita died and the wonders began has been a shrine visited by people from all over the world. They come to seek the intercession of one who was no stranger to loss and suffering and yet had given herself with complete confidence to the Lord. It is here, in this sparsely furnished room, where Italian journalist Roberto Italo Zanini begins his story of Bakhita and her journey from slavery to sainthood.

Based on Bakhita's autobiography, which she dictated to a Canossian sister in obedience to her superior, the canonization files and many other sources, Zanini records the life, virtues and miracles of this daughter of Africa who has become a sister to the whole world.

$16.95