Role Models for All: Praying with the Saints

Role Models for All: Praying with the Saints

By Stephen Rule, Intern

I firmly believe that there is no better model for imitating Christ than the witness of the saints. Although many of us Catholics know that we are a part of the Communion of Saints, living this out practically can seem daunting and overwhelming, as we have a nearly inexhaustible list of saints to know and venerate. 

Praying with the Saints by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker, published in August by Ave Maria Press, offers concise reflections on men and women of heroic virtue and how they prayed. This book offers short, easy-to-read reflections on the lives of 103 saints, perfect for a quick meditation each day to grow closer to those in heaven. According to Ave Maria Press, it is also “the first prayer book to include Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati as saints.”

In the introduction, Koenig-Bricker gives us the criteria she used for this collection of prayers from a hundred different saints. She mentions that she had to like the saint and the prayers needed to reflect on the universal Church: “I firmly believe that we need to see that sainthood isn’t a relic of the past but offers role models for all of us” (xii).

The selection of saint stories and prayers runs in alphabetical order, from St. Agnes of Rome to St. Vincent Palotti. There are plenty of names that will be familiar to most Catholics, such as St. John Vianney and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, but there are also several saints that I had no previous knowledge of, such as St. Dulce de Souza Lopes Pontes, St Julie Billiart, and St. Lutgardis of Aywières.  

St. Francis of Assisi is by far the saint that has the most prayers in this book. My favorite of his included prayers is “Your Holy Cross.”

While the book does not give the most thorough stories of the lives of the saints, that is not its purpose. Many of the saints of the early Church included in this book are usually found in collections of hagiography, which is a popular way of telling the lives of saints with a mixture of mythology and legends handed down through the centuries. While there is a great opportunity for spiritual edification through hagiography, Koenig-Bricker makes a conscious effort to stick to historically verifiable details about each saint she writes about, allowing the reader to be confident in the veracity of each story in this collection. Like so many of the books put out by Ave Maria Press, this book is faithfully Catholic in all that it presents.

The prayers would be great as a guide to prayer when you cannot find the words to say and you do not want to fall back on the traditional prayers that most of us know by heart, such as the Our Father or the Hail Mary. These prayers, as infinitely great as they are, can feel repetitive for some, which brings us to the beauty of praying with the saints in their own words. As Koening-Bricker explains:

“I am convinced that the greatest prayers ever prayed followed Christ’s admonition to pray in secret. Thus, these holy women and men never wrote their words down for posterity and never said them aloud when their followers could record them.” (xv-xiv)

These stories and prayers will allow us to enter into the meaning of lex orandi, lex credendi: what you say when you pray is what you believe.  

You won’t find complete life stories or biographies of the saints in this collection, but just the necessary background information to lead you into the words the saints actually prayed with. I personally would have loved to have a more thorough biographical section for each saint, but that would have changed the scope of the book quite significantly. What makes this collection so remarkable is the universal appeal it offers. It may be difficult for some people to relate to the mystical prayers of a sixteenth century Carmelite like St. John of the Cross or St. Teresa of Ávila, but they might find it helpful to look to the prayers of someone like Nicholas Black Elk, a Native American layman who has a cause for canonization. The saints are a time-tested example of what it looks like to live a holy Catholic life. 

Personally, my favorite prayer included was from my confirmation saint, Augustine of Hippo:

“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new? Too late have I loved you! And behold, you were within, and I abroad, and there I searched for you; I was deformed, plunging amid those fair forms, which you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Things held me far from you-things which if they were not in you, were not at all. You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed and shone, and scattered my blindness.” (18) 

This is a wonderful little book, and it would not be enough to simply recommend reading through it—it is meant to be prayed through.  

To purchase Praying with the Saints, visit Ave Maria Press here. Learn more about Woodeene Koenig-Bricker at her website here.

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Stephen was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a recent convert to the Catholic faith, which came about through reading the Doctors of the Church, particularly the writings of St. Augustine and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. He is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio. Stephen has a great love for reading, writing, and creating music and has a passion for using his gifts to share the faith with others.