Guest post by Tacy Williams Beck.

Flannery O’Connor exhibits a humorous conception of racism in her classic story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and for me, her comic strips come to mind. We all know about her ability to reveal the truths of human nature by emphasizing the absurd and grotesque.

The snarky tone is a beguiling clue to the nature of her stories. We should go at them as we read a comic strip: ready to laugh. Her command of the sound of the South, her self-deprecating tone, and her self-awareness (so early and ahead of her time!) mixed with grace can all lead us to laugh and also to love, across races, sincerely.

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” one can see many examples of her command of the sound of the South and its effect on the listener.  You can almost envision her comic strips as she uses words like “recernized” “prechate” “yes’m” and “terrectly.” You can hear her hearing it; this can also be seen in O’Connor’s story, “The Displaced Person.” In that story, the main character Mrs. Shortly states of the immigrants, “You reckon they knows what colors even is?” The title of said story comes from The Displaced Person Act, which was originally condemned (although later approved) by Truman as discriminatory and racist.

As a Southerner, I believe her self-deprecating tone will awaken even the most deaf ears, in particular as regards racism on the part of Christians.  From the “A Good Man is Hard to Find”:

“In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?”

What could this condescension be?  Her use of a now passe term displays that the layers of pre-judgment that all black children are diminutive and would make a sentimental portrait and it goes deeper than skin tone.  Christian prejudice that precocious children come from a certain upbringing, or the pre-judgment that all Islamic people are criminals because they are displaced, is of huge concern in contemporary times. How can this token displaced “Misfit,” the story’s famous villain, apply?  He is a self-aware bad guy. So we could say this about many Christians in the South with an unspoken pecking order. Materialism and greed are excused for the sake of giving a child every opportunity.

Her symbolism makes the story shimmer in this dark night of the soul. Certainly the monkey-like description—“he was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy”—is a symbol of the culture of looking at black people and their children a dehumanizing way. It is as if they are saying: A black person could never be a clean person.

Assumption is oozing from each comment in the conversation between the grandmother and Red Sam, at the moment Red Sam claims he is a good person because of the way he does business.

“Two fellers come in here last week,” Red Sammy said, “driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?”

“Because you’re a good man!” the grandmother said at once.

“Yes’m, I suppose so,” Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer.

Her comic device is this punchline, which reinforces Red Sam’s inflated opinion of himself.

O’Connor becomes a star in this story, no doubt, and if not before, she must have known that her own greatness, mixed with just the right amount of gracious humor would stun every onlooker. Her future work is a greatness that remains to be seen.

In conclusion, O’Connor can can make us laugh and love sincerely, both at the same time.  In her prayer journal, O’Connor prays: “Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace,” which is a perfect expression of wit and faith in action. Looking to her comic strips and as well to her fierce loyalty to Christ over classism or any kind of racism, we see a refreshing picture of humanity.  She can cause us to chuckle even at harmful situations, making us see the irony of the Southern depths of darkness. She is willing to go there and ultimately it makes her shine.

Tacy Williams Beck is a wife and mother to three girls and one boy. She likes to read, bake, sew, and, of course, write. Read more of her articles at her blog and Catholic Mom. Follow her on Pinterest here.

Guest post by Belle Joseph.

To understand the situation of young women in the West today, you could do no better than to read a novel written by an English Catholic convert and priest over 160 years ago.

The first time I heard of Callista, the 1855 novel by Cardinal (Blessed John Henry) Newman, my interest was piqued immediately, and the book didn’t disappoint. Newman’s elegant prose is a delight to be relished at length. True, this isn’t a perfect novel; the plot creaks from time to time, and some of the author’s scholarly digressions won’t be to all readers’ tastes.

Yet despite its limitations, this is no ordinary Victorian novel. In fact, compared to reading other English-language novels from the time, discovering Callista is like moving from a dimly lit room into clear daylight. Grappling with questions of faith and doubt, sacrifice and duty, the novel is, among other things, an original and convincing account of a young woman’s spiritual journey, one that sounds a prophetic note today.      

Set in the Roman town of Sicca in North Africa towards the middle of the third century, at the time of the emperor Decius, the novel follows the fortunes of a number of the inhabitants during a time of persecution of Christians. At the outset of the novel, we find one of the protagonists, Agellius, an assistant bailiff on a farm outside Sicca, striving to exercise his Christian faith despite the lack of churches and clergy in the town, the taunts of his brother Juba and the disapproval of his worldly, conformist uncle Jucundus. He becomes friends with a pagan brother and sister, Aristo and Callista, newly arrived from Greece, and falls in love with the beautiful, gifted Callista. He hopes to marry her, but his hopes are dashed in quite an unexpected manner.

