The Blog

For those seeking a theological story of truth, love, and faith—but aren’t quite ready to sit down with St. Augustine’s Confessions—Thomas Curry’s Miss Sally’s Son (Ignatius Press) is a compelling alternative.

Curry himself describes the novel as a way to reach audiences who might otherwise not be open to reading about the Catholic faith, writing that his “goal in writing has always been evangelization, believing that fiction speaks to a different ear than serious theology.”

The Lord’s command is simple: “Be holy, for I am holy.” Holiness doesn’t isolate us; it draws us into deeper communion, first with God, and then with each other.

And this is where That They May Be One enters the conversation.

“You can’t study the life of a Christian mystic for very long before you find yourself back in the Church,” Jenny duBay recently told Paloma & Fig. She would know, having immersed herself in Catherine’s writings and the landscape of Siena itself to write World Between Worlds, a lush and sprawling novel of the saint’s early life.

June 1979: Karol Wojtyła returns for the first time to his home country as Pope John Paul II. He is greeted by millions in Kraków, a city living under a communist regime that kept a tight hold on public religious expression. Tens of millions more hear him on the television and the radio.

There are two main passages in the New Testament where Jesus teaches us how to pray: Matthew 6: 9-13 when he gives us the “Our Father,” a structured, vocal prayer, and the Agony in the Garden. In the example of the Agony in the Garden, one could say that Jesus does not need to pray in this way—He is God. He could have very well prayed or processed what would happen next in private without involving the disciples. Instead we have this demonstrative and ceremonious example of mental prayer, spoken aloud for our benefit.