faith

Undset, or Three Things to Love About the Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment


Blogger’s Note: Several years ago, I agreed to my friend Jacqui’s challenge to read 15 Classics in 15 Weeks. I continue to press forward, this being number 12 of 15, and at this point 15 Classics in 15 Years seems quite doable…

Last week I finally finished Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy. This series came highly recommended by two trusted friends; the author, Sigrid Undset, was the daughter of Norwegian atheists, a Catholic convert, and a Nobel Prize winner. The books are tremendous, insightful, and often achingly beautiful.


However, these are not easy reads. Although written in the 20th century, my translation, at least, has a voice and vocabulary hearkening to the Middle Ages, with both Norwegian and Latin scattered throughout. The author’s knowledge and love of her country’s geography and culture shines throughout the books, but could overwhelm or disorient the reader.

It can also be challenging for a man to characterize or recommend these books to others — the covers of the edition I have (pictured above) do not inspire masculine interest, nor do the titles or cover summaries:

  • “Volume I, The Bridal Wreath, describes young Kristin’s stormy romance with the dashing Erlend Nikulasson, a young man perhaps overly fond of women, of whom her father strongly disapproves.”
  • “Volume II, The Mistress of Husaby, tells of Kristin’s troubled and eventful married life on the great estate of Husaby, to which her husband has taken her.”
  • “Volume III, The Cross, shows Kristin still indomitable, reconstructing her world after the devastation of the Black Death and the loss of almost everything that she has loved.”

That said, within the past month, The Catholic Gentleman website posted an article entitled, “Kristin Lavransdatter and Your Nordic Catholic Medieval Heart,” which makes a solid (if hyperbolic) case for why every Catholic man, at least, should read these books.* Men, take this as a challenge!

Now, without further ado, Three Things to Love about the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy:

  • Everyday Catholicism: This series is as Catholic as the day is long, although Catholicism is not what it’s “about.” I’ve never read a book in which Catholic prayers and blessings, sin and penance, were so effortlessly present and pervasive, reflecting the daily lives of the characters. If you want a glimpse into the everyday lives of the faithful during the Middle Ages, this is your ticket — this is what Christendom looked like.
  • Historical Fantasy: Although painstakingly researched and historically accurate, the style and storytelling recall great fairy tales and epic fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings. High mountains and dark forests. Fertile valleys and fortified cities. Stories and visions of elves and trolls. Swordcraft and witchcraft. It’s all there for those brave enough to venture forth.
  • The Challenge of Marriage and Family: This, to me, is the real wealth of these tales. The story is told primarily, but not exclusively, through Kristin’s eyes, providing deep insight into love, marriage, masculinity, and motherhood from a woman’s perspective — but every character is richly drawn and complex, living with each other as best they can given their individual virtues and flaws, assumptions and knowledge. Even among those we love, there is so much we don’t know — which makes true love not as fleeting as feeling, but, ultimately, an act of the will.
I’ve got three more slots in my seemingly interminable quest to read 15 classics, and it has taken so long that my interests have changed. I think my final three books will be Dante’s Divine Comedy, Flannery O’Connor’s Collected Works, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Not sure on the order yet — I’m reading something else in the interim!

* * * * *

* The comments below the post also suggest that translations other than the one pictured, by Archer and Scott, may be better or easier reads.

Book Break: Story of a Soul

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

One of the great blessings of surgery has been time to read; as a result, I’ve now finished three books that lay on my nightstand, long overdue. The first was the the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul. The Little Flower had been much on my mind and had shown up time and again in my prayers and study this past winter, so much so that I decided she must be trying to tell me something. I found her biography in our parish lending library, and finished in late last week.

Autobiographies, especially those that weren’t expressly written for publication, can be challenging to read, and this is no exception. St. Therese is writing out of obedience, fulfilling requests of three different prioresses to record the memories of her life. Her style is emotional, sentimental, somewhat meandering, and acutely self-aware — in fact, she acknowledges throughout the book, with good humor, that she has drifted far from the main point, but that she is writing because she was asked to, and if her work is found lacking and destroyed, it will be of no great loss to her.

