Travels in Search of the Saints

Barb Szyszkiewicz reviews Saint Everywhere and Somehow Saints, both by Mary Lea Carroll.

Traveling around the world seems like only a pipe dream as we slog through a second year of pandemic restrictions and lockdowns. Although we can't travel wherever we'd like right now, there's nothing to stop us from reading about it. Readers who misses traveling will thoroughly enjoy Mary Lea Carroll's two saintly travelogues, Saint Everywhere and Somehow Saints.

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Saint Everywhere: Travels in Search of the Lady Saints begins with the story of a trip to Italy in the year 2000. After spending several days touring battlefields, Carroll convinced her husband and daughter to take a side trip to Siena to view the relics of St. Catherine -- and she was hooked. Carroll enthusiastically summarized St. Catherine of Siena's life and accomplishments.

I pondered in the dark this whole implausible tale of St. Catherine. Do I believe it? It’s hard to say yes. But I want to believe. Life seems bigger, grander, more fun if you believe that a person can have mystical powers. That one woman can quell a war. (29)

Subsequent travels took Carroll to places as diverse as Prague, New York City (more than once), Colorado, Bosnia, Mexico City, and Spain. She pondered St. Elizabeth Seton's influence on Catholic education and her challenging life of suffering, recounted her pilgrimage to see the tilma with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and discovered that a quote from St. Teresa of Ávila would be an apt reminder as she waited in line at the DMV. And she considered her own motherhood in the light of the Blessed Mother's visit to Guadalupe.

Thinking about Guadalupe, who appeared as the mother of us all, the one we can turn to when we’re afraid or when things turn awful, makes me realize how few women can actually be that type of mother. I never confided in my mother because she’d just judge and correct me. My grandmother, who lived with us, was so vain that she wouldn’t lift a finger around the house, driving my mother nuts. Me, of course, I’m perfect. Well, maybe I care a little too much about some things and get a little uptight sometimes. My girls call it “going crazy on them.” But I’ve tried to do my best, just as my mother did her best. We all continually try. Falling short and feeling bad is part of our lot. But humanity’s been given a gift in the idea of Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who infinitely does not judge, who infinitely says just keep trying, who infinitely advises us to turn to her Son. (125)

Somehow Saints; More Travels in Search of the Saintly finds Carroll sharing more stories and insights from her travels. She begins the book with her trip to Philadelphia to visit the tomb of St. Katharine Drexel in the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul. St. Katharine's extraordinary life and work inspired Carroll to consider the frustrations we experience as mothers, the saint's contribution to the Church's work against racism and other injustices, and St. Katharine's emphasis on Eucharistic Adoration.

Further travels took Carroll on visits to upstate New York to the shrine of St. Kateri Tekakwitha; to St. Marie of the Incarnation's shrine and the Shrine of St. Anne de Beaupré at Quebec, Canada; Emmitsburg, Maryland to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's shrine; to New York City to see the resting place of Bl. Pierre Touissant; to St. Brigid's shrine in Kildare, Ireland; and finally to Venice, Italy, to the tomb of St. Josephine Bakhita.

In each place, she considered how she should pray for saintly intercession.

What would I want to pray to St. Anne for? I knelt down. How about ever more strength and the desire to do and be more? And for my own motherhood, even
though my daughters are grown up. Help me be what’s needed now; help me to offer good advice and to keep my mouth shut. Help me to both be there and not be in their way. I prayed for possibly being a grandmother—to be a magical, fun, fairy grandmother. A grandmother who’ll bring out a box of treasures, who’ll take them on trains, who’ll have the patience for loud noise, who won’t be too tired. (81)

This book also contains shorter selections that focus on the heroic efforts of people Carroll knows in person: living women, saints in the making.

Mary Lea Carroll's books are not fancy travel guides. They're memoirs of journeys of the soul and reminders how the lives of the saints can inspire us in little ways. They're stories of memories (good and bad) told with relatable honesty and humor. Maybe, when we can freely travel again, we'll take inspiration from Mary Lea Carroll and begin our own journeys to visit shrines of the saints along the way.

Copyright 2021 Barb Szyszkiewicz
Image: By Yair Haklai (2019), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
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