The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sigrid Undset was a Catholic convert, Third Order Dominican, and a Norwegian. As a fellow convert, lay Dominican in formation, and Scandinavian, and as a huge fan of her novel Kristin Lavransdatter, I feel as though Undset and I might have been friends - or, at least, I would have been her adoring fan girl and she'd have tolerated my enthusiastic adoration in a spirit of Christian charity.

My husband gave me Undset's biography of St. Catherine of Siena for Christmas, and finally, for Lent, I've been able to read it. Catherine of Siena does not disappoint. Undset's knowledge and love of medieval culture and her novelist's eye gives a richness to Catherine and her story that I suspect few other storytellers have achieved.

Catherine was graced very early in her life with mystical visions and heroic holiness, and as is the case with lifelong saints, some hagiographers have difficulty finding and showing the inner conflict that makes a character (I'm speaking in a literary sense now) interesting to the reader. But Undset finds both the inner and exterior conflict of Catherine's life and crafts her story as only a gifted novelist can.

One interesting connection Undset makes is between Catherine and St. Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden. These two women never met, and yet Undset devotes half a chapter to the role Birgitta plays in Catherine's drama. Birgitta was noblewoman and a visionary, and bringing both her spiritual understanding and her political acumen to the fore, she fearlessly worked to convince the Avignon popes to return to Rome. Unfortunately, Birgitta did not achieve success in her lifetime; instead, she paved the way for Catherine, who inherited her mission:

. . . before Birgitta had closed her eyes in death the Sienese virgin had taken her work upon herself, and it was Catherine's destiny to carry it out. She was to be the master tool in the hand of God to bring St. Peter's successor back to his home besides the graves of St. Peter and St. Paul. (pg. 139)

This is the novelist's bird's-eye view, seeing connections between the pieces of the story where the characters themselves can not. This ability allows Undset to see the spiritual connection between the two. It's a saintly connection, and I think it's just awesome.

I've enjoyed Catherine of Siena so much that I've decided to give a copy away. If you're interested, let me know either in the comments box (if I don't know you personally, leave some sort of contact info, like your Twitter handle) or via email (the link is at the top right corner of the website). I'll draw a name this coming Monday, 3/21, and send it out right away. Thanks to Amazon Prime, it should arrive on your doorstep just in time for the Triduum.

St. Catherine, pray for us!

Update 3/21/16: And the winner is... Heidi K.! Congratulations!

I love Flannery O'Connor. I really do. While I have to be in the right mood for reading her short stories (which, according to my former professor, "is like eating power-punched potato chips"), I could read her essays anytime, anywhere.

Hers is an amazing voice and talent; her ability to spot incongruencies and blow them up to the point of surrealism is exceptional. She can make me laugh. I hope I'm half the writer she was by the time I die.

But she also annoys me, though it's not her fault. What gets to me is the cult of Flannery. When you've hung around Catholic literary circles long enough, you're bound to hear your fair share of Flannery adulation. She's become a patron saint of the Hopeful Revival of Faithful Catholic Literature, you see.

Because she's so well loved, O'Connor's Catholic detractors are unlikely to receive a lot of sympathy. Last year's Crisis article by James Bernens, in which he criticizes the "artlessness and crudity of her style," garnered over 160 comments—for a web post about a deceased writer of short stories, that's a lot. Bernens said That Which Must Never Be Said, and he paid for it.

It's a spiteful sliver of the old devil left in me, but all this dead seriousness and hearing her praises sung again and again makes me not want to read her work. Ever. Sticking out my tongue right now.

(I hope she's chuckling at my childishness up there in Glory Land.)

My issues regarding the Flannery Following aside, it's great that we continue to raise questions about Catholic art and culture. It's great that larger Catholic publishing houses like Loyola Press, Ave Maria Press, and Ignatius Press have published at least a few quality new and rediscovered works of Catholic fiction. It's great that Dappled Things exists (and humbling for me that I can play a small part in it).

