Man for Others: Reflections on Christian Priesthood

John Jay Hughes

Religion & Spirituality

Our Sunday Visitor

A lively and fascinating account of some 30 saints, many well known, some obscure, which brings them down from their stained glass windows and pedestals and presents them as real human beings, of flesh and blood. The saints are just the sinners who kept on trying, writes Father John Jay Hughes, a gifted preacher and author also of the acclaimed memoir No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace.
Before recounting the colorful stories of these men and women, he answers such frequently asked questions as: Why do we have saints? How does one get to be a saint? Why so few married saints, so many priests, monks, and nuns? What does it mean to pray to the saints? The chapters which follow introduce readers to a remarkably diverse crowd of human beings: A man who prayed, Lord, make me chaste, but not yet. A woman who did not realize her true vocation until she was past sixty. A man who lived for fifteen years with a concubine and fathered an illegitimate son. A religious teacher and reformer repeatedly charged with heresy. A young woman who promised to spend eternity doing good on earth. A priest who attracted such crowds to his confessional that special trains had to be scheduled and you needed a ticket to confess to him. Three women who were wives and mothers before they became Sisters. The man who said, In the heart which loves God it is always springtime; and another who wrote: You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. The Pope who, as he lay dying, told his priest-secretary: We never stopped to throw back the stones they cast at us. A woman who labored for fifty years to help others, despite feeling that heaven was empty and God absent. Common to all was that they were in love with God.
Readers will find themselves, by turns, inspired, surprised, uplifted, and deeply moved by the words and actions of these heroic men and women. In their different ways they show that every saint has a past, every sinner a future.

Columns of Light: 30 Remarkable Saints

Now You Know Media

Why does a gifted boy from a privileged Establishment background decide, at the age of twelve, to spend his life as a priest? And what moves him, after six happy years in the Anglican priesthood, to enter the alien world of Roman Catholicism? 
 In a gripping narrative full of humor and self-directed irony, John Jay Hughes tells of the loss of his mother at age six, entry into the Catholic Church at the cost of estrangement from his beloved Anglican priest-father, his lifelong search for God in prayer, and his joy in priesthood, 'all I ever wanted from age twelve.'

No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Tate Publishing

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Books by John Jay Hughes