The saints from the great novels can help us grow in our faith, writes Ken Craycraft
One of my daughters, Margaret, recently finished Sigrid Undset’s magisterial trilogy of novels, known collectively as Kristin Lavransdatter. Reading with the eyes of a mother of three young children, Margaret noted her regard for Kristin’s selfless devotion to her own children in the novels. She admires Kristin as the example of a patient and longsuffering mother, never giving up hope for her children despite the seemingly hopeless situations they found themselves in.
Kristin never ceased praying for her children; and she never compromised her Christian witness to them. Having planted the seeds of Christian faith, and nurtured them with her prayerful tears, Kristin trusted God—even in the most arid times—to bring her sons to an abundant harvest. In other words, Margaret esteems Kristin—a wholly fictional character—as an exemplar of a saintly Christian mother. In doing so, my daughter reminded me that we can grow in our own Christian faith even by emulating the great saints of fiction.
Of course, readers who are familiar with Kristin Lavransdatter, know that Kristin’s life was very far from a perfect, consistent witness of Christian virtue. On the contrary, as a girl and young woman she committed grave sins against God and her family. Strong-willed and rebellious, Kristin broke the hearts of her father and mother through her own selfish desires, disregarding the virtues that she knew well from her own childhood. But she suffered the consequences of her youthful, prideful indiscretions. More importantly, she made amendments for them, growing into the model Christian mother to whom Margaret can look for encouragement.
Kristin is one of many examples of fictional saints in whom we can find inspiration and solace. Whether by steady witness, overcoming of peccadilloes—or both—we can find assistance in our road to sainthood by observing the paths that these characters have trod. Of course, we do not venerate fictional saints as we do actual historical ones. But we can learn from them, even the imperfect ones. And in doing so we can grow in our own lives of faith.
Take, for example, the “whisky priest” of Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory. If we were to keep a ledger of our protagonist’s virtues and vices, it would not look very good for the priest. From venial to grave, his sins seem to weigh him down both literally and metaphorically. Indeed, as the narrative progresses, and the backstory is told, we find very little in his moral life to emulate. And yet, I believe that Greene considered him a saint. Certainly, I do. Indeed, it may be in the whiskey priest’s slips and falls that I find the most solace. This is not to say that I admire his sins, of course. But in his sins, I see my own. And I see that, despite his weakness, the whisky priest found a way, in the end, to be a faithful witness to the gospel.
Greene’s character Sarah Miles from The End of the Affair is another example of saintly fiction. Mysterious in her spiritual journey, Sarah’s faith seems both aloof and elusive. Greene hints and hedges through the increasingly desperate and obsessive narrative of her erstwhile lover, Maurice Bendrix. And yet, at the end, we the readers probably know better than Bendrix that Sarah was, in the mysterious way that God makes them in real life, a saint. Like Kristin Lavransdatter, Sarah Miles teaches us that remorse and repentance can lead to grace and salvation.
I believe that both Undset and Greene understand that real grace can be found in the lives of their fictional heroes. And, of course, the list of others is long. Some are obvious. Alyosha Karamazov, for example, is a steady witness of God’s love and grace. Similarly, Pastor John Ames from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series of novels is a model of gracious presence. Others are more difficult. Is Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited a saint? Is Querry in Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case? Even if they are not, these characters also teach us rich lessons about faith, doubt, and the difficulty of sorting them through.
Fictional saints—or pilgrims toward sainthood—can give us both inspiration and succour as we contemplate our own spiritual journeys. To the extent that they can help us to grow, we can even celebrate all the fictional saints.
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