I recommend for your reading a new book available in English.
The Life and Times of St. Gaspar del Bufalo
by Giorgio Papasogli
I have had the book for a while and have been reading short sections of it between other books. For my vacation I intend to read it all again, straight through.
Also during my vacation, I intend to put the whole thing on-line. You can find my first efforts here.
The one thing I find beneficial is is all the background material about the politics and the economy and the social life in the late 18th and early 19th century, a time that contributed to the formation of St. Gaspar. There was a passage I read this morning, that taken out of the violent context that was France and Italy of the time, could actually be used to describe the day in which you and I live.
The little boy Gaspar and his group of friends heard these stories and at night, with their eyes open, they thought and continued to think of these incredible tragedies. One thing was clear in these little minds: the most populous nation had murdered God and invited other nations to do the same. This is what these little infantile souls felt.
In reality there were all kinds of thing about this tragic conflict which, apparently developed among men, but actually it was something between heaven and earth. There are enemies of God, but there are also heroes of God. There are vacillating souls, there are souls solidly believing in the death of God; there are apostles, there are weak ones, there are cowards, there are the indifferent ... Each life, each soul is implicated and is graded according to the strength with which it reacts.
But the external values provoke, as in this case, a taking of an interior position. Resistence, in order to be sustained, has to be superhuman.