Look to the Saints (and Quote Dame Julian)

Weekly Notes

Happy All Saints Day!

Last night, Chris, the kids, and I headed out for our first Halloween in our neighborhood. Although, I lived just three blocks due South from our present home for a solid dozen years, my lack of children at the time meant I had never experienced a proper Halloween here. Halloweens back then, involved either sitting around with roommates and handing out candy as kids came to the door, or hiding in the basement, with the front porch light off, because, unbeknownst to us, the city had moved the official trick-or-treating night and we had no candy to give. How much I missed!

Unlike our previous neighborhood, Halloween here was a tamer, calmer, far more sociable and family friendly affair. No massive hordes of children, driven in from other neighborhoods. No life-sized mannequins dressed up like Jason. No doll cemeteries. No 20 foot tall Grim Reapers with red glowing eyes. And no small children dressed up as anything terrifying—no zombies, no demons, no devils.

Instead, there were just lots of neighbors sitting on porches chatting with each other, one house with relics and a memento mori skeleton display, another house with wine for the parents, and more sweet fairies, superheroes, and jungle animals than I could count. Afterwards, just about every family in town was invited to a party up the street, where the adults ate chili while kids jumped on trampolines and ran wild through the dark. It was charming. It was lovely. It was everything All Hallows Eve is supposed to be. And it has absolutely removed the bad taste left in my mouth for the night by our old neighborhood.

When we got home, we let the kids stay up way too late, assessing their candy haul, then paid for the whole night as we wrestled them to bed. After that, my tired self pulled out the “family photographs” that will be on display here all month. I haven’t seen them since I packed them up last year, right before our open house. There was Thea and Dorothy, Stanley and Edith, John Henry and John Paul, Louis and Zelie, Josephine and Emil, Chiara and Julia, Carlos and Pier, Gianna, Andre, and Solanus. Seeing their faces brought immediate consolation to my stressed out, exhausted, overwhelmed heart. Each one, in their own way, reminded me that all the things that have me in knots right now don’t ultimately matter. Jesus’ love for me won’t change if my talk this weekend is terrible or if my tights have a hole in them or if this newsletter doesn’t get out on time. What matters is Him … and loving Him and loving other people like they are Him.

I am so grateful for the saints. And I’m grateful to Jesus for giving them to us. I love that the clouds of witnesses the Book of Hebrews talks about don’t look like a cloud to me. They look like Thea and Dorothy, Stanley and Edith, John Henry and John Paul, and all the other heavenly friends I hold dear. I know those witnesses. I know their story. I know their intelligence, humor, strength, courage, gentleness, sharpness, and wit. What a poverty it would be to walk through this valley of tears without them.

A few years back, in my book, Letters to Myself From the End of the World, I wrote a letter about the saints to my 25-year-old self. That Emily had returned to the Church only months before. She didn’t know the saints personally back then. She wasn’t sure what to make of them either. She couldn’t imagine anything like a real friendship with a bunch of long dead men and women, no matter how holy they might have been. I’m not even sure she wanted a friendship with them.

Anyhow, I thought some of you might like to read that letter today. This particular newsletter is free for everyone, so if you think the letter might be helpful to someone who is struggling with the idea of saints or friendship with them, feel free to pass it on.

I hope you have the most blessed and joyful of Hallowtides. And please keep me in your prayers, this weekend and next. The family and I head up to Cleveland later today, so I can speak at a women’s retreat there tomorrow, then next week, I’m keynoting the Joan of Arc Ministries Women’s Conference in Pittsburgh. These will be my first two major conference talks since Becket and Ellie were born, and while I know Jesus loves me regardless of how I do, for the sake of the women who are attending, I want to say what Jesus wants said and say it as best I can. Please pray that I do.

Look to the Saints

Dear Emily,

Last month, someone I respect left the Church. They had all sorts of perfectly rational reasons for their decision, but it boiled down to disappointment: disappointment with Church leaders, disappointment with their fellow Catholics, and ultimately disappointment with God. They expected more of His grace. They thought grace would do more in the world and do it faster. When it didn’t, they walked away.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen. I doubt it will be the last. As I wrote yesterday, when you have a Church filled with broken people, disappointment is inevitable, and for some people, the disappointment becomes too much.

It hasn’t been too much for me. Not yet. I pray never. But it’s possible. It’s possible that someday I’ll look at Jesus, hanging on the cross, and feel nothing, believe nothing, hear nothing. Faith is a gift we can lose. Each and every one of us. We can’t presume we’re beyond temptation or won’t someday join all those disciples who walked away.

Faith has to be nurtured, Emily. It has to be protected, cared for, and fed. God has entrusted this gift to you. It’s pure blessing. You didn’t earn it. But you can lose it.

So, why haven’t you lost that gift yet? Why haven’t I lost it?

There are a few ways I could answer that question. It’s no one thing. But, like that quote from Dorothy Day that I shared in my last letter, a lot of it is that I don’t spend much time focusing on bishops and priests. I know wonderful priests and friars, whom I love, trust, and respect. But I don’t look to the majority of clergy in this day and age for guidance or encouragement or for an example of how to follow Jesus in this broken, messed-up world. Instead, I look to the saints. I look to Catherine of Siena and Edith Stein, Gianna Beretta Molla and John Paul II, John Henry Newman and Josephine Bakhita, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Pierre Toussaint.

When the Church seems irredeemably broken, Emily, this is how you keep your faith. You look to the saints. When priests, bishops, and popes let you down, you remember the ordinary men and women who became extraordinary by God’s grace. Take your inspiration from them. Imitate them. Follow their lead and example. Above all, call on their prayers for the help you need navigating the narrow and rocky path to which Christ has called you.

I know you don’t fully understand the Church’s teachings on the saints yet. Growing up, the saints weren’t anything more to you than marble statues. You didn’t know their stories. You didn’t know their love for you. Then, you left the Catholic Church and decided the saints weren’t just statues; they were an abomination, idols that Catholics put before Christ. Now, you’re back in the Church, and you know you’re supposed to love the saints, but you’re not sure how. They don’t look like idols anymore. But they still do look like statues—distant and cold in their perfection, frozen in some long-ago time, out of touch with the problems of twenty-first-century America.

The saints aren’t statues, though, Emily. They’re real men and women, who, in this world, had quirks and struggles, besetting sins and crippling wounds, sharp senses of humor and (often) even sharper tongues. Yet, despite all that, every one of them said yes to God’s grace, unequivocally and unreservedly. Grace then worked wonders in and through them.

Grace still works wonders through them. The saints aren’t dead or frozen in time. They are alive—vibrantly, luminously, gloriously alive—and they want to help you be gloriously alive too. Which they can do. As T. S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets, “The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”[i]

Let the saints help you. Start making friends with them. Read about them. Sit with them. Ask for their help. In all your needs, great and small, they will never let you down. When you call, they will come in an instant, with no babies or bosses or crises of their own to distract them. They also will never lead you astray. They will be your surest guides through life, with their words and witness telling you more about the way you must walk than any theologian or bishop ever will.

Above all, the saints will remind you that you are never alone. As that old king in Ecclesiastes said, there’s nothing new under the sun (1:9). Every problem encountered has been encountered before. Which means someone else has been there. Someone else understands. Someone else knows exactly what help you need to endure. As you will discover, there is a saint for every person, every need, and every occasion: for home repairs and computer crashes, marriage crises and motherhood woes, infertility, loneliness, difficult bosses, more difficult mother-in-laws, doubts about God, and temptations to unbelief. To be Catholic is to know you’re walking through life accompanied by legions of heavenly helpers.

And yes, Jesus can and does help us with all our needs, great and small. But His invitation to us isn’t just an invitation to Himself. It’s an invitation to communion—with the Trinity, with our brothers and sisters on earth, and with every angel and saint gathered round His throne. That communion with heavenly friends deepens much like our communion with earthly friends deepens—through time spent together, life lived together, and help given to one another. When we call upon the saints, we’re calling on family, and we’re growing in love the way God made us to grow.

Keep your eyes fixed on that family. There is so much darkness in the world. But the light of Christ, blazing in His saints, scatters the darkness. The less you look to the great ones of the world and the more you look to the great ones of Heaven, the more clearly you will see the face of the One for whom you were made, and the stronger your faith will grow.

Blessings,
Emily

Five Fast Things

1. My newest children’s book, “Lord, Have Mercy,” launches next week, on November 7. Based on Scott Hahn’s book of the same name (for adults), it tells the story of our first parents’ attempt to hide from God and the Father’s desire to pour out His mercy on us. It’s great for children ages 5-10, and especially for children preparing to make their First Confession. There is still time to pre-order the book, which will ensure that you get it, in your mailbox, on launch day or shortly thereafter. And if you have a public social media account and would be willing to help spread the word about the book, I think you can still fill out this form and receive a coupon to use to buy the book.

