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Christians have always recorded the lives and sayings of those they were convinced were good examples of conduct and teaching. The Book of Acts (6:8-7:60), in its narrative of the trial and death of Stephen contains the earliest account of the martyrdom of a Christian. This kind of writing is generally referred to as a “martyr act” because it records what the person did as a witness to his faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that led to his death. Although Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians have generally been more comfortable with the idea of reading and learning from saints’ lives, the popularity of Foxe’s Book of Christian Martyrs and the presence in any “Christian bookstore” of shelves of lives of faithful Christians is clear proof that this approach to learning from the Christian past is alive and well in all branches of the Church. All Christians, whether great saints, themselves, or miserable sinners, can learn from reading these accounts of those whose sense of purpose and purity of dedication was greater than their own. The Desert Fathers of ancient Egypt and St. Francis of Assisi seem every far away from our modern life, but they continue to fascinate Christians because of the fierceness of their resolve and the clarity of their sense of the purpose of their lives. For Christians who often do not seem to know what they want or ought to do, another look at these brothers (and sisters) form long ago can offer both teaching and inspiration. Other people have tried to make sense of their lives and have found that sense in Christian living. This book offers some brief glimpses of how they did that and how their example might help us do the same, in our own lives.
