Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones by Scott Hahn

Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones by Scott Hahn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Published May 27th 2014 by Image
Hardcover, 208 pages
Source: amazon.ca


I love Scott Hahn's books. I always buy them because I read them with a pen/pencil in hand and write in them, underline, draw arrows, exclamation marks, etc. He never fails to blow my mind, as a Catholic convert myself, I love the way he speaks and always tells me something new. I am a bit underwhelmed with this book, though. The first time I won't be giving Hahn a five star rating. I think the main downfall is the book's topic is just too broad compared to his other's that I've read. The first half was the most interesting and where I found the most 'aha!' moments I come to expect from the author. Mostly I learnt to appreciate the understanding of 'saint' with a small 's' in scripture and the "Saints" with a capital "S". There wasn't a lot of new information here for me, but it presented an informative and entertaining discourse on how saints become Saints and just who and what angels are. The second half focused on 12 canonized saints which Hahn picked for, he admits personal reasons. The biggies are here, of course, St Michael, St Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, The Little Flower and ends with The Blessed Virgin. Hahn tells their stories focusing on their humanity and how they lived forever pressing onward toward the saintly. Only saints live in heaven and these examples show how we can all start living a more saintly life today by following these people's examples. Nothing of the information here was entirely new to me, as I say it was a broad look at the topic, but I still found some gems of instruction, ideas, history and quotes to underline and fill the margins with my pen!