Simultaneously, an edict is released by Decius, ordering the execution of any Christians refusing to sacrifice to the gods of Rome. As the novel progresses, the story shifts more and more to Callista’s interior ordeal. No longer believing in the Roman religion, she is restless and unhappy in herself, yearning for truth, clarity and peace.

Agellius is an engaging, appealingly flawed character, but Callista is the real tour de force here. The boldness of Newman’s portrait of this young Greek woman is searing. Newman is no subscriber to the submissiveness of women to their men-folk, according to the ideals of his day; Callista has a mind, a conscience and a heart of her own that demand fulfilment.

At a key turning-point in the novel, Callista makes an emotional outburst against the shallow, worldly life that her brother enjoys so much: ‘Here am I, a living, breathing woman, with an overflowing heart, with keen affections, with a yearning after some object which may possess me. I cannot exist without something to rest upon. I must have something to love; love is my life.’ 

A third-century Jane Eyre? Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that both books, with their spirited and morally courageous heroines, appeared around the same time, at the height of the Victorian obsession with the domesticated, compliant woman. Yet Callista reminds me more of another of Charlotte Brontë’s characters: the emotionally neglected Caroline Helstone in Shirley. Like Caroline or, to take a later literary character, Thérèse Desqueyroux in the eponymous novel by French Catholic novelist François Mauriac, Callista is dying spiritually for lack of love.

In other ways, Callista is a woman of the twenty-first century Western world. If anything, her character is more relevant today than in Newman’s time. She is prosperous, artistic, well-educated, and employed in congenial, skilled work (carving pagan idols). Like many of her generation, she has lost her belief in the religion of her parents. The philosophy of her social circle is to live solely for the pleasures of friendship and romance, art and music, intellectual exploration and self-expression. But this blithely hedonistic life-style, with its motto of ‘enjoy the present; trust nothing to the future’, no longer satisfies Callista.

Callista’s predicament is a familiar one in modern society. She sees clearly the emptiness of a life without religion – ‘If I were a Christian,’ she tells her horrified brother, ‘life would be more bearable’ – yet at first hesitates to take the leap of faith to accept the Christian faith. ‘I am not its enemy,’ she explains to the Bishop Caecilius, ‘but I cannot believe in it.’ When asked why, she responds: ‘It seems too beautiful to be anything else than a dream.’ On the other hand, she finds certain Christian dogmas, notably the doctrine of eternal punishment, ‘odious’. ‘They revolt me,’ she tells Caecilius bluntly, and it takes the Bishop’s wise and compassionate words on the subject to slowly bring her over this obstacle.

Callista’s existential loneliness and depression – what she calls being thrown back upon her ‘dreary, dismal self and the wounds of my memory’ – her dissatisfaction with the materialism and pleasure-seeking of her peers, and her emotional and intellectual struggles in accepting Christianity all give Newman’s creation a curious modernity. Apart from a few details, her story could be the story of many young women living today, coming to terms with the inadequacy of contemporary social values and ideals to give complete joy and meaning to their lives.       

Newman takes a definite counter-cultural stance when he denies Callista the happy ending of marriage, perhaps just as discomforting for modern-day society as for Victorian readers. He does not deny the beauty of marriage; far from it. But he understands that human love can only partially fill the emptiness in a woman’s heart. As Professor Janet E. Smith once put it in a talk: ‘Marriage does not eradicate man’s loneliness, but only alleviates it.’ Sensitive as they are to their own spiritual and emotional needs, women are, perhaps, especially prone to the mistake of seeking total spiritual fulfilment and emotional satisfaction in their spouses – a gift that even the most exemplary husband might have some trouble in ensuring.   

The answer, then, to woman’s deepest desires? For Newman, it is both simple and radical: complete fulfilment is found in a Person and that Person is Jesus Christ. Only a pure and complete love can satisfy woman’s soul; only the love of Christ can fully answer her longings.

