Name: The Life You Save May Be Your Own
ISBN: 9780374529215

Paul Elie

The author explores the lives of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor to search for evidence that their "Christ haunted" Catholic backgrounds inspired them to write, in a study of the spiritual and literary pilgrimage of these four great American Catholic writers. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

An American Pilgrimage

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Dana Kraft

This book compares the lives and faith journeys of four well-known American Catholic writers. It is long and dense and took me a few months to finish but was well worth the effort. Before starting, I had read some of Merton's books but nothing from Day, O'Connor or Percy. I stopped in the middle to read at least one book from each of those, which turned out to be very helpful.

I took so many notes and recorded so many quotations that it's difficult to summarize my lessons learned or favorite things, but a few that rise to the top are:
- It's refreshing to learn that each of these people struggled with their own belief and faith. One of the questions I wrote down for myself is 'What competing ideas are you struggling with?"
- I liked the definition of pilgrimage as "the journey to firsthand experience".
- Quote from O'Connor, "Does one's integrity every lie in what he is unable to do?" (reference to not being able to totally give up on one's faith)
- 'For wisdom cannot be learned from a book. It is acquired only in a living formation...' It is 'lived.' And unless one 'lives' it, one cannot have it.'
- The purpose of this book is not to glorify these four people, but rather to describe their own pilgrimages for the benefit of the reader. There are specific references to how Merton and Day wanted to be seen by others. The paragraph about Day is best. "She, however, saw her own life as an imitation of Christ, and liked to say that the saint is a person whose life would not make sense if God did not exist. Something is lost when she is merely venerated, whether by Catholic Workers or by the sponsors of her sainthood. She meant for her life to point beyond herself - to God, and to the poor people among us; to ourselves and to the wider world, which alike always need reforming."

I wrote this review on All Saint's Day, so that last quote feels particularly relevant to me today.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own An American Pilgrimage

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