2. Speaking of pre-orders, Ignatius Press sent me the glorious, wonderful, amazing and COMPLETE Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. This Bible has been over 20 years in the making, and I have been waiting for it to be finished and published in one volume for every one of those years. It truly is a gift to the Church and there is no other Catholic Bible—at all, anywhere, in any translation or edition—of its like. It is a serious study Bible, filled with footnotes, word studies, background information on every book, and essays by top Biblical scholars. If every Catholic in America had this in their house, no one would ever be able to say Catholics don’t know their Bible. The Bible releases to the public on December 9, and if you pre-order it now, Ignatius is guaranteeing that yours will ship in the very first shipment.

3. If you need a little poetry in your life on this blustery fall day, Joseph Bottom has a beautiful reflection on Thomas Nashe’s poem “Autumn” on his Substack.

4. Beautycounter’s “In Between” Sale starts today! If you plan to shop, I would be so grateful if you use my affiliate link to do so. Later this morning, I’m sending an email with some shopping tips to my clients, but in case you are not on that list and plan to pick up some things, I’ll include those same tips at the very bottom of this email (scroll all the way down).

5. One more thought before I go. I know Election Day is Tuesday. Believe me, I know. I have the texts to prove it. But I’m not really thinking about it much. It’s possible I am one of maybe five people in America who are not worried about what happens Tuesday. I mean, I have my preferences. I think. Maybe. But mostly, I recognize that Jesus already knows who is going to win, and He is not worried. Jesus doesn’t worry. No matter what happens, on Tuesday or any day, He will work with whatever heaping pile of dinosaur dung we hand Him, and He absolutely will use that dung to lead people to Himself. So, I will head out on Tuesday (yes, Tuesday, I think early voting is a scourge and I will not participate in it), cast my vote, and then watch the returns, which are always a good show, with a martini in hand. Then, the next morning, I will get up, love my family, do my work, say my prayers, and go on doing all God has called me to do just the same. Maybe the world will end this year. Maybe it won’t. But, God is real, Jesus died and rose again to save me, the Mother of God is praying for me, so are the saints, and they all want me in Heaven with them, so I trust that eventually, in time, and with a whole lot of grace, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” If you’re struggling, just keep repeating those words over the next few days. Dame Julian knew what she was about. We do well to imitate her.

In Case You Missed It

Signs of Contradiction: On Trad Wives, Keyboard Warriors, and Saving the World While Losing Your Soul (Full Subscribers Only)

Circling the Drain: On Feminism, the Patriarchy, and What Marriages Really Need (Full Subscribers Only)

Stupid Is As Stupid Does: On Politics, Prudence, and Priorities (Free for All)

About that Beautycounter Sale

Today, at noon Eastern on Friday, November 1, Beautycounter kicks off its "In Between Sale," with its whole inventory back online, 30 percent off all Holiday Sets, and free shipping plus a free Perfume Discovery Set with orders of $125. These offers are good from today through November 11.

A few important things to keep in mind:

1. The sale will go the whole month long, until 2:50 am EST on December 2, with the deals changing as the month goes on. My guess—stress "guess"—is that site-wide discounts will come later in the month, as we get closer to Black Friday. Again, that’s a guess. Not knowledge. Don’t quote me on it.

2. This is a Warehouse Sale. In includes inventory manufactured prior to Beautycounter's shutdown this past Spring, including new products that had been set to launch in the Spring and Summer, but no items are expired. 

3. Supplies are limited. Once an item sells out, it won't be back until sometime later in 2025, when Beautycounter officially relaunches (if then). Many items will sell out and some will sell out quickly. 

4. Everything is final sale. There are no returns or exchanges unless an item arrives damaged. 

5. I truly have no clue what other deals are coming as the month goes on. They have told us nothing more than the deals for the first 11 days.

6. Because of this I recommend shopping Holiday Sets and your "must have" items first. Buy the things you will kick yourself over if you miss the chance to buy them. 

7. I also recommend holding off, for now, on shopping any "new to you" items (I would hate to see you pay full price for something you might need to return, but can't). Again, my guess is the very best deals will come later in the month, when the most popular items are sold out or low stock.

Here is my affiliate link. Thank you so much to everyone who uses it to shop, and don't hesitate to reach out with questions or for help!

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[i] T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” in Four Quartets (Boston: HMH Books, 2014), 51.