Perhaps you’ve had the experience of finding a book that you’ve really loved because it draws your heart up into a certain depth of joy and excitement while you’re reading it. I’ve experienced that with some writings of saints like St. Charles de Foucauld, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Bonaventure, St. Augustine, and some books of the bible like Revelation. I’ve also found it to be the case even sometimes when reading more academic theological articles that seem to “get it” about where the world is at and what could lead us all closer to God. Most recently, I think I felt that powerful heavenly sensation while reading a book called “A Song for Nagasaki” about the Japanese man, Takashi Nagai. His writings quoted in that book, words he wrote after living through the atomic bomb that fell over Nagasaki, were incredibly powerful and at times led me to tears.
This article isn’t about Takashi Nagai, though, but rather about the experience of finding words such as those he wrote. The human mind is an incredible creation of God. He made us able to express reality in words – reality that we can hardly grasp through our senses, and even reality we cannot receive at all through our senses. What is love? What is suffering? What is goodness and truth and beauty? These things can be observed in different ways in the world, but so often they are best discovered in the written or spoken word. We receive our understanding of them through stories and through the beauty of a life retold.
When we find a book that does this for us – a book that leads us to God in our thoughts – we have found a treasure. These books, articles, poems, or texts, are real gifts that we should hold on to in our memories and read again and again. Truly, it seems the Holy Spirit often uses writings like these and stories like these to lead us into a renewed and deepened relationship with God the Father.
Finally, I would like to share an imaginative poem about the awe, gratitude, and wonder of coming across the thoughts of a saint in the written word. May the Lord grant us all the grace to find and treasure words that lead us to him. Amen!
Within the wooded regions of this land
I found a small oak cabin, now forlorn
But bathed by amber candlelight … unmanned.
Perplexed, I turned the doorknob, smooth and worn.
Inside, door closed, I lit a larger fire
And by its greater glow saw walls of white.
Walls covered by small papers, once entire,
Held shreds of poems, scattered lines in flight.
These fragments speak of life and wisdom old
What man could know? “…a love from love divine,
Shines forth in pure desire…” I read and know
A saint and man of prayer composed this line.
Oh blest mysterious light that drew my heart
To this small saint’s inspir’d celestial art!