Review: Littlest Suffering Souls

“There will be saints among the children,” said Pope Pius X, and he lowered the age for First Holy Communion because of a 4-year old’s desire to receive Jesus.  It wasn’t until 1981, however, that the Church began considering non-martyred children for sainthood, as shown in the recent example of the children of Fatima.

The half dozen stories in this book are of young disease-ridden children who suffered much and died, willingly, for Jesus.  These children intensely loved God, accepted sufferings, and in their short lives made their families, communities, and the world a better place.  These are sad stories – you will cry – but these are good stories.  Everyone around these children didn’t pity them, but felt loved by them.  And through them God worked miracles.

St Paul writes (Col 1:24), and the Catholic Church affirms, that we can unite our sufferings to Christ’s on the cross.  It’s why there is a corpus on the crucifix, and we recognize Christ’s death as not only pain and suffering, but also as a deep enduring love.  These children demonstrated that type of love in their short lives.  These are wonderful stories, but they were written to remind us to look around; there are more examples of God’s love around us, even in suffering, if we’d but look.