In an article dedicated to the reading of literary fiction, the remarkable Jesuit Father James V. Schall, one of the founders of The Catholic Thing, recalled the opinion of Rudolf Allers (1883–1963), who stated that it is always worthwhile to read literature. This assertion, Father Schall tells us, included even bad literature. The reason is that “we will almost always find there scenes of human reality that we would not notice otherwise.”

From a very young age, I have been – and remain – an avid reader of fiction. Even my theoretical pursuits have always been subordinated to literature. This is because my mentor, a French professor named Marian Prada, taught me that writers and poets typically have a deeper vision of life, of the human being, and of the world, than most of us have. That may seem like a simplistic statement, one you’ve undoubtedly heard (or read) in one form or another. But when it is said at the right moment, by the right person, it takes on a value that can change your life. Allers’s statement points in the same direction.

In his brief assertion, Father Schall was primarily referring to the depths of our life experiences, whose contents are often best highlighted by poets and writers. In addition to these distilled essences of humanity, works of fiction manage to offer vivid descriptions that can explain key concepts of Christian (i.e., Catholic) theology better than any rational-speculative discourse. “The sacred,” “the profane,” “sacrifice,” or “symbol” are all such concepts. In a way that recalls the intuitive knowledge that mystics of all times strive to rekindle, the metaphors provided by a novel can reveal the cognitive value of such terms without leading you astray in the labyrinth of discursive knowledge.

For example, rereading The Mysterious Island (1875), a novel by Jules Verne (1828–1905), unexpectedly gave me a revealing image of the notion of “symbol” (synonymous with the Augustinian concept of “sign”). In this way, as I’ll explain below, I was able to give our two younger sons (aged 12 and 16) both a catechism lesson and a lesson in literary aesthetics.

It is probably not necessary to explain very much why sacred symbols are of crucial importance in Christian (i.e., Catholic) theology. As evidence, it’s enough to quote the definition of the Holy Liturgy proposed by the famous Benedictine liturgist Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805–1875):

The Liturgy, considered in general, is the ensemble of symbols, chants, and acts by means of which the Church expresses and manifests its religion towards God.

So, before anything else, the Liturgy is “an ensemble of symbols.”

I hasten to add and emphasize that everything is symbolic in the context of Catholic Tradition: the architecture of the churches, the liturgical objects, the holy altar, the liturgical vestments, the liturgical gestures – in short, everything. It is no coincidence that one of Pope Benedict XVI’s favorite liturgists, Romano Guardini (1885–1968), wrote a beautiful short monograph entitled Sacred Signs.

Simply put, the symbol creates a link between a consecrated object, which plays the role of the symbolizer, and the entity or being from the unseen world, which is symbolized. For example, the holy altar is in a mysterious symbolic relationship with the transcendent person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, “the chief cornerstone.”

The candlelight received by the godparents and parents from the priest during the Baptismal ritual symbolizes the unquenchable light of sanctifying grace that, though invisible to our physical eyes, clothes the soul of the baptized child. From these simple examples, one can easily deduce the value of a sacred symbol: it establishes a deep, mysterious, yet no less real connection between a sacred object from our world and an entity from the unseen spiritual world.

Given the crucial importance of this notion, I have always made efforts to present it as convincingly as possible both to my children and to the adult faithful for whom I’ve led catechetical lectures for over twelve years. In one of my recent discussions with our two younger boys, the memory of a Jules Verne novel gave me a new image to clarify the exceptional importance of sacred symbols.

The Mysterious Island, one of Verne’s most famous novels, begins with an intense scene in which five Northern prisoners during the American Civil War manage to escape using a hydrogen balloon. Damaged during a terrible storm, the balloon rapidly loses altitude. Much like the crews of old ships, the men in the balloon start throwing out anything that might weigh down their flying vessel. In the end, they even throw out the gondola, managing to cling to the ropes that had connected it to the balloon.

The image of the five heroes, suspended above the ocean and clinging to the ropes of the balloon, still haunts me. I’m convinced that millions of readers over the past century have read Jules Verne’s story with bated breath. And during my little catechesis session, I instantly realized just how vivid and expressive this image is.

Correctly understood, sacred symbols are literally the ropes that keep us connected not to a balloon, but to the eternal realities of the Kingdom of Heaven – the heavenly Jerusalem from the Apocalypse of Saint John – toward which we journey through the fallen world. Just as a ship cannot reach its destination without sails tied to the masts by hundreds of ropes, so too could Verne’s airborne adventurers not have reached the saving island without the help of the ropes they clung to.

Similarly, we cannot reach the end of the road without the symbols that establish numerous and strong connections of thought – accessible through meditations guided by supernatural faith – to the unseen world spoken of in the Creed.

However, unlike the “signs” in the human world – such as traffic signs – sacred symbols have eternal meanings, meanings we have not created, but established by God Himself.

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