Sacred Stories by Peter Darcy

Virtually everyone knows about famous female saints like Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Therese of Lisieux, but most of the warrior women in this book are not well known. In fact, the majority of them are not canonized saints at all, and one story is about Amish girls who are not even Catholics!The 11 stories in this book tell the tales of common women who lived heroic lives without ever calling attention to themselves. These warrior women come from every age of the Christian Church and from a remarkable variety of cultures and circumstances to show how pervasive the warrior spirit is in the Christian Church.The stories are listed in a chronological fashion to show the constant influence of that strong “spirit of…power and love and self-control” (2 Tim 1:7) that St. Paul recommended to Timothy.The Christian warrior spirit is an inheritance that is given to men and women alike. It cascades through the ages of the Church like a mighty river of grace flowing down on any who ask for it. But women especially need it now to address our modern crisis of femininity and reconstitute the moral and spiritual center of our society.This book is a small contribution to the work of creating a new generation of warrior women for the Church in the belief that a vibrant religious faith acts as leaven and light (Mt 5:14-16) in a culture that is in an advanced state of decay.