Posted by As Gary Jansen was preparing for Confirmation when he was 13 years old, his mother gifted him a book about the saints that she found at a garage sale. He quickly embraced this collection of the Church’s holiest figures because they reminded him of the comic books he enjoyed. Only in this case, the leading characters were not Batman or Green Lantern, but rather “the superheroes of my faith.”
Gary grew up to become a Christopher Award-winning author and editor of spirituality books, often focusing on the Catholic faith. He also never forgot that childhood gift. So, when an opportunity arose for him to write a similar book for the modern era, he jumped at the chance. Featuring nearly 400 profiles, Gary’s book is titled “Saints, Angels, & Demons: An A-to-Z Guide to the Holy and the Damned,” and we discussed it recently on “Christopher Closeup” (podcast below).
While Gary highlights the heroism and character of a multitude of saints, he also makes it clear they were “imperfect individuals.” He observed, “I loved seeing the trajectory of the saints’ lives because, in many ways, they’re just like you and me…They have foibles, they make mistakes. Sometimes they’re plagued with touches of arrogance – or more than touches of arrogance. And through living life, they gain wisdom, they gain spiritual insight. As much as sometimes I could think of our canonized saints as the superheroes of the faith, it was important for me to try and get across the humanity of these folks…It helps us to think…we can be saints, too. I think we’re called to be saints. By our very existence, we’re sacred.”
The book’s illustrations of a number of saints, by artist Katie Ponder, add the right balance of reverence and freshness. “Iconography is important for me and for many people,” explained Gary, “in terms of their being able to communicate and pray. Being able to focus on icons, on images or classical paintings or modern paintings, that inspired the spirit…I love, love the cover because I wanted to put the Queen of all the Saints, the Queen of the Angels, Mary, in the middle. She’s there with 12 points around her head. On the corners we have a saint, an angel. Then, on the very bottom, there’s a dark angel, too. So, it encompasses the entire spectrum of our supernatural Catholic world.”
Aspects of that Catholic world – specifically, the relationship of Catholics and the saints – are often misunderstood by Christians from Protestant denominations. As someone whose family has a devotion to St. Jude, Gary explained, “We don’t worship saints. That gets all confused. It’s all propaganda. But we do venerate, we do set aside certain people to celebrate their lives and celebrate what they can do to inspire us and to be a focal point for our faith. I think the lives of the saints is integral to the life of the home. So that was something I wanted to do with this book as well – to make it a family experience. Some of the early feedback I’ve been getting, which has just been wonderful, [shows] parents are reading it, and their teenagers are sitting down with it, and their preteens are checking out the pictures. I wanted this book to be a family affair, something that you could keep on your shelf or keep on your table, hopefully take it down and explore your faith.”
Among the saints Gary profiles is St. Ambrose of Milan, whose story is unusual because he was appointed a bishop before he was even a priest – and before he was even a Christian.
While Ambrose served as governor of Milan, the local bishop died. The position needed to be filled, so Ambrose made a persuasive case to the citizens about nominating a worthy candidate. He did such a good job on his speech that the people demanded Ambrose be made bishop. He was quickly baptized and ordained a week later.
Ambrose took the position seriously and learned everything he could about Christianity. He left his pagan beliefs behind and came to embrace Jesus Christ, going on to combat heresies such as Arianism, becoming a proponent of the separation of church and state, and serving as a mentor to St. Augustine. Gary noted, “Essentially, a pagan is elected as bishop, and then from bishop, he does this crash course in Christianity to become one of the most important figures in early Christianity.”
Every once in a while, a saint’s profile includes an unexpected modern reference, such as St. Catherine of Siena’s connection to actor Bill Murray. St. Catherine is known for helping to heal the western schism and convincing Pope Gregory XI to return from Avignon to Rome.
“Bill Murray’s sister is a nun,” Gary explained, “and they grew up in Chicago. She has been doing for a number of years now – I don’t know if she’s still doing it – but a one woman play called ‘Catherine of Siena: A Woman for our Time.’ So, she got bit by the acting bug as well. Her name is Nancy Murray, and she’s a Dominican nun.”
With more than 10,000 canonized saints in the Roman Catholic Church, Gary could have focused on them alone for this book. But he also added some profiles of both angels and demons, partially because he doesn’t think it’s been done before in a single volume.
Gary said, “You have this whole community of faith in the afterlife or in the invisible world. So, our saints…their spirits live on to help us. Then you have this angelic order that exists within our faith, and it’s something that we believe in. Then on the dark side, you have the dark angels, the fallen angels. So, another category of spiritual reality. I’m a spirituality writer, more than a historian, so part of what I wanted to do is make this a spiritual experience, but also to touch on those spiritual realities. That was a fascinating part of the research, especially how long St. Michael’s been around and how he’s talked about in Jewish mystical texts and things like that. That was eye opening.”
Gary’s ultimate hope for “Saints, Angels, & Demons” is that it inspires and informs readers of all ages and sets them off “on their journey of wanting to learn more. Each profile – they vary in length anywhere from 200 words to maybe a thousand – tries to give you an opportunity to learn a tiny little bit…It’s almost like the introduction to Lectio Divina where it’s just, ‘Oh, that resonates with me.’ This saint resonates with me. Let me go out and explore a little bit more. Let me pray with this. Let me go on my own expedition of the spirit. [I also want the book] to bring families together, [so they] have a book that they can hold in their laps and share with each other.”
(To listen to my full interview with Gary Jansen, click on the podcast link):
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