What would it look like if

we lived like we are children of God?

Wouldn’t everything look different?

Our culture, relationships, even our politics?

Each week, I do at least one interview about my latest novel, Plausible Liars. There is a commonality among the interviewers’ questions about the unusual title: my explanation of its origin is greeted with brief silence when they hear my reply,

“I had several working titles for this story. But when I read Saint Paul’s exhortation in the letter to Timothy, I knew this was the perfect description for doctors who knowingly sterilize and mutilate young girls and boys:

The spirit distinctly says that in later times some will turn
away from the faith and will heed deceitful spirits taught by
demons through plausible liars.

Another frequent question asks for the difference in this book as compared to its four predecessors. The first time I was asked, I replied,

“None. Because each of these five stories is a complex mix of family, medical research, and controversial subjects, often set in a courtroom.” But even as I spoke the words, I changed my mind: This story is an unflinching and bold testament to the imperative for God, His Law, and the Sacraments. To deal with the subject matter, it had to be. It’s one of the many reasons that Plausible Liars was the toughest book I’ve ever written.

Because the words for my newest novel, One Smooth Stone, are finally here, I muse about what it would look like if we lived as children of God. This story about the early life of King David is one I thought I would write and publish a couple of years ago. But that was before I understood there are three pillars of this story. It is a dual tale of King Saul and David: One that could not have happened in the absence of Samuel.

Samuel: the spiritual giant of ancient Israel.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read the two Books of Samuel. Like always, when writing a new book, I have a sizeable pile I’ve read for background, but it’s F.B. Meyer’s 1918 book, Samuel the Prophet, that keeps sending me to the Bible. And last Monday, to the Book of Joshua.

Joshua was a warrior, like David: Joshua prevailed against thirty-one kings. It was Joshua whom the Lord used to map out the Promised Land. This is the land the Lord gave to his Chosen People- this map compels thought, wonder, and deep prayer at the fulminating hatred of Israel and the Jewish people, which is infecting Americans and even our politicians.

The abortion, Trans, Traffiking industries wouldn’t exist

if we lived as children of God.

The business of sin would not exist among a people steeped in Virtue.

Sin as business? You betcha.

Think about the two billion dollar industry of “gender affirming” care, or the 150 billion dollar yearly trafficking, and its brother, the 100 billion dollar pornography industry.

And why wouldn’t the abortion industry exist?

Virtue: it feels like a word from the nineteenth century, alien. And yet, Jesus tells Luisa Piccarreta that ….

Virtue alone is what makes man king of himself. And I teach those who are in command that virtue, together with right knowledge, is alone worthy and capable of governing others, while all other dignities, without virtue, are dangerous and should be rejected.

The Twenty-Four Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

To our twenty-first-century minds, virtue embodies itchy words like chastity. Itchy because we look the other way at engaged Catholic and Christian couples, calling their fornication and cohabitation as we think, ‘”‘We did it; how can we advise against it?”

We think this because we misunderstand the universal vocation to chastity, thereby denying our youth the beauty and purity inherent in virtue.

Chastity is a moral virtue. It is also a gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort.¹³¹ The Holy Spirit enables one whom the water of Baptism has regenerated to imitate the purity of Christ.¹³²

The integrality of the gift of self…

2346 Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God’s fidelity and loving kindness.

2347 The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends,¹³³ who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality. Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one’s neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.

The Vocation to Chastity

All of which takes me back to my conversion; how abrupt it felt, but the reality was that I’d been searching for God from the moment I first walked away. Bishop Barron calls it the invasion of grace. A splendid and perfectly fitting phrase for us converts and reverts. If you’ve an extra fifteen minutes, listen to his homily embedded in that phrase.

We’re sinners, all of us.

Even the best of our good works are nothing in the abyss of a majestic love we cannot comprehend. Our Lord told many of the saints that we are far worse than we can possibly imagine. And yet, Holy Father God sends us His Beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.

In the manner of the centurion, you also must say, “I am not worthy to receive You; I merit nothing; I am an abyss of weakness and cowardice; I make resolutions and do not keep them; I fall over and over again. But Jesus, say only one word, and my soul shall be healed.” Jesus was so delighted by the centurion’s words that he willed them to be fixed in the Liturgy of the Mass, to be forever the most perfect preparation for Communion.

I Believe in Love

I am frequently flattened by God’s answer to prayers I don’t even know I’m praying. Just so, this exquisite book: I Believe in Love: A Personal Retreat Based on the Teachings of St. Therese of Lisieux, showed up.

The French priest author feels like he’s speaking directly to me with admonitions like,

“I shall come back to this, but I should like to ask you urgently, from now on, that you never let your past sins be an obstacle between you and Jesus. It is a ruse of the Devil to keep putting our sins before our eyes in order to make them like a screen between the Savior and us. Think of your past sins for your own humiliation or to persuade yourself once again of your weakness, of your unworthiness; think of them in order to find happiness in expiation, in order to confirm your firm resolution not to fall again—….Do not go looking for them at the bottom of the sea! He has wiped them out; He has forgotten them. His Blood has been shed; the flames of His mercy have done their work: they have burned up all of them, consumed them all while renewing you.”

Relying on the inspired wisdom of that very young yet very old soul of St. Therese, St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, and many others, Father Jean C.J. d’Elbee created a masterpiece worthy of reading repeatedly.

“Here is a sublime thought which I expressed to you in my first conference. All the merits of Jesus are mine. He covers me with His Blood. He fills my empty hands with His own virtues and transforms me into Himself. I present myself thus before the Father, and, in all justice, the Father receives me as His beloved Son.”

I Believe in Love