Book Review:

The Witness of St. Ansgar’s:

By Ben Merrill

I spent this past Thanksgiving week living among the friars of Saint Ansgar’s, a Bavarian Catholic church located on the west side of Manhattan.

I was leery about going. I don’t really enjoy city life, and let’s just say I’m a little gun-shy when it comes to the Catholic church. But to my very great surprise, it was among the most pleasant weeks I’ve ever spent. I felt completely safe and at home behind those great wooden doors—so much so that as my visit drew to a close, I found myself becoming ever more reluctant to leave. During the course of that week, I found a place of comfort, security, and strength that I had somehow forgotten existed.

I should interject here that my trip to the city took place via the pages of Francis W. Nielsen’s recent work of fiction, The Witness of St. Ansgar’s. But my mode of transportation notwithstanding, what I experienced during my week inside the confessionals, choir lofts, and sacristies of that sturdy old church was anything but fictional.

The Witness of St. Ansgar’s takes place on Stanley Street, a tired, gritty, decaying collection of tenements and warehouses populated by German, Irish, and Italian families whose struggles I found to be very similar to my own. So similar in fact, that I’ve come to wonder if that’s what made the book—and by extension my "visit" to New York—seem so real. I also can’t help but wonder whether it was the safety and security of my cell at St. Ansgar’s that finally gave me the eyes to see it.

Like the inhabitants of both Stanley Street and the friary, which of us hasn’t loved an abusive spouse, partner, parent or friend? Which of us hasn’t wished that others might love us for our talents and personalities instead of our shape?

Which of us hasn’t struggled with thoughts or desires we cannot explain, or taken some action we cannot reverse, or spoken some word we cannot take back?

Whether we live in the scenic, if homogenous, hills of Vermont, or in a "rear-house" tenement off of Stanley Street, who among us can say that he or she has escaped the cuts and bruises (and fleeting joys) of growing up?

The friars of St. Ansgar’s and, in a most wonderful and surprising way, the Catholic church, provide a rock-solid, God-centered backdrop to a society facing some of the biggest dramas of the twentieth century—dramas, such as Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, that would eventually challenge many people’s very belief in God himself. And yet, throughout the book, sturdy old St. Ansgar’s and its centuries-old Catholic faith remain a beacon of both life and hope—a beacon that continues to shine, if dimly sometimes, on the dramas we face today.

But there’s another component of The Witness of St. Ansgar’s that’s equally compelling: the fact that its author, Francis W. Nielsen, never saw the story published. He died in 1985, some 20 years prior to its release earlier this year.

(It was resurrected from manuscript by his son Erik Nielsen of Brookfield and Erik's college-age daughter Kristina, who typed and edited it.)

Nevertheless, Francis W. Nielsen's spirit, his insights into human nature, and his gentle way of showing us that we are all members of the same human family resonate throughout the book and lurk in the background of every chapter. Thinking of this, I am reminded of these words, spoken by the Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh:

"There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passersby see only a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney, and go along their way… Must one tend the inner fire, have salt in oneself, wait patiently yet with how much impatience for the hour when somebody will come and sit down—maybe to stay? Let him who believes in God wait for the hour that will come sooner or later…"

I think of this quote every time I remember that Francis W. Nielsen didn’t get to see this beautiful book in print…yet how warmed I was by his fire and how grateful I am for his years’ of effort.