Pray for Us

I received an advance copy of, Pray for Us, by Meg Hunter Kilmer. This is a great book. I learned alot of new saints. 75 saints, actually, most I never heard of. Real people with real faults.

I grew up studying in a Catholic school and I remember we used to study the lives of different saints. There are so many saints with different causes that you could pray to and most of them have stories to tell. Pray For Us is such a informative book, the stories of these saints are such that I have unheard of and are kinda unusual which is what makes it so interesting. Overall, I enjoyed the book and the quirky and usual stories, makes you realise that saints are not superheroes but just mere humans too.

What an amazing collection of stories! Pray For Us breaks the Saints out of their stained glass windows and porcelain statues and puts them where we need them - in messy, real-life situations we can all relate to. These men and women who struggled with vice, disappointment, prejudice, disabilities, and suffering serve as examples for the rest of us: that no one is beneath God’s love and mercy, and we are all called to love Him through our own crosses. Meg Hunter-Kilmer has done an incredible job of showcasing saints from across the centuries and around the world, highlighting the incredible diversity of the Communion of Saints we are a part of.

My words won't express how much I loved this book. I loved it so much.
The saints inspires me to seek God's will.
They had suffered, had been tempted. They're witness that holiness is possible.
The book shows a lot of servants of God, venerable, blessed, saints and some of them I have never heard about before.
Praise God for His saints.
This book is a must read. Well done, author!
Thank you Netgalley and publisher for free ARC in exchange of honest review. All thoughs are my own.

Whenever I pick up a book about the lives of the saints, I’m usually bracing myself for all the usual tropes. All those generic white girls with no personality and colonizing men presented completely uncritically. Glossed-over rape and glorified eating disorders. The list goes on.

What a relief it was to open this book and know from page one that I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that, In Meg Hunter-Kilmer’s capable hands, each saint really does leap out as a unique image of Christ, utterly irrepeatable, formed in this real world. You get the sense that Hunter-Kilmer has learned to see the Creator’s delight in each of us, and wants to teach us that above all. This book doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, but handles them all with instructive grace.

If the goal of this book was to make me want to be a saint… To be a part of this star-studded cast… To meet people in heaven like jungle surgeon Bl. Maria Troncatti, bold foundress Ven. Mary Elizabeth Lange, and misfit sister Bl. Sara Salkahazi… Then it was successful. Sign me up!

If you read a lot of books about the saints, like I do, it devolves into the same handful of stories over and over again. This book is a marvelous look at saints whose stories are more contemporary, wild, or simply took place outside of Europe. It is an asset to any Catholic book collection and Meg Hunter-Kilmer writes with reverence but also a playfulness that I appreciated.

Are you lonely, or depressed? Have you lost your faith? Are you struggling with 'Covid fatigue'? Perhaps, you are simply interested in Catholic saints? There is a saint for everyone, and Meg Hunter Kilmer has written an inspirational book about saints who had to combat all kinds of huge problems in their lives, and how they can help us.
The Saints include people who led exciting lives, such as Saint Catherine Jarrige who saved priests from the guillotine during the French Revolution, those who lived simple, quiet lives like Saint Therese, and even fiery socialists. They also include disabled, or extremely ill Saints who led lives of great suffering.

I found the story of the Servant of God Rose Hawthorne the most fascinating, because she led a somewhat glamorous literary life (although she may have had an abusive husband), yet she became a nurse, founded a new religious order, and helped very poor sick people.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

For anyone who's tired of saccharine saints who seem unapproachably holy, this is the book you've been waiting for. In Pray For Us, Meg Hunter-Kilmer offers an array of saints whose vices and trials somehow bring them down to a level that's very different than the usual hero worship and much more like real friendship and fellowship . (Saints -- They're Just Like Us!)

Her categories include saints whose paths to heaven were complicated by both exterior and interior stumbling blocks. More notably, this thoroughly researched work brings us a wide variety of saints beyond the usual cohort -- varied in historical period, geography, culture, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability, vocation -- but singularly united by their devotion to God. I almost wrote "unwavering" devotion out of sheer habit, but some of these saints wavered quite a bit, actually... and that's Hunter-Kilmer's whole point.

The author's tone is relaxed and engaging; in each story, you get the sense you're chatting in a cafe about someone she knows. She weaves her narratives deftly, highlighting the specific crosses of each saint (everything from alcoholism to lukewarmness to prostitution to outright satanism), then leading us along to their reward in heaven, but without the tidy red bows we've come to expect in most saint stories. These saints are complex, multi-faceted, and richly rewarding to get to know.

Pray For Us is a compelling read for anyone who's turned off (or feels left out) by traditional depictions of sainthood. If we are all invited to holiness, Hunter-Kilmer's book is a much-needed handbook on just how very many ways there are to get there.

Pray For Us reminds us that the Saints were not perfect but they were perfect for God's purpose in their messy, real-life situations. Meg Hunter-Kilmer has reminded us of little known Saints who are just like us!