SAINTS FOR EVERY OCCASION:

101 OF HEAVEN'S MOST POWERFUL PATRONS

by Thomas J. Craughwell

C.D. Stampley Enterprises, 2001 432 pages, $19.95

Available in retail and online bookstores.

“Patronage” has gotten a bad rap. Associated in the popular mind with political corruption, moderns tend to regard patronage as something baneful.

But patronage has a good side. Because a pope was his patron, an Italian ceiling painter named Michelangelo got to decorate the Sistine Chapel. Today we call patronage “mentoring” or “networking”—but the idea is the same: People need people to achieve their goals, natural or supernatural.

Heavenly patronage is the subject of Craughwell's book. He assembles the lives of 101 saints, designated by Church teaching or popular practice as “patrons,” and recounts their stories.

Some are old favorites: St. Anthony, patron of those searching for lost things: St. Jude, patron of hopeless causes; St. Blaise, patron of the throat. Some are newcomers—St. Faustina Kowalska, for confidence in Divine Mercy, or St. Maximilian Kolbe, for political prisoners. Some make surprise appearances, like St. Christopher (patron of travelers). Some are in the process of acquiring patronage, as is the case with St. Isidore of Seville, who is being considered for patron of the Internet. Some get looked at in new ways. St. Paul is called patron “against snakebite” (see Acts 28: 1-7). St. Aloysius Gonzaga is described as patron of “AIDS sufferers” not because he lost his association with chastity but because he overcame his fear of plague to work with the sick during an epidemic.

Craughwell writes about saints as patrons for contemporary life. Thus we have St. Martha interceding for those “stressed by entertaining” and St. Joseph Cupertino for astronauts. Tax collector St. Matthew is patron of “financial professionals.” St. Helen, mother of Constantine, is presented Constantius as patroness “for those divorced or divorcing” (her husband, Constantius, dumped her for a more politically expedient wife).

The book is light and easy-to-read. Each saint gets three or so pages, and the essence of the saint's story is pithily captured. Here's how Craughwell explains the core of St. John the Evangelist's teaching:

“A tradition repeated by St. Jerome holds that when John was very old and too weak to walk, his disciples carried him to wherever Christians had assembled for the Eucharist. All he said to them was, ‘Little children, love one another.’ On one occasion someone in the congregation asked him why he always said the same thing. ‘Because these are the words of the Lord,’ John answered, ‘and if you do this, you do enough.’”

Craughwell sometimes focuses too much on the miracles of a few patristic and medieval saints (like St. Nicholas restoring three boys to life who had literally been butchered by an innkeeper, the aerial acrobatics of various levitating saints or St. Christina's triple “deaths”). My understanding was that the 1969 reform of the Roman calendar was intended to replace fantastic fervorinos with the sobriety of real flesh-and-blood saints with whom contemporary people could identify. The publisher promises a sequel to this book; a presentation of the saints with obligatory or optional feasts in the revised Roman calendar would be especially useful.

Those criticisms noted, however, this is a good book of light reading for spiritual edification. It's probably best read one saint at a time. If we each acquired but one of the characteristics with which these men and women were imbued, we'd all be holier. Parents can share these stories with their children. Once upon a time tomes such as Butler's Lives of the Saints graced Catholic homes. Contemporary Catholics, especially the young, need ideals, role models, heroes, mentors … patrons. Craughwell offers no fewer than 101 to choose from.

John M. Grondelski writes from Warsaw, Poland.