Blessed Are You: Finding Inspiration from Our Sisters in Faith

Melanie Rigney uses stories of the saints, our sisters in faith, to help readers grow in their spiritual lives. Some of these saints are familiar—Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, Bernadette of Lourdes, Elizabeth Ann Seton—while others are not so well known—Maria Karlowska, Claudine Thevenet, Josephine Bakhita, Elizabeth of Portugal. They come from different places and different times, creating an intimate portrait of the universal Church. Yet the lives of each of these women illustrate the qualities of the Beatitudes—what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “the heart of Jesus’s preaching” (1716)—in a down-to-earth and human way. Through the lives of these exemplary women saints and the qualities they espouse—meekness, mourning, poverty of spirit, justice, mercy, purity of heart, peace, righteousness—women will find ways to live more fully the Gospel values of Christian life.

Melanie Rigney is the author of Sisterhood of Saints: Daily Guidance and Inspiration, and a contributor to Living Faith, a 650,000-circulation Catholic devotional. She writes weekly for Your Daily Tripod, a Catholic blog, and has a monthly newsletter, “Sisters and Friends: Refresh Your Soul with Melanie Rigney.” Rigney has spoken at the National Catholic Women’s Conference, as well as several of their regional gatherings: numerous parishes, bookstores, and diocesan events; and several Theology on Tap sessions.