Customer Reviews

Saint-Watching

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I absolutely love Phyllis McGinley's "Saint-Watching." It is a book filled with humor, wit, and honesty. It is a treasure that should have a much larger reading audience. Even if this is not an area you have ever had an interest in, I recommend it most highly to you.

The saints used to be a big deal. Time has changed all that. Still, what is the meaning of the word "saint" in the present day? While the saints surely still serve as guides to a few, they have taken on an air of incomprehensibility for many others. Even most Christians have a hard time with what the term "saint" means.

All too often when we speak of saints in modern times, images of the self-hating joyless ascetic spring to mind. The only problem is that most of the people we call saints were the furthest thing from these images.

What Phyllis McGinley restores to the image of the saints is their basic humanity. These women and men were no different from you or I. Some were shockingly earthy. Some did indeed live among the clouds. All loved their Savior with great fervor.

The stories contained in "Saint-Watching" are insightful and very entertaining. I recommend them wholeheartedly to you. Find a copy of this book and see for yourself.

Although this book is out of print, I would highly recommend checking library shelves for it. The author shares delightful stories of the saints, as she knocks off the plaster casts and tells of their humanity.

A wonderful new insight into the lives and accomplishments of many of the important (and not so important) saints.

Phyllis McGinley was a poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1961. I remember reading criticisms about her because her poetry tended to glorify, or at least put in a good light, the life of a suburban housewife. One can imagine how politically incorrect this kind of literary reflection was after her Pulitzer award. Yet a poet she was, and good one, apparently. And the great writing of a good poet is a gift that this book about saints gives to us. So it is not just the subject matter - the lives of the saints in their unadorned reality, that is, without the whitewashing that is usually provided to young schoolchildren preparing for their sacraments. No, these are the saints in the raw, so to speak, with their flaws as evident as their virtues. Sanctity does not mean, or even imply, perfection. Sanctity is a constant struggle toward holiness, a struggle because there is always falling to temptation and backsliding (as Protestants would say). But it's the struggle that makes the saint. McGinley still does make clear to us what separates the true saints from the rest of us - their literal interpretation of the word s of Jesus, for example. If Our Lord said give everything up and live for the poor, that's what they did - See St. Francis. They respond to the call wholeheartedly, even if with hesitation, although that hesitation usually comes from doubt in the self, not from doubt in the One who is calling. McGinley treats her subjects under different categories - saints according to their land origin, for example. Loyola the consummate Spaniard; Rose of Lima a product of her environment, her harsh and even violet penances perhaps abhorrent to our modern sensibilities but understandable to her contemporaries. Her categories fit neatly and aide in the understanding of each saint's success. She even has one chapter for individuals who, but for their non-Catholicism, may have been saints: Gandhi, for example. All of this captivating and motivating information presented to the reader in beautiful prose, in a form of biographical poetry.