Callista is not for the faint-hearted. Less because of its accounts of martyrdom than because it shows without varnish the demands that the Christian faith makes on us. C. S. Lewis put it with his inimitable forthrightness in his book God on the Dock: ‘Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.’ There is no room for the ‘moderately important’ brand of Christianity in Callista’s world, where religious belief is literally a matter of life and death.   

What are the implications of this truth for today’s world? Perhaps Callista has something to tell us about women today, at a time when anxiety, low self-esteem and insecurities are rife among young women. In the formation of young women, there is a tendency, even among Christians, to emphasize external accomplishments: intellectual, sporting and practical achievements. While these are all very good and necessary, any intelligent woman will sooner or later fall into despair if she believes such success is all there is to life.

As the great saint and philosopher, Edith Stein, explains, the young girl’s spiritual development has to come first in her formation. She must be put in relation with the Person Who alone can love her totally. The deepest and most lasting desire in woman, Stein writes in one of her Essays on Woman, is to ‘achieve a loving union’. Stein had a special interest in Newman’s life and work (she translated his letters and diaries into German) and her words about love echo the thoughts expressed by Newman in his novel. 

Indeed, Newman, whose episcopal motto was ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’ (‘Heart speaks to heart’) understood as few others have the primacy of the heart, and in particular, the call that every woman’s heart sends out for a love capable of understanding her completely. Just like Charlotte Brontë’s heroines, Callista cannot be satisfied with a loveless existence. Unlike them, she finds the love and purpose she craves in Christ, rather than in human love. It’s a historical novel, and a spiritual meditation as well, but Callista is first and foremost a love-story, the story of a woman who falls in love and discovers a joy beyond all her hopes.

Belle Joseph lives in Canberra, Australia, where she teach French. She has a doctorate from the Australian National University (ANU) in French Studies.

Twenty-five year old Catholic Artist John McCoy from Cincinnati, Ohio painted a 10 x 20 ft. life-size Crucifixion mural for All Saints Parish in Alpena, Michigan. The work entitled “The Crucifixion” was blessed by Bishop Steven Raica of the Diocese of Gaylord, MI on June 1st, 2018.

This is the second artwork by McCoy to adorn the sanctuary space of St. Anne Catholic Church of All Saints Parish. In 2016 he created a 60 x 9 ft. mural depicting 62 life-size saints. His latest mural, which is acrylic on panel, was completed with 13 days of painting.

While working on “The Crucifixion” McCoy joined the All Saints Parish staff in Morning Prayer before beginning each day of work. “In my work,” he says, “I continually rely on the Holy Spirit for inspiration and believe prayer to be an important part of my process.” The painting focuses the attention of the viewer on the center point of the liturgy, the Eucharist, with compositional elements leading the eye toward the tabernacle.

What is the trouble with religious art? Joaquín Navarro-Valls, longtime director of the Holy See Press Office, has some thoughts. Religious artists, he says, “seek to represent [saints] in a paradigmatic moment of their existence. And this results in the plastic image of holiness usually appearing in a context of exceptional circumstances, thus giving the impression that these are the only ones that can form the context of a saint’s life.”

Can the life and writings of Pope John Paul II be understood outside of the context of Polish Romanticism? Czesław Miłosz did not believe so. “Karol Wojtyła was undoubtedly formed by Polish Romanticism. From early on in his life the poetry of the Polish 19th century bards fascinated him. He wrote poems referring to them, studied under the direction of outstanding experts in Romanticism, and during World War II he created dramas firmly rooted in the tradition of Polish messianism.”

A new exhibition of artifacts from the life and work of J.R.R. Tolkien is on display in Oxford. “The exhibition’s theme is the creation of Middle-earth. Gathered from the U.K., the U.S. and France, there are manuscripts, artwork, maps, letters and other artifacts. ‘Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth’ includes more than 200 items, 60 of which have never been displayed before, from Bodleian’s extensive Tolkien Archive and Marquette University’s Tolkien Collection, as well as from important private collections, with many items drawn directly from the author’s family.”

I thought you all might enjoy this Shakespeare-based homily that I’m preaching for my long-suffering parishioners this weekend. Full disclosure, I stole a lot from Chesterton. If you’re interested in the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, which is a truly fascinating holiday, Jonathan McDonald’s piece is well worth reading.

Today is the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. He, along with the Blessed Virgin, is the only saint whose actual birthday we celebrate. The other saints are all celebrated on the anniversary of their death. John’s birth was miraculous, though, and closely connected with that of Christ. The Scriptures tell us that John was six months older than his cousin Jesus, so you always know that on the Nativity of St. John, Christmas is only six months away. Start making your wish list for all the toys you want.

