Witness: Learning to Tell the Stories of Grace That Illumine Our Lives

by Leonard J. Delorenzo

Beginning with the apostles themselves, Christians have practiced the art of telling their stories to bring others to faith. Leonard J. DeLorenzo, theology professor and director of Notre Dame Vision—a program designed to help youth and young adults find their true vocation—presents seven guiding principles to help you share your faith in a genuine way and teach others to do so as well.

Unlike many evangelical Christians, Catholics often find it difficult to tell their faith stories. Leonard DeLorenzo has taught thousands of teens and young adults to relate their moments of grace in a way that is compelling, convincing, and free of clichés and vague generalizations. The seven guiding principles he includes in  Witness  DeLorenzo includes literary examples of writers such as C. S. Lewis and Flannery O’Connor, the conversion stories of St. Paul and St. Augustine, and real-life accounts of grace told by young adults he’s worked with. Their stories are born out of battling an anxiety disorder, struggling with a loved one’s Alzheimer’s disease, dealing with the effects of alcoholism, learning from people with mental disabilities, and overcoming an eating disorder. DeLorenzo teaches us that  by paying close attention to particular aspects of these stories, we can attune ourselves to the surprising and specific ways that grace moved through their experiences—as it does in our own. DeLorenzo provides a model for the kind of attentiveness we should foster when crafting our own stories of grace, and lead others to do so by providing an example of God’s presence in our everyday life.

Witness  is a unique resource for faith-formation ministers and adults of all ages to appreciate the ways that grace is at work in your life, to inspire hope, and to build community by telling your own faith story.

Genres: Catholic

160 pages, Paperback

Published December 5, 2016

About the author

Leonard J. DeLorenzo, Ph.D., teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame, where he also directs Notre Dame Vision within the McGrath Institute for Church Life. He was born on the East Coast (New Jersey), spent part of his childhood in the South (Tennessee), grew up for the most part on the West Coast (California), but has lived in the Midwest longer than anywhere else (Indiana). His travel beyond these quarters of the United States includes leading pilgrimages to Italy and Malta, as well as journeying somewhat regularly to the edge of the observable universe in a planetarium where he works collaboratively with a professional astronomer and astrophysicist.

DeLorenzo is the author of Witness: Learning to Tell the Stories of Grace that Illumine Our Lives (Ave Maria Press, 2016) and Work of Love: A Theological Reconstruction of the Communion of Saints (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017). He is currently editing a volume to which he is also a contributor dedicated to Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person (forthcoming from Cascade Books).

Reviews

[Brian Kiczek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Today I would like to review a wonderful book that will help you to be able to tell stories of Grace in a powerful and effective way. This book is called Witness and is written by Leonard Delorenzo, who is the director of Notre Dame Vision. Witness is a book designed to help you to be able to tell your own stories of grace in your life. One could ask the question, why do I need to tell such stories. I know I have received grace why do I have to go around telling everyone about it. The number one reason is that those who spread stories of grace receive stories of grace. Those who keep it to themselves eventually forget they ever received them. Those that believe in miracles get to see them all the time, those that don’t, don’t. While it seems simple to tell stories of grace, the reality is it is very hard to tell others about grace in your lives because it is elusive. Leonard says, “learning to speak of grace as grace is hard work…Grace is irreducible, incomparable, and altogether peculiar.” To become experts at speaking about stories of grace will take time and this book helps you to prepare and practice as expertise is acquired with practice and not given in advance as Leonard states. However, he does not give you a formula because there is never a cut and paste story to talk about grace. Leonard gives you the basic rules, then gives you many samples of different variations of the stories of Grace. Those rules are 7 in number and easy to remember but take a lifetime to master. 1 is to tell it as a story, 2 Begin with what happened, 3 Express it in style, 4 modify it for your audience, 5 ensure there is sufficient closure, 6 embrace natural emotion, and 7 is to pray and practice. With these seven basic rules taught in the book as well as many samples you will be on your way to telling and writing your own stories of grace before you know it. Creating and crafting your own stories of grace will help you open to grace in your life. As Leonard says, To be open to grace and to respond to it changes who we are. The one who grows in response to grace becomes one who is shaped in and by grace-that is graceful.” MAY ALL SOLDIERS OF THE ROSARY BECOME GRACEFUL!

I usually give ten quotes to inspire you to buy this book but today I will give one of the beautiful stories of grace that fill this book and hopefully will inspire you to get this book and start crafting your own stories of grace in your life. Here is a Story of Grace by Vinnie:

“Alcohol carried so much anger, so much sadness, and so much pain that for a long time I couldn’t drink from the Communion cup at Mass. I could not see that cup as holding the Blood of Christ; all I could see was alcohol. But sometime this past fall, I started to feel pulled toward that cup. In my prayer, I felt God was prompting me to make a choice about what my life is going to be about: Is my life about the demons that haunt me, or is it about accepting the loving embrace of God, who will fight my demons with me? Deep within I knew that I needed to get past the alcohol and receive the Blood of Christ who died for me, who loves me. Whether it’s alcoholic or not is irrelevant. It’s real.
The Blood of Christ has brought some healing to my relationship with my dad. I still can’t say that I have forgiven him completely. I know that any anger I harbor toward him is only hurting me and that I can never really repair my relationship with him unless I forgive him. But just as there’s no greater sign of truly real love, there’s no greater sign of truly real forgiveness than the Eucharist. God, who is perfect and needs nothing from us, forgives us of every depraved thing we do, every failure to love that we enact, and we are graced with this forgiveness in every Mass through the Eucharist. I haven't completely forgiven my dad, but I see no better way to work towards forgiveness than entering into the most real forgiveness of all.”

I wish to leave you with this quote which is the best way to keep the faith is to spread it. You can spread it through sharing your own stories of grace with others and this book will give you the tools to confidently do so. God bless Leonard for creating this masterpiece of grace. Spread Grace everywhere!

[Maggