Description:
Explores the lives of the saints and the beauty, meaning, and mystery of Catholic supernatural phenomena, including stigmata, mystics, relics, and miracles as living signs of what it means to be transformed by Christ.
Brief description:
W. Tyler Allen is a Catholic writer, podcaster, and speaker whose work explores the beauty, mystery, and supernatural heart of the Catholic faith. He is the creator and host of St. Anthony's Tongue, a popular podcast and online platform dedicated to Catholic mysticism and what he calls "strange Catholicism," which reaches tens of thousands of listeners and readers each month.
A writer and publicist by profession, Tyler has spent more than a decade studying the lives of the saints, mystical theology, and the role of wonder in spiritual formation. Writing as a lay Catholic, he seeks to reawaken awe in a faith often reduced to explanation, inviting readers to encounter Catholicism not merely as true, but as beautiful.
Review Quotes:
An eloquent and thoroughly fascinating spiritual and historical excursion.
Podcaster Allen offers an examination of several often misunderstood facets of the Catholic Church.
An ongoing emphasis on beauty--physical, holy, and subjective--permeates this work, because in this survey of aspects of Catholicism, the author wants "to show you that Catholicism is beautiful. But through beauty, you will encounter truth, not a truth of the head but of the heart." The author then presents an investigation into various enigmas of the Catholic faith, from the "Strange Burden of the Stigmata," which multiple saints were documented to have exhibited, to holy relics. ("In our modern age, it's easy to scoff. A skull in a chapel? A bone in a glass case? But relics are not artifacts. They are signs that the church believes that holiness is not an abstract ideal; rather, it is something embodied.") He also addresses the Eucharist, transverberation (religious ecstasy), and other mysterious elements. Throughout, Allen provides thought-provoking interpretations mixed with vibrant imagery, inventive similes, and vignettes. As in a detective story or legal drama, the various puzzle pieces eventually join together to form a big picture of "just how wide the range of God's love truly is." Some readers may quibble that these narratives of miracles and other unexplained happenings eventually become a shade predictable. However, other readers are sure to enjoy unraveling and clarifying the different layers of a multifaceted ideology, as Allen portrays it: "if you have felt the ache of longing, the sudden joy of nearness, the holy stillness that overtakes your breath--then you've already touched the edge of this mystery." Ultimately, there's no big reveal or surprise twist: Readers are simply presented with the facts of what Catholics believe and encouraged to draw their own conclusions. --Kirkus Reviews