This day also occurs very near the summer solstice, which is the longest day of the year. It’s the subject of Shakespeare’s great play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the events of that play occur on the Vigil of the Nativity of St. John. The plot for that play is fairly simple: a group of normal, sane people meet some fairies and things get funny.

G.K. Chesterton says it’s a study of a spirit that unites mankind. “The sentiment of such a play,” he says, “can be summed up in one sentence. It is the mysticism of happiness.” What he means is that, in life, we should never forget that we live in a borderland in which we may find ourselves very quickly and easily in a heavenly atmosphere, not only through being serious and profound but also by being extravagantly happy.

In the Catholic Church, one of the things I appreciate is that we do know how to talk about sorrow and how to find God through suffering. Let me tell you, I have visited people in the nursing home, and I encounter them when they’re in a very difficult phase of life. In the midst of physical weakness and limitation, they are struggling to recollect their lives, to remember who they once were but understanding that they are losing the battle with each passing day. They know they are leaving pieces of themselves behind and as we talk they cry. These moments are profoundly heartbreaking and I don’t know how anyone could handle them if we didn’t know that Christ suffers right along with us, and that through suffering the spirit can be strengthened. It is very important that we see how God is at work even in our darkest moments.

But what about happiness? We all want to be happy, but it’s almost as if, when we are we can’t help but feel guilty about it. Like we’re doing something wrong, or we don’t deserve it, or it isn’t the most spiritual way to live. This may sound way too simple, but God wants you to be happy. The saints are happy, and even when the Church is penitential and serious, she is happy.

Chesterton claims that people misunderstand Shakespeare’s comedies because they are themselves so profoundly unhappy. They believe that religion must be dour and serious and puritan. But happiness, true happiness, points us to a very important fact. The happiness of this life is a participation in the happiness of the life to come.

That is perhaps where the misunderstanding comes from. Happiness is not a frivolity that distracts us from heaven. It is a gift from God to lead us to heaven. Take joy in your life, your children, your family, your friends, your hobbies. Take a vacation, drink good coffee, go to a play, this is the joy of the saints. St. Francis de Sales says, “A sad saint would be a sorry saint.”

Because happiness comes from heaven, we find it by diving deeper and deeper into the life of faith. This is Shakespeare’s whole point with Midsummer Night’s Dream, that when heavenly happiness overtakes us we are drawn more and more into the life of the world to come. I think that, when we look at American society right now, we see a lot of sad people who have rejected God. They are bitter, and depressed, and lost. Our celebrities seem profoundly unhappy, our politicians spend all their time bickering, suicide rates are epidemic, divorce and loneliness are destroying the lives of so many. In chasing a false happiness that pulls them away from heaven, they have been misled and cheated out of the joyful life that every person deserves.

For us to be happy, we must re-integrate our faith with our daily lives, to see that both the natural world and the supernatural world are intertwined, that both are real.

John the Baptist says, “I must decrease and God must increase.” John is the waning of the old light, Jesus is the rising sun. From here on the days grow shorter as John decreases until right at Christmas and the birth of Christ when the light begins to increase. This eclipse of his own personality made John profoundly happy, because in it he was able to leave behind earthly concerns and seek out a heavenly reality. The only way to discover your purpose in life is to reflect the light of your creator. This is how we are drawn into the communion of saints and find that each one of us is a lamp burning brightly.

At the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there’s the sound of little feet and elves peek into a normal, human house. “Suppose we are the realities and they the shadows,” they wonder. When it comes to earth or heaven, which is real? Maybe it’s both. This is the sacramental reality, to inhabit the borderland where God’s grace infuses every part of our lives and draws us steadily onwards to true happiness.

The news about Anthony Bourdain’s early death by suicide hit me hard this morning. His travelogues were sensitive and insightful, particularly about the fragility and beauty of the human experience. Even as he experienced genuine highs in his exploration of the world, he clearly found meaningful connection in more intimate moments simply connecting with new friends on an individual basis. Travel is broadening in the way it opens us up to new cultures but also in the way it puts us into contact with other human beings.

Travel also has its cost. It’s become a bit of a joke that the secret to a happy life is to go travel the world, eat good food, and gather unique experiences. This is what blessed people are supposed to do while the rest of us are stuck in the various hometowns we cannot escape. To the extent to which we consider travel a panacea for our boredom, it will always disappoint. Not that this is what Bourdain thought he was doing, but his life proves that a man can live a beautiful, meaningful existence that is greatly envied and yet peace is still fleeting. For a certain personality (mine) travel is a fraught experience. I love it, but when I return to my every day existence the crushing reality of homesickness settles in like nausea. This, I want to be clear, is after I return home. Everyone’s psychological landscape is unique, but in the distant past I was clinically depressed. I’ve since recovered to a great extent, but I shudder to think how travel would often make my situation worse.

Travel is still worth the effort, but it forces us into a confrontation with the basic fact that this world is not our home. That everywhere we go, we leave behind somewhere else. In our wake is the detritus of old friends, the ghosts of college towns, pictures of beaches that have long since ceased to bear the mark of our footprints.

In his travelogue Remote People, Evelyn Waugh is brutally honest about the psychological cost of travel. He writes about how we tell stories of travel with selective memory, forgetting the pains and inconveniences, but also the one, inescapable, supremely devastating terror of melancholic personalities – boredom. He writes, “The boredom of civilized life is terminable and trivial…I am constantly a martyr to boredom, but never in Europe have I been so desperately and degradingly bored as I was [while traveling]”. He then delicately dissects the concept of human boredom, writing from a hotel in the heart of Africa while waiting for a steamship whose arrival is indeterminate. The point being, no matter where we are or what we are doing, a human being must struggle with the highs and lows of existence. Travel is a beautiful thing, but it isn’t a magic pill to solve the existential sickness that ails us.

Waugh manages to return to London after an absence of several months in Africa and finds himself immediately bored. He ends up in a trendy underground club, surrounded again by the gossip and wit of high class society. He drinks fancy drinks, sees fancy clothes, hears trendy music. Why travel? “Just watch London knock spots off the Dark Continent,” he writes. Where ever we find ourselves, we are in the midst of it.

Life is achingly fragile, and we go forth like a dream. Love each other. Love life, and always remember that even in our lowest moments, we are aching for Home.

I still remember certain books from my formative period vividly. When I was younger I would happily spend hours and hours tucked away in my bedroom reading incredibly thick, dense books that I’m sure I only fractionally understood. The problem is, now that I’m older I no longer have the energy to read books of that caliber. My literary life now is PG Wodehouse novels, Evelyn Waugh travelogues, and watching Brideshead Revisited once a year. I do believe that there’s a certain amount of youthful exuberance that gets us through very difficult books when we’re younger. I’m pretty sure, for instance that I once read Being and Time cover to cover and after that, in youthful impetuosity, immediately started Either/Or. There’s no way in the infinite horizon of dasein that I’d ever make it through those books now. Well, maybe I’d re-read some of the Aesthete’s advice. He seems like a pretty cool guy.

The point is, the formative stage for any human being is precious, so don’t waste it. Here’s my list of the best books to read each year of your life until you get a job and your only cultural input is listening to sports talk radio. Feel free to intensely question my choices.

6 – the ABCs. It’s, like, fundamental. Go ahead and memorize it and sing it if you want. But the important bit is to actually learn to read it.

7- The Little Prince. Read the best book ever written before you get too old to understand it.

8 – Black Stallion. It’s about time for that developmental stage where you get into a major pony obsession. Go with it.

9 – Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Honestly, I still re-read this. It stretches the imagination in delightful ways and is a masterpiece of whimsy and creativity.

10 – The Chronicles of Narnia. Before this age, it’s too scary. After this, it’s too tame.

11 – Ender’s Game. Kids are better than adults. It’s time you learned that.

12 – Little House on the Prairie. You’re about to hit the big time, your teens, and it’s time you learned how to take care of yourself.

13 – Lord of the Rings. Your imagination is primed and ready. If there’s one thing a thirteen year old can do, it’s read an incredibly long, dense trilogy full of insanely intricate details and then obsess about it through role playing and memorizing fictitious languages.

14 – Discworld. It’s a mythological detox from Tolkien. Sometimes books are just for fun and kind of pointless but they’re also really clever and you suspect the author totally squandered his talent and that’s okay.

15 – Hamlet. It’s a rite of passage. You have to get this thing read and you’ll probably hate it, but you’ll thank your English teacher for this later. It’s almost laughable how little I appreciated this at the time and how I fall more in love with it every time I re-read it. Is it possible that Shakespeare is under-rated?

16 – Catcher in the Rye. Finally, someone who understands you. Sure, the guy you relate most to in life is probably a sociopath created in the mind of a reclusive, anti-social hermit. But a little empathy is nice wherever you can find it.

17 – Catch 22. The book you should’ve read last year because it’s way funnier and darker.

18 – Blood Meridian. You’re about to graduate high school and it’s time you understand the world is a violent, biblical place, kid.

19 – Inferno. You’re going to want to store the experience of reading this away so in twenty years when you have your mid-life crisis you have it as a resource. You don’t want to wander the dark wood alone, do you?

20 – Infinite Jest. If you’re in college and have followed this reading list up to this point, you’re just becoming pretentious enough to tackle this. The funny thing is, it isn’t pretentious at all. It’s amazing and human and thoughtful and sad.

21 – On the Road. This is it. This is your moment to get in the car and drive. It doesn’t matter where you go, just be sure you give it zero thought as you slip behind the wheel. DO IT NOW

22 – Brothers Karamazov. When you’re older you won’t have the time or energy. I couldn’t imagine trying to read this now that my brain is fried by work meetings, the internet, and talking to other adults on a daily basis. This book, I seem to recall, is really good, you guys.

23 – The Aeneid. This may be the last book you ever read, so make it a good one. It’s time to find your place in the world and do great things. Spoiler alert, Aeneas never makes it. Life is open-ended and uncertain, but it is most definitely a heroic adventure. Go found your Rome.

How did poetry and theology become so disconnected from one another in the modern age? “If one were to walk away from Domestico’s book under the impression that he is simply arguing for a shared sentiment between modernist theologians and poets, though, one would be mistaken. This shared feeling of crisis between Barth and Eliot is based on a shared theological concept: namely, the notion that this temporal world is under the judgment of eternity, and that any moment of divine presence is always punctiliar and fleeting.”

Ian McEwan tried helping his son write an essay about one of his novels, and landed him a C+. “I confess I did give him a tutorial and told him what he should consider. I didn’t read his essay but it turned out his teacher disagreed fundamentally with what he said.”

An interview given by the last slave ship survivor in the 1930s has recently surfaced. “Most poignantly, Lewis’ narrative provides a first-hand account of the disorienting trauma of slavery. After being abducted from his home, Lewis was forced onto a ship with strangers. The abductees spent several months together during the treacherous passage to the United States, but were then separated in Alabama to go to different plantations.”

Guest post by Denise Renner.

For we have not by following artificial fables, made known to you the power, and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; but we were eyewitnesses of his greatness.” (2 Peter 1:16)

We received an icon of Saint Catherine of Alexandria as a gift a couple years ago. She hung in our son’s bedroom, out of sight and out of mind, until we moved and I placed her in our kitchen. Having her as a constant companion throughout my day made me curious to know more about her. And her story is extraordinary.

As a young Christian girl in Egypt during the 4th century, she confronted the Roman Emperor Maximinus II because of his violent persecution of Christians. Debating and ultimately converting some of his scholars only served to further anger the emperor, who sentenced the insolent and eloquent Catherine to death. But at her touch, the wheel she was condemned to die on was destroyed. She was ultimately beheaded, and her body was transported to Mount Sinai by angels—a Catholic saint if ever there was one.

But then I read the boiler plate: there have been embellishments, and there is a lack of historical documentation; there are even claims that Catherine did not exist, that she is a purely legendary figure based on the pagan philosopher Hypatia.

This bothers me.

Maybe because I grew up reading literature that dealt with the stuff of everyday—suffering, loss, death, tragedy—and spent little time in mythical worlds and the fantasy genre, I find the stuff of real life infinitely more compelling than smidgeons of reality padded and puffed up beyond all recognition with the fantastic. A big part of my conversion was realizing that truth could objectively be found in the Church. After conversion, it was disheartening to discover what felt like an absence of just that.

Things I had previously dismissed—saints, apparitions, relics—were suddenly becoming part of my culture, and part of the heritage we were passing on to our children. I remember the first time I heard the term “pious fake” applied to a relic. I thought, Well, of course. Nothing sounded more Catholic than fake bones and body parts being venerated all over the world by laypeople who did not know the difference, and probably did not even care.

If relics could be both pious and fake, then what of the Communion of Saints? Could a saint be both the stuff of legend and still intercede on our behalf? What of Saint Catherine, who was either a character in a fictional romance or a devout Christian martyr, depending on who you ask and where you looked for information?

Of one thing I am certain: the inner Doubting Thomas has surfaced more since becoming Catholic. There was less to question as a Lutheran, less demanded of the faithful. I accepted Martin Luther, who was one man, terribly and fearfully easy to relate to. Not so in the Church founded by Jesus Christ. I struggle mightily to relate to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, even the most simple version of her life: a young girl martyred for her faith. Even if you lop off the bit about confronting the emperor, her torture and beheading, and the transportation by angels—she is still much more than I was at her age, and more than I am now.

So why gild the lily? Perhaps that is just part of the mystery of the faith and its transmission to future generations. And maybe we all struggle, in our own unique way, with some form of perceived “excess” when we come into the Catholic Church.

There are those who cannot understand the elaborate ceremony, the vestments, the candles, the incense; and those who stumble in the silence, who cannot find a toehold when confronted with the Latin Mass. Some cannot comprehend the Eucharist, the papacy, Marian devotion, or how the Divine Office can be so complicated. For me, there is the shimmering veil of fantasy that seems to envelope the Communion of Saints.

Perhaps, like the vestments and candles and processions, these embellishments and legends are meant to inspire, in the same way we use fairy tales to introduce children to the nature of good and evil, to see Hansel and Gretel succeed in escaping from the witch. And are we not all children of God?

I have spent a considerable amount of time reading fiction. I know the stories are not true when I start to read them, but that does nothing to prevent the characters from lodging in my imagination, from being people I “know” in the sense that I have spent time in their worlds, in their circumstances, and in their mind. Before becoming Catholic, I was able to commune with Saint Augustine through his Confessions, able to know him, and to be influenced by him, all these centuries later.

I would argue that I know Anna Karenina as well, that I have connected with her and a whole host of characters that are fictional, or loosely based on real people; and whether only partly real or totally imagined, each character reveals some truth about human nature and our existential condition, which is not only possible in fiction, but is the purpose of all good literature.

Perhaps the story of Saint Catherine’s life as it has come down to us is simply inspiration for confronting the pagan emperors of today, yet another example in a long list of those who have stood for what is right and true—even if the details are a bit fuzzy. After all, Saint Joan of Arc claimed that Saint Catherine was among the saints who counseled her on her own blazing course through history.

And yet, somehow it remains easier to accept a purely fictional character’s nod to the truth than to fight my knee-jerk resistance to legends of the early saints. I want the Barque of Peter to take on no water, to be neat and tidy. To examine one life, one legend, and find holes leads to questions about what Joan of Arc truly saw, said, or heard and whether this divine and holy communion can be trusted. Tolstoy never suggests that we commune with Anna Karenina, and we have no expectation that her role will transcend that of a good story. But if we believe in Christ’s Church, which can neither deceive nor be deceived, then Saint Catherine is not merely a historical figure, and not merely good fiction, but a sister, a counselor, a confidant, and a companion of God.

We do not live in the same culture as the early saints. Indeed, we now have “proven” saints, whose lives, deaths, and miracles are sanctioned by experts within the Church. Saint Catherine did not leave an ecclesiastical paper trail as proof of her holiness: we only have the tradition.

But if we trust the wisdom Mother Church has amassed, then we must be able to call on Saint Catherine of Alexandria, ora pro nobis, with the joy of the children who delight in the death of the witch and run to the open arms of their father. In truth, these legends provide abundant evidence—not of the saints, but of their foe, for he is one we share, and about whom there is ample proof: the pagan, the evil emperor, the Devil.

I had not given Saint Catherine much thought when I placed her in the kitchen. I would have chosen Mary Magdalene, as a reminder of my sins. But instead I have this ancient martyr and her wheel of torture beside me, accompanied by the soft sound of angel wings carrying her body away. She bothers me because I cannot “know” her, because I have no proof. But in just this way Saint Catherine, and all the saints, point beyond themselves to that unsurpassed mystery of the faith presented to us in the Mass. In truth, no saint, relic, miracle or intercession is as astounding and incomprehensible as that which occurs every day, all around the world—when the silence of the sanctuary is broken by the ringing of the bells and the priest raises the host and declares: “The Body of Christ.”

Denise is a wife, mother and convert who makes her home in the Pacific Northwest.