Need a good Christmas gift idea? How about a new book on the lives of saints?

Saints guide us in our everyday lives. Gianna Beretta Molla, Carlo Acutis, John Paul II, Tonino Bello, Giuseppe Moscati, Piergiorgio Frassati: these are just some of the big names you can find in Marco and Romina Manali’s book Companions on the Journey. The Saints who Enlighten Family Life (“Compagni di viaggio. I santi che illuminano la vita di famiglia” in its original Italian version, published by Edizioni San Paolo).

The authors outline an itinerary that starts by presenting, briefly but comprehensively, the lives of these wonderful, inspiring saints.

The lives of saints

Seeing their lives side by side, the reader will see that each of these saints is unique, living in different eras and places, each one with a different personality, vocation, age, and mission.

One might almost think that the stories collected and presented have nothing in common. There’s a Polish pope, a young man who went to be with God at a very young age, a married couple, a mother who died in childbirth, as well as priests and celibate lay people. Some dealt with poverty at an early age, while others came from a wealthy background. Some died as martyrs, others from illness and natural causes.

Yet, all are linked by a common thread: they gave their lives to God out of love, sometimes under extreme conditions, and they did so by relying on God’s strength, not just their own inner strength.

All of them were able to recognize themselves in the grain of wheat that, by dying, produced fruit.

Dying, however, does not only mean cessation of biological activity: the first “death” that the protagonists of the book encountered was the end of their own selfishness. They knew how to give themselves, without thinking of their own gain.

The book’s message: any one of us can be a saint

What about us? Where are we in all this? The book, in a gentle but firm way, seems to pose this question to us. The Manali’s seem to understand this very well. They not only exalt and praise these men and women who are praised for their good works—while not idealizing them; rather, they introduce them to the reader as friends of a shared faith, who are virtuous, yes, but neither more nor less than we are, if only we decide to live our lives in the same way.

The saints, in fact, are not to be considered beautiful, distant stars that shine in some other galaxy, which seems to “not concern us,” while we are over here mired in weaknesses and feeling small and incapable of saying that we are like them in any way.

The book seems to want to free us from this “excuse.” Its message is that we are all made for holiness. We belong to the “same species as the saints” and can make it, just like they did.

The unique thing about the text—which is fit for all kinds of readers—is that it offers not only enlightening biographies but a path designed for the human and spiritual growth of families. Better yet, we could say that Companions on the Journey is really a book to be read as a family, in small sips, day by day, to reflect together on how the virtues presented within its pages can become part of our lives, especially at home.

Each chapter begins with the saint’s name, followed by a virtue best represented by him, her, or them. It’s a text that we highly recommend as a gift this Christmas that families might begin to read together, sitting around the Christmas tree.