A complete life, free

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Saint Patrick

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Siddhartha Gautama

The prince Siddhartha who left a palace to seek the end of suffering, and awakened beneath the Bodhi tree as the Buddha, the Enlightened One.

Sri Krishna

The beloved Lord of Vrindavan, cowherd, charioteer, and teacher of the Bhagavad Gita, in whom the Divine took form for the love of the world.

Lao Tzu

The old keeper of the Zhou archives who rode west on an ox and, halted at the last frontier gate, left behind the five thousand characters that became the Tao Te Ching.

Padmasambhava

The lotus-born master who carried the dharma across the Himalayas, tamed the fierce spirits of Tibet, and remains, to those who call on him, a presence that has never left.

Jetsün Milarepa

Tibet's great yogi and poet, who turned from dark deeds to the dharma and, clad in a single cotton robe in the high mountain caves, attained awakening in one lifetime, singing all the way.

Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

Guru Nanak Dev Ji

The first of the ten Gurus, who sang Ik Onkar, the One God, across the lands of Asia, and lit the lamp of the Sikh path: truthful living, service, and remembrance of the Name.

Sant Mirabai

A Rajput princess who renounced a throne for the love of Krishna, whose ecstatic songs of devotion are still sung across India to this day.

Sai Baba of Shirdi

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

The priest of Dakshineswar who worshipped the Divine Mother until she answered, then walked the paths of other faiths one by one and found the same God waiting at the end of each.

Swami Vivekananda

The disciple of Ramakrishna who carried Vedanta out of Bengal and into the West, telling a Chicago parliament that every faith is a path up the same mountain.

Paramahansa Yogananda

The monk who carried Kriya Yoga from the banks of the Ganges to the West, whose Autobiography of a Yogi has led generations of seekers to the inner light.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

The silent sage of the holy mountain Arunachala, who awakened as a boy of sixteen and taught seekers ever after to trace the 'I' to its source: Who am I?

Li Hongzhi

The founder of Falun Dafa, who brought to the world a practice of cultivation rooted in Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.

Sri H. W. L. Poonja

A master of Advaita in the lineage of Sri Ramana Maharshi, who awakened thousands to the Self with a single, disarming question: who are you?

Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhaddo

Thich Nhat Hanh

The Zen master of Plum Village, known to his students simply as Thầy, who carried mindfulness from war-torn Vietnam to the whole world and taught that peace is every step.

Jagadguru Sri Adi Shankaracharya

The great teacher of Advaita Vedanta who, in a life of only thirty-two years, renewed the eternal dharma and unified the wisdom of the Upanishads.

Goswami Tulsidas

Eihei Dōgen Zenji

Hui-neng

Sri Ramanujacharya

Nāgārjuna