The pre-Vatican II writers of Flannery & Co. were able to get a toehold in the secular publishing market. But that was 1960. This is 2016. We need all the internal support we can get if Catholic fiction is ever going to see a revival beyond our little enclave.

What's tough for us aspiring writers of Catholic fiction is that, unlike the Protestants, we don't have large publishing houses accepting and releasing shelves upon shelves of mass-marketed (but distinctively Catholic!) mostly-crap. If I were to write a Catholic-Amish romance story, it had better be a damn good Catholic-Amish romance story or no one is going to publish it. 

On second thought, maybe that's a good problem to have.

What is theosis? I've subtitled my blog "Theosis In Progress" with full understanding that theosis is a strange, obscure little word that I picked up from my theologian husband.

(It's cool being married to a theologian. Makes me sound way smarter than I actually am.) 

Definition: Theosis is a Greek word that the Western Church translates as deification.

Deification? 

Like, becoming a god?

You're right to be scandalized. I know I was when I first heard it. So let's back this soul train up.

When it comes to our salvation in Jesus Christ, most of us, consciously or not, fixate on what we are saved from—sin—without asking ourselves the question, What are we saved for?

The answer is heaven, of course. But let’s dig deeper.

Who is this Jesus Christ who claims to save us? Our faith tells us that He is the Word Made Flesh, God becoming human. But logically, how is this possible at all? Wouldn’t God annihilate his own nature in condescending to become his creation? Wouldn’t human nature be annihilated in being joined to God? Wouldn't God cease to be God, and the creature cease to be the creature?

The answer is no. Because God transcends his creation—He is not the highest thing within creation, but stands outside it as being itself—he can enter into his creation without violating it. Bishop Robert Barron states in his book Catholicism:

The Incarnation tells central truths concerning both God and us. If God became human without ceasing to be God and without compromising the integrity of the creature that he became, God must not be a competitor with his creation . . . The Word does indeed become human, but nothing of the human is destroyed in the process; God does indeed enter his creation, but the world is thereby enhanced and elevated.

God is not in competition with his creation, nor is he in competition with us. He does not violate the integrity of his creation, nor does he violate our integrity. Instead, as Bishop Barron states, by entering into it, God raises it up. Bishop Barron continues:

And the Incarnation tells us the most important truth about ourselves: we are destined for divinization. The church fathers never tired of repeating this phrase as a sort of summary of Christian belief: Deus fit homo ut homo fieret Deus (God became human so that humans might become God). God condescended to enter into flesh so that our flesh might partake of the divine life, that we might participate in the love that holds the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in communion.

This is a radical claim. Our salvation is nothing less than God’s transforming us into Himself. This claim is so radical that at first we might balk. It sounds heretical. And yet it is the consistent teaching of the Church, starting with St. Peter (cf. 2 Peter 1:4) and St. Paul (cf. Galatians 4:4-7) and repeated in our day in the very first paragraph of the Catechism.

Salvation is not simply about escaping hell. It is about God’s gratuitous gift of love and desire for complete union with us. Complete union.

Still scandalized? Good. It's God's scandal—a wonderful scandal.

Despite my bumbling and sin, God is drawing me—us—to himself. Theosis is in progress, because that's just the way God loves.

For the past several months I have clung to the idea that blogging is dead and that I have moved on. In an effort a few years ago to simplify and maintain privacy, I shut down my personal blog. And six months ago I laid my last blog, Real Housekeeping, to rest: twenty hours of work a week and a team of women promoting it couldn't save Real Housekeeping from stagnation.

People have moved on, I thought. There's no point to any of this anymore. Who wants to read one more thing from one more random website?

Then I read this and my perspective shifted. It's one of those posts: that which must be written because the story is a gift to the world.

This is why bloggers blog. I knew it as soon as I read the post. 

Laura's many years of faithful writing laid the foundation for sharing a message of hope. She could not have anticipated what she would one day write, but when the day presented itself, the blog was there, waiting for her.

So who am I to say that blogging is dead?

All this to say, I'm back.