Andrew Shirota

“One day she accidentally ran over my rosary beads with the vacuum cleaner. When she pulled it out, it had lost three beads. When I came home from school I spied it on my bedpost and said, “Hey look what happened to my rosary beads!” Hoping to make me feel better, she said, “Well, look on the bright side. Now it won’t take you so long to pray it!”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“So, when I entered the Jesuits, at age twenty-seven, I did so with only an eleven-year-old’s knowledge about the faith.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“though I was by that point rather fond of Saint Jude, I was afraid of what my friends might say if they saw a strange plastic statue standing on my dresser. So Saint Jude was stuffed inside my sock drawer, and was brought out of the drawer only on special occasions.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints

“I got the idea that Merton was bright, funny, holy, and altogether unique. But there was something else about the show that drew me.”
― James Martin, Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints