MSI Press Blog

  We share a couple of items with you in honor of All Saints Day. (1) We would remind you of the book, Saints I Know , by Sula, parish cat at Old Mission (shown above with Our Lady of Guadalupe). It is a great resource for catechism students in choosing a saint's name. It is also a great resource for anyone wanting a collection of true stories about well-known and not-so-well-known saints. (2) Sula also wrote a book, Sula and the Franciscan Sisters (saints in waiting). (2) Today is the second anniversary of Carl Leaver 's birthday following his passing in 2021. Carl was co-founder and chief typesetter of MSI Press from 2003-2021. While he was born on All Saints' Day, he usually referred to himself as a "rotten pumpkin," being born the day after Halloween. Happy All Saints' Day. Read more posts for All Saint's Day here . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI

Excerpt: Why Saints Are Important by Deacon Van Saints give us a model for trying to live as Christ teaches. He wants us to be kind and loving and generous and forgiving and humble and brave, to care more about giving than receiving, to want to serve instead of being served. It isn’t easy, but Christ doesn’t expect us to be perfect; he simply wants us never to stop trying. All of the saints weren’t all those things all of the time, either. Like us, they weren’t perfect, but they had qualities that set them apart, that made them more willing—and more able—to come closer to his ideals. They all spent much of their lives serving others. Many of them gave their lives for their faith in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: these are the martyrs whose sacrifices move us to honor their memory. We don’t have to look very hard to find evidence of the historic and ongoing importance of saints. Think of some of our well-known cities: St. Louis, St. Paul, St. Augustine, San

  Yep, it's Caturday, and we want to share, somewhat anonymously for privacy reasons, a bit of the recent trials and tribulations of Sula, the parish cat at Old Mission who has written six books. Sula has both a big fan club -- you can even join it on her Face Book page HERE -- and quite some renown, thanks to both own publications and publications about here, which you can read about HERE (pick and choose the ones that might most tickle your fancy). To briefly encapsulate the history: 1. Sula arrived as a kitten, perhaps somewhere around age 1, at the Old Mission, which really is the only action in her little town. 2. After a few years spending much time outdoors in this sunny California town, Sula developed skin cancer on her ears. They were trimmed. The cancer came back. Her ears were removed. You can read her story about that experience in her book, Surviving Cancer, Healing People: One Cat's Story .  3. Elizabeth Mahlou related Sula's story to Guideposts Magazine , wh