Tell Me a Story: The Role of Narrative in the Faith Life of Catholics

Every person has a story worth telling, a story that may express a defining moment in his or her life. Such stories ultimately shape our identities and express a powerful in-breaking of God’s active love into our lives. Author Robert Hater strongly believes that “story without basic belief lacks direction, and basic belief without story is lifeless.” He clearly illustrates this relationship between story and Catholic belief with sensitive and powerful narratives, including the account of his own mother’s death and its impact on him, and describes the relationship through the lens of faith, hope, and love. Hater further addresses the levels of meaning and the changing elements of every story, the defining moments in Jesus’ story, and the defining periods of church history. As Mark Markuly comments in the Foreword, Hater invites us to let faith illumine our experiences. to “interpret our stories of [the] precious moments of our lives in light of the story of Jesus Christ and the Church and its teachings. In so doing, our core life events, our defining moments, will become part of God’s work to resurrect, from the ashes of loss, struggle, doubt, and death, a new creation.” This volume is invaluable for anyone involved in conveying the story of Jesus and the church—pastors, homilists, catechetical leaders, catechists and teachers, other parish ministers, and families—as well as anyone who wishes to find God in their own stories.Robert J. Hater