Summer Book Club Announcements!

 Happy Friday everybody, and happy June! I began my June novenas this week, and am happily speeding right along with them. Details are on the June Novenas page if you'd like to join me in praying both the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary novenas. :) Feel free to also leave prayer intentions on that page in the comments so that others can lift you up in prayer! 

*virtual hug*

And so, it is time to finally announce our exciting Summer Book Club plans for 2021! I got a nice response from people saying they were happy to read about any of the saints, and not really a majority vote for any one title. So I called a bit of an audible, looking through the options on Amazon and deciding based on what I felt inspired by, and the length that I thought would work best for us. And so...

🥁

For Summer Book Club 2021, we're going to be reading about: St. Francis Xavier!

Here is our description, to whet your curiosity a bit:

Saint Francis Xavier's life is, in itself, a dramatic story. With humility and deep religious conviction, the famous Catholic novelist Louis de Wohl takes us into the mind and heart of this great missionary and saint who went by order of St. Ignatius of Loyola to "set all afire" in the Orient. Louis de Wohl captivates the reader as he follows Xavier's life from student days in Paris, through his meeting with Ignatius, his rather reluctant conversion, and his travels as one of the first Jesuits. The story takes the reader from Europe to Goa, India, Malaysia, Japan, and finally, to an island off the coast of China, where the exiled Xavier dies virtually alone. The book captures the dramatic struggles and inspiring zeal of this remarkable saint, giving at the same time an enthralling picture of the age in which he lived.

What drew me to this title is that his role as a missionary means that St. Francis gives us a bit of a travel theme, and that seems perfect for summer! I also don't know much about St. Francis Xavier nor the Jesuits, and this book presents the perfect opportunity to learn more (ideal, given that our current pope is a Jesuit!). We read about a female saint for Lent (St. Catherine of Siena), so I wanted to give our male saint friends some attention this summer. :)

And so here is our schedule, also stickied in our Catholic Book Club page:

• June 18th - Part 1
• July 2nd - Part 2
• July 16th - Part 3
• July 30th - Part 4
• August 13th - Part 5
• August 27th - Part 6

I wanted the pace to be a bit more languid for the summer, and this book, at about 100 pages shorter than the St. Catherine title we read for Lent, and with more, yet shorter, sub-sections, I thought fit the bill nicely. We'll begin with the first part in two weeks, so lots of time to order the book or procure it from your local library, and then we'll move in 2 week increments from there through the entirety of the summer. It's available in both paperback and Kindle form from Amazon if you choose to go that route!

Who's in to learn about St. Francis Xavier and his missionary journeys this summer? 😀