It does not take long to realize this is the story of an exceptional soul from an exceptional family. From her earliest days in 19th-century France, the Martin family’s life revolved around their Catholic faith, prayer, and the sacraments. The first thing that struck me (and I believe this was one thing the little saint wished to tell me) was that in her childhood, preparation for receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist for the first time was the most important and most exciting thing that could happen. She understood the mystery of the Real Presence early on and longed for the sacrament with her whole being; her entire family — parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, everyone — helped her to prepare, encouraging and instructing her, helping her to make a mature first Confession, even sending this little girl on retreat to prayerfully prepare for her first Communion. We fall far short of this today, and that must change!

From an early age, St. Therese longed for the religious life of a Carmelite sister. The persistence of her vocation also struck me: she prayed long and hard on this beginning in childhood and was so strongly minded that, on a pilgrimage to Rome, she pulled rank on her local priests and bishop and cried to the Pope to let her honor him by entering Carmel at age 15. He told her she would enter if God willed it, and a short time later, the local church authorities relented.

The religious life was not without struggles for St. Therese, and it was there that she perfected her “Little Way,” which has made her so beloved the world over. She wanted to do great things for God, but was confined to a convent, young and of poor health. She could not be a priest, and would not be a missionary or a martyr. She was just a little flower on the forest floor — but the little things she did, she could do with great love. As a result she began to bite her tongue when accused or  provoked, to seek out the sisters who were avoided by others and look for ways to serve them, and to seek the good for others in every situation, regardless of the cost to herself. She began to love as God loves.

St. Therese was extraordinary, but blazed a trail that ordinary Catholics can follow, perhaps, more easily than that of the spiritual powerhouses of the Church. And I think that was another thing she wanted to tell me. This is a beautiful story of a great soul, and while it’s not a traditional page-turner, I highly recommend it.

On a related note: during the same time period as I was reading this book, a colleague gave me a booklet called “40 Days of Preparation for First Communion with St.Therese of the Child Jesus.” It is a booklet of very short daily prayers and exercises for children, based on the prayers and exercises St. Therese undertook as a girl under her family’s guidance. Unbeknownst to me, my colleague Kathy was given the same booklet by one of our priests to consider for use with this year’s First Communicants. It’s a baby step toward what our First Communion preparation ought to be. St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, pray for us!

Full of Grace

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment
Annunciation by Paolo de Matteis (1712)

Yesterday was a rare treat: a three-sacrament day. I went to work, then to Confession at lunch time, received a pre-surgery Anointing of the Sick late in the afternoon, then went to evening Mass to receive the Eucharist. Never have I felt so full of grace — and today is the Feast of the Annunciation. Providential?

Then I came home — late, because I was tying up loose ends to be out of the office for awhile. The family had already eaten supper, but we still managed to spend some quality time together before bed. They’ve got Dad’s back with prayers today, as do countless other friends and family members, and a few acquaintances I just barely know. I’m a little embarrassed by the support, but I will never refuse prayers. We are blessed to have such love in our home, in our parish, and in our extended families.

Hernia surgery is supposed to be a pretty routine thing, for the surgeons, at least. Less so for me. I’ve never had any sort of surgery, except the removal of my wisdom teeth before I left for college. That involved local anesthesia and laughing gas; I remember begin vaguely fascinated by the industrial crunching and grinding noises emanating from my own mouth. This is different, and I don’t think I’ll care to know what’s going on as it’s happening.

I’m not a great patient, either. Oh, I’m generally alright (perhaps a little talkative) with doctors and nurses…but on the homefront, I’m more of a Man-Cold kind of guy. My bride, who works from home, is so looking forward to the next few days.

But you know what? This is actually a penitential season, in which we strive to enter more fully into Jesus’s suffering for us. This is an opportunity for me to grow in this regard — to be still, to pray, to suck it up a bit in solidarity with the One who took nails for us.

Ask Jodi at Easter if I manage to pull it off. Much love and many blessings to you this Holy Week and Easter!

LIFT Links: Holy Week and Easter Traditions

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Icons of Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter

I’ve been a little lax on LIFT Links lately (that’s a lot of Ls) — and now, as we’re headed into Holy Week and the Easter Season, I need to make up for lost time.

