 Hi, I'm Mary Harrell for Tan Books. Catholic parents have lots of resources today for telling their children about the lives of the saints. But what about the saints who won the crown of martyrdom, often showing near impossible levels of courage in the face of torture and really awful violence? Those stories can be a bit tougher to share. One such saint is Saint Philomena, a beautiful 13-year-old girl who defied the Roman emperor Diocletian and was ultimately martyred because of it. And Tan Books is excited to be releasing a beautiful new picture book about her life. Check out a little sneak peek. Well, you saw it right there. The book is My Name is Philomena and its author and illustrator is here with us today. Father Peregrine, Fletcher's gonna tell us more about it. Father Peregrine, thanks for being here. Thank you, Mary. It's an honor and a joy to be here with you and to have published this book with Tan. So thank you for having me. Father, is it a bit surreal to see your book here in a video trailer like that, that it's a real thing now that you can hold in your hands? I can't tell you how surreal it is. That's really the right word, Mary. Because for the last 10 years, I've been working on the book on my own here in the monastery cell, wherever I've been sent on assignment from the Abbey. So it's always just been sitting around with me here in this room or wherever I've been, and to see it out just on display for whoever would like to see it or read it, it's amazing. I can't imagine, that's a wonderful feeling, I'm sure. Yes. Father, you are a Norbertine father. You've been down with the Norbertines in Southern California, I think about 10 years now. Before we dive into the book, tell me how you ended up without order of priests. I think you're from the Midwest, right? That's exactly right. I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, my beloved hometown, and really I wanted to do God's will, and that's very broad, and to make it more specific, I really sensed a call in my late teenage years to the priesthood, and I started out in my discernment process, considering diocesan priesthood, and I studied at a local diocesan seminary, Kendrick Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, a very excellent seminary, and I was there for a long time for six and a half years, and eventually felt that there was something else that God was calling me to, although I loved my experience there, and that ended up being the religious life after working with my spiritual director and visiting various monasteries. I discovered St. Michael's Abbey when I arrived here. I just knew it was home, so I decided I was going to give it a shot and at least try it out, and 10 years later, I'm still here, so praise the Lord. It's stuck, something stuck, you were there. Something stuck. That's it. Father, you are the master of novices for the Norbertines, and they are a thriving order, so I can't imagine you are bored by any extent of the imagination. Right, how did you find time then to write this book, illustrate it, find a publisher, all those things? That's a really good question, and well, I think because I started out this project really in my earliest years, in my earliest days here at the Abbey, because I started so long ago and I didn't give myself any timeline at all. I just said I'm going to write and illustrate this book about a saint whom I love, and we'll see where it goes, when it goes. And so I worked on it when I was a novice, and then I became a junior professed, meaning I took my first vows and lived under vows, and then later on renewed those vows and eventually made my solemn profession of vows and then was ordained a priest. In the course of these 10 years of my time as a Norbert team, I've just been periodically, when I can, writing or sketching and drawing, so I just fit it in, in between our prayers, and when the bell would ring, I would put down my colored pencils, put down the text, and I would join the brothers in prayer. So it was very piecemeal. See, this is where it helps to not have an Instagram account, because I just scroll in those times. Right, it was very, my earliest years of being in the novitiate, the novices are all very detached from social media, so that they can really dive deep into the spiritual life, into the history of our order, and that gives a very unique environment. It also really fosters a creativity. The distractions are gone, and so you can really see what's going on inside, and what do I want to do for God? And for me, my superiors allowed me to spend my free time doing this project. So not knowing where it would, not knowing I would be sitting here and having an interview about it, it's just amazing, but that was the origin of it all. Father, let's talk about the order, because St. Philomena and the Norbertines, this is not some random coincidence that you picked her for your picture book. So tell us about the relationship and why she's special to you and them. Yeah, well, that's a really good question too. St. Philomena was not a Norbertine saint. She is an ancient saint predating the Norbertine order by centuries, but here at St. Michael's Abbey, I discovered that many of the Norbertines just had a strong devotion to her, as many people in the church do. So there isn't a really obvious connection between St. Norbert and St. Philomena, except to say that the Norbertines, whom I met, loved her and were devoted to her, and I took up that devotion because I saw it was very fruitful in their lives. It's beautiful. And Father, to then pivot over to the saint at hand here, she has a really incredible drawn-out martyrdom. She was essentially, from reading your book, I learned, tortured more or less for a month. She then offered, the Blessed Mother came to her, told her that she would have these three days, and then she would meet our Lord. And in these three days were really the bulk of the legend around her death. And there's a lot of, there's violence and there's blood. How did you go about the process of depicting that, drawing it and writing it for an audience of children? Yes. That was, the scenes revolving around her torture were definitely the scenes that were the hardest conceptually to design. And so I found that it was something I needed to take to prayer. How to really share, I wanted to share with everyone through this book, but especially children because there haven't been too many children's stories about books about her. But I realized that I needed to do that with sensitivity and carefulness and gentleness. So I just prayed with the various scenes of her torture, very often in the actual illustrations, we're seeing St. Philomena before the torment or after the torment. And yes, and here is, this is a good example. So we're seeing that St. Philomena is being led into the prison cell there in Rome. And that was under the command of the Emperor Diocletian. So at many times in these scenes, you're seeing St. Philomena entering into the suffering. And then on occasion, you might see her during the suffering and after. Here is a good example up on the screen right now of St. Philomena being healed after a great torture. And the angels we hear from the private revelations regarding her story, the angels came and healed her as our lady promised that they would. So our lady told St. Philomena that she would suffer but that there would be help all along the way. So the angels would come and rescue her from being thrown into the Tiber. So St. Philomena became this great hero and it's really important to show the suffering in some way that is also sensitive to