The Spear

I began Lent reading The Spear by Louis de Wohl. I’m almost halfway through this 400 page historical novel on St. Longinus, the man who hurled his spear into Christ on the Cross.

In the past year I have become a fan of de Wohl, whom Adam has been reading for about the last five years after he was introduced to The Joyful Beggar, de Wohl’s novel on St. Francis. Each holiday I would get him another book and we have since acquired quite a collection. It wasn’t until last year that we read together the novel on St. Catherine of Sienna, Lay Siege to Heaven. I was hooked.  It was a good first novel for me since she is my Confirmation saint so I started out quite excited about it. But I never imagine that I would enjoy these novels so much. De Wohl has an incredible writing style that draws you in.  He really bring the saints and the times in which they lived to life. The novels are historical fiction but de Wohl stays true to as much of the factual events as he includes in his novels.

I asked myself this evening, why I am so drawn to these novels? Years ago a friend gave me the book, Rediscovering Catholicism by Matthew Kelly. In one chapter he wrote about the heroes in our lives. And he wrote that our heroes are the people we look up to and aspire to emulate. As Catholics our heroes should be the Saints! Isn’t that why our beloved Church gave them to us?! Since then, I have grown in greater love for the Saints and I have made it a point to celebrate their lives in our home as much as I can.

I came across an autobiographical article that de Wohl wrote. After his service WWII for the British army, he re-evaluated his life and asked himself how he was using his talents for God. What would people remember him for? He reverted back to Catholicism and he knew what his mission was:

Now what would be the examples that God would wish us to follow? Christ, of course. But then, Christ was not only a Man, He was also God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity; and how could Mr. Smith hope to imitate Him?

Perhaps that was the main reason why the Church taught us to venerate the saints. They were all human, and many of them had to combat all kinds of faults to reach sanctity in the end. I began to read books about the saints. Soon I realized that most of them were written by devout people-mostly priests and nuns-for devout people. I could not imagine that anyone living at the outer fringe of the faith, to say nothing of a non-religious person, would read them. Yet it was exactly that type of person who needed a saint’s example and guidance more than anyone else.

I began to ask questions and found that for a great many people a saint was “a person who was a religious fanatic,” or “a medieval phenomenon,” or simply “someone who prayed all the time” (which last was much nearer the mark, though not in the sense they meant). Saints were “plastercast figures,” “goody-goodies,” “disagreeable zealots.” Of a hundred people I asked, not one replied “saints are what I ought to be” or “saints are examples to be followed.”

But I had read enough now to sense, to feel, to know that apart from being just that, they were the most thrilling, the most interesting, the most courageous and even the most glamorous people of all. I decided to write historical novels whose heroes and heroines were saints.

De Wohl certainly accomplished his goal in this family of readers. De Wohl died in the early 1960s, and not all of his books are in print anymore or have returned to print (most are through). In fact the last novel he wrote and the last I purchased for Adam was The Glorious Folly, on St. Paul, I bought as an antique. This will be my next read as it picks up where The Spear leaves off. So, if you ever want to borrow one from our collection, let us know. You won’t be disappointed.