First, the basics. Until I met and married Jodi, I was vaguely aware that Palm Sunday was the Sunday before Easter, the Good Friday was the Friday before, and Easter was a pretty big deal–right up there with Christmas. At some point early in our relationship, my bride informed me that her family attended Mass at least three (and sometimes four or more) times during Holy Week, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. As I’ve said more than once, they went to church on days I didn’t know church was open!

St. Liborius Catholic Church, Polo, SD

Jodi’s family, and many of the other parishioners at St. Liborius Catholic Church in Polo, SD, went to church at every opportunity during the Holy Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, and morning Mass on Easter Sunday. Today, our family goes on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and either Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday. It’s a beautiful way to enter into that period of uncertainty and darkness, then light and joy, that Jesus’s disciples experienced between the Last Supper and Christ’s Resurrection.

One more thing before I share some links: attending Mass on every Sunday and all Holy Days of Obligation is one of the five Precepts of the Catholic Church — the minimum requirements to be a practicing Catholic. Receiving Holy Communion is not required every Sunday, however, receiving Holy Communion at least once during the Easter season (which is Easter Sunday through Pentecost Sunday) is required. Receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation once a year is also one of the precepts — and since being cleansed of all serious sins is required to receive Our Lord worthily, Lent is a great time of year to get to Confession so you can receive Holy Communion at Easter.

Now, some links:

Have a blessed Holy Week and Easter, friends!

Call—and Response

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Given March 11, 2015

I spent two days in St. Paul last week, training to become a VIRTUS facilitator. VIRTUS is the archdiocese-approved program for helping church employees and volunteers keep our children and youth safe from abuse. A number of the presenters spoke of feeling calledto protect kids—and I immediately felt out of place, not because I don’t want to keep kids safe, but because by primary motivation for signing up to become a facilitator was, “Somebody’s gotta do it.”


But over the course of the training the leaders encouraged us to think more deeply about our motives, and I learned something about myself. I told the gentleman next to me, “Our church is like a second home to me and my family—we’re there all the time!—and if there’s anything I can do to make it safer, so that my family and other families can feel at home there, I want to do it.”

Maybe there was a deeper call there after all. 

Two weeks ago I announced that we were putting together a new team of people to help shape our faith formation programs going forward. So far, Kathy and I have received 20 responses about joining the LIFT Crew—15 yes and 5 maybe—from current and past teachers, FFAC members, small-group facilitators, and more. Only one person I’ve spoken to has said no, and even she shared an hour’s worth of great ideas from more than a decade of teaching kids in our parish.

Think about that for a moment: We have people in this community who have been sharing their faith with children for ten, twenty, even thirty years! We have a committee of dedicated parishioners who work behind the scenes to create, promote, and improve LIFT with little public recognition of their time, effort, and results. We have people who are committed to praying specifically for the success of our programs and the conversion of souls. We have teens who, without knowing or asking what it might entail, have said, “Mr. Thorp, I saw that you are looking for people to help with LIFT—sign me up!”

We are surrounded by people who love the Lord and want to live out His call to make disciples. That’s a beautiful thing.

And it works: these people are setting a high bar that others respond to with more prayer, more service, more love. Last Wednesday I went to the archdiocese for training, then hustled back to St. Michael to prepare for LIFT and Confirmation classes. Kathy and both priests were gone, two Confirmation teachers were out, and another was running late. Two out of three videos were malfunctioning, and the mic in the gathering space wouldn’t plug in. I joked that my goal for the evening was to survive.

At the end of the night, one of our catechists handed me a picture. It was a pencil drawing of a “spiritual bouquet” from her Confirmation class, with each flower labeled with an act of sacrifice and love her teens had pledged to perform for me and my family in the coming weeks. Prayers, chaplets, and rosaries. Holy Hours in the Adoration chapel. Pain and suffering. Offered up for my family and for me. What else can I do but reciprocate?

Christ calls us to love, and we respond. Love begets love begets love. It’s a beautiful thing.

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, March 22, church bulletin .