the fact that these are children. In this image, you have St. Philomena in the midst of a suffering here in the Tiber. And what is she doing, but she's praying. And I think this is really important. The saints show us examples of prayer and how the Lord will, He will share with us His own sufferings. And He's very united to us in our sufferings and we can use our sufferings as the very atmosphere of prayer. So I wanted to somehow communicate to whoever's reading this book. And if it happens to be a child that it's okay that we suffer, that the saints suffer in the end they are victorious and they will suffer no more. So I had just had to pray with each image and decide the right way to do it. And frankly, I don't know if I was perfectly successful in every image, but I definitely tried to evoke her story with authenticity and gentleness. Well, and I would say maybe the most successful place you've done this so obviously, but with such tender care is that image of St. Philomena at the Scourging Pillar with our Lord on the other side. What a powerful image of showing that she was suffering just in the same way as our Lord. And really I see in the book her martyrdom and her suffering had parallels to our Lord's passion. Absolutely. And this is one of the things that we learned about St. Philaminas sufferings that because she was being tortured for her commitment to Jesus for who was her spouse, Diocletian made sure that her torments were related to him. So this one in particular, Diocletian said that he would order her to be scourged like Jesus was scourged. And so this image I came up with after I was thinking how can I depict that awful scene? Well, I thought our Lord has to be a part of this somehow and it just became clear that there's a kind of mirror. You used the word parallel here and I think it's true in this case too that there's a parallel between Christ's sufferings and St. Philomena's suffering. So obviously these are two scenes that happen in two different times in history. And yet there's something in the very moment of St. Philomena's suffering that brought Christ's sufferings to her. And that's true with all of us too. So hopefully when someone reads this book and sees this image they'll realize, oh, for my suffering too, I can see Christ in a mirror here and not just in a mirror but reaching through that mirror and connecting to me. And so my suffering takes on a value and a worth that maybe we didn't see before. Well, and not just our Lord being in this book but the Blessed Mother is there as well. And there's another beautiful parallel that I think children will certainly catch. Maybe adults would miss it but children would see. In one image, the Blessed Mother, her halo or her crown is made of butterflies and that imagery repeated on at the end of the book. Tell us about that. Sure. Well, this is a butterfly here in the very end of the book. And this relates to the crowning of, the crown of our lady that the image that happens earlier on in the book. Right here it is. And it can kind of be hard to see in this but you see the butterfly there. To see the full thing, you'll have to actually, you'll have to see the book or get that. And but you see that our lady is crowned in this way. And for me, this is very special because when I was illustrating this image, I was looking out my window and I'm from a monastery cell and that season in California at that time there was many butterflies. It must have been a butterfly migration which happens periodically. And I just thought, oh, that is so beautiful. And I was designing her crown. And I thought, what if I just, instead of giving her a typical golden crown, I gave her a crown of butterflies. And it happened to be that I was doing that on the feast of the coronation of our lady on August the 22nd. And it was when I see that image and I see other images, I see a lot of just the local region, the circumstances of my life here at the Abbey of what's going on around me. And they kind of made their way into the book. And there you see the little red butterfly descending. And the red butterfly is representative of the martyrdom and that was going to be coming St. Philomena's way. Each butterfly has a different color and the image of butterflies in Christian symbolism often evoke the resurrection. So this red butterfly with the color symbolizing blood, symbolizing martyrdom was approaching St. Philomena but so was the resurrection which follows that martyrdom. So in a way, it's an unusual image. In a lot of ways it's an unusual book. And so I'm asking the reader to also enter into some of the mysteries of her life but also some of the circumstances of just the life here at the Abbey. So kind of an unusual project. Father tell us about the cover of the book, that image that was used on the cover and is the book, the symbols that she's pictured with there why you put her in the moonlight in that way, on the water. Well, so St. Philomena, I didn't, this was the very last image that I did. And that was not my plan to have this in the book at all. I finished the book, I finished all of the images. And I just when I was, I was, what was I doing? I was searching online one day and came across this image of a person standing on the waterfront and the light was so beautiful. And I just realized to myself, I said, I think I need an image of St. Philomena standing on the water, the light hitting the water. She who was, you know, was threatening to be thrown into the water. She's here standing victorious above it. And oftentimes we see, we think of heaven as this great shore and this, and God's endless ocean, the sea of mercy. And I wanted it to be this, the end of the book is the beginning of St. Philomena's life in heaven in so many ways. And we see her here depicted with this anchor, which was supposed to submerge her into the water and kill her. And actually for St. Philomena becomes this great symbol of hope. And she's rescued from this. In fact, she's holding onto the anchor as though she's in charge of this. You can't submerge her, you can't keep her down. That's the story of the saints. And you also have not just this anchor meant for the water, but you have this arrow that is lit with fire. And it was this fiery arrow that was meant to be also St. Philomena's destruction where she was supposed to die with flaming arrows being, you know, heralded her. And neither of them, neither of the anchor or the arrows killed her. And it shows that she has a power with God. And so I wanted both of these symbols to be there with St. Philomena standing victorious on the water. They're standing in the light of God. Can picture no greater image for a young Catholic girl to be reading this book and to see this in her? I hope that those young girls will really see in her this model of virtue and a virtue that they can access when they pray to St. Philomena. I mean, my prayer is that this will be an impetus not just to, you know, read and learn about her but to establish a beautiful relationship with this heavenly saint who is real, who is watching over us in this cloud of witnesses with which the scriptures talk about. And she's a powerful saint. So I think you're right on there, Mary. Father, congratulations just on this beautiful project. I'm so happy for you that this came to fruition and happy for all the readers who will read it. Thank you for joining us today. Again, the book is My Name is Philomena. You can find it here on tanbooks.com or at your local Catholic bookstore. God bless you, Father. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mary. God bless. Take care.