Christian Lives

One yes from a village girl, and heaven entered history.

Mary of Nazareth, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, Our Lady

The maiden of Nazareth whose yes carried God into the world, who kept every word in her heart, and who stood at the cross when nearly all others fled.

Before the Light came, one voice dared the wilderness.

Saint John the Forerunner and Baptist

The last of the prophets and the forerunner of Christ, who baptized in the Jordan and prepared the way of the Lord.

He sank, he denied, he wept. And on this rock the Church was built.

Simon Peter , called Cephas / Peter

The Galilean fisherman who denied his Lord three times and was three times restored, and upon whose confession the Church itself was founded.

Struck blind on the road, he rose to carry the Light to the nations.

Paul the Apostle

The persecutor struck blind on the Damascus road who rose as the apostle to the nations, and whose letters still carry the beating heart of the Church.

She stayed at the cross, and was first at the tomb. The risen Lord spoke her name.

Mary Magdalene

The woman delivered of seven demons who stood at the cross when others fled, and who carried the first word of the risen Lord to the apostles themselves.

The real Nicholas gave in secret, struck at lies, and became legend.

Nicholas of Myra

The bishop of Myra, wonderworker and secret giver of gifts, defender of the wronged and father of the poor, beloved and honored in East and West alike.

Basil the Great

They exiled him for preaching the truth. Glory to God for all things, he said, and died walking.

Saint John Chrysostom

The golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch and Constantinople whose sermons cost him his throne and his exile, and whose last words gave glory to God for all things.

He chased every pleasure the empire sold, and found his heart still restless.

Augustine of Hippo

The brilliant wanderer of Hippo whose restless heart found its rest in God, and whose Confessions and City of God have taught the Church the ways of grace for sixteen centuries.

They took him in chains. He came back with the Gospel.

Saint Patrick

A Roman-British boy carried to Ireland in chains who returned as its apostle, and brought a whole nation to the faith.

Ireland kept her flame burning for a thousand years. It has not gone out.

Brigid of Kildare

The abbess of Kildare, Mary of the Gael, whose perpetual flame burned for a thousand years and whose boundless charity to the poor made her Ireland's beloved mother-saint.

One man left Rome to find God in a cave, and gave the West its soul.

Saint Benedict of Nursia

The father of Western monasticism, whose Rule of prayer and work, ora et labora, shaped the life of Europe for fifteen centuries.

The visions began at three. At forty-two, heaven ordered her to speak.

Hildegard of Bingen

A Benedictine abbess of the Rhine, visionary, healer, and composer, who saw the Living Light and wrote what she was shown, honored now as a Doctor of the Church.

A rich man's son kissed a leper, and the world has never recovered.

Francis of Assisi

The merchant's son of Assisi who embraced Lady Poverty, preached to the birds, and bore the wounds of Christ, the little poor man who rebuilt the Church with love.

They called him the dumb ox. He built the greatest architecture of thought the Church has ever known.

St. Thomas Aquinas

The quiet Dominican whose Summa gave the Church its greatest architecture of reason, and who at the end called all he had written straw beside what he had seen.

She could not write. She still ordered a pope home to Rome.

Saint Catherine of Siena

A dyer's daughter who never learned to write, yet dictated letters that summoned a pope back to Rome and left the Church one of its greatest books.

At thirty she lay dying, and heaven showed her sixteen things. All shall be well.

Julian of Norwich

An anchoress walled into a cell beside a Norwich church, who received sixteen showings of divine love and spent twenty years understanding them, then wrote the first book in English by a woman.

Heaven spoke to a farm girl. Armies followed. Fire answered.

St. Joan of Arc

A farmer's daughter of Domrémy who heard the voices of the saints, led the armies of France at seventeen, and gave her life for her king and her God at nineteen.

In a quiet cell he wrote a quiet book, and five centuries have not exhausted it.

Thomas à Kempis

The canon of Mount Saint Agnes who copied the Scriptures four times by hand and wrote the little book of the interior life that has taught more souls to pray than any work outside the Bible.

A cannonball ended his soldiering. What he read while healing began the Jesuits.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola

A Basque soldier whose leg was shattered by a cannonball, who read the only books in the house while he healed and rose to found the Society of Jesus.

They told her mysticism was no place for a woman. She built an interior castle.

St. Teresa of Avila

A Carmelite nun and mystic of Spain who reformed her order and mapped the soul's ascent to God in the seven mansions of the Interior Castle.

They locked him in a cell too small to stand in. He came out with poetry.

Saint John of the Cross

The Carmelite friar imprisoned by his own brothers in a cell too small to stand in, who came out with the poetry that mapped the soul's dark night and its dawn.

They jailed the tinker for preaching. In his cell he dreamed a road the whole world has walked.

John Bunyan

The Bedford tinker who preached without license, wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress in a jail cell, and gave the English-speaking world its map of the soul’s journey home.

Two hundred and fifty thousand miles on horseback, to tell the world it was loved.

John Wesley

The Oxford priest whose heart was strangely warmed, who rode a quarter of a million miles to preach in fields and market squares, and declared the world his parish.

A thousand days on a stone, praying, until the light shone through him.

St. Seraphim of Sarov

A Russian starets and wonderworker who greeted every soul as 'my joy,' radiant with the light of the Holy Spirit from his forest hermitage.

A teenage convert filled the largest halls in London with nothing but a voice.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Victorian pastor of London's Metropolitan Tabernacle, converted in a snowstorm at fifteen, whose sermons crossed oceans in his lifetime and are read to this day.

She died at twenty-four, unknown. Her little way conquered the world.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

A Carmelite of Lisieux who died at twenty-four, whose Little Way of trust and small deeds of love made her a Doctor of the Church and the world's beloved Little Flower.

He found in orthodoxy the wildest romance, and laughed the world back to wonder.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The laughing giant of Fleet Street who defended the faith with paradox and joy, and found in orthodoxy the wildest romance of all.

He could have stayed safe in America. He caught the last boat into the fire.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A pastor and theologian who taught the cost of discipleship, stood with the Confessing Church against darkness, and met his martyrdom saying: this is the end, for me, the beginning of life.

For fifty years he carried the wounds of Christ, and never once put them down.

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina

A Capuchin friar of southern Italy who bore the wounds of Christ for fifty years and spent his life in the confessional, drawing countless souls back to God.

An American skeptic walked into the ancient faith and became its voice in the wilderness.

Hieromonk Seraphim Rose

An American seeker who found the ancient Orthodox faith and, from a Californian wilderness, became a monk and a teacher for the modern age.

She hid the hunted behind a false wall, and forgave the man who found them.

Cornelia ten Boom

A Dutch watchmaker's daughter who hid the hunted behind a false wall, survived Ravensbrück, and carried one message to the world: there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.

She answered a call within a call, and walked into the darkest streets on earth.

St. Teresa of Calcutta

The saint of the gutters of Calcutta, who saw Christ in the poorest of the poor and served Him there, doing small things with great love until the whole world took notice.

The whole world still asks him to find what is lost.

Saint Anthony of Padua

A young friar of Lisbon whose learning lay hidden until the day he was asked to preach, and whose voice then drew such crowds that no church could hold them, sought ever since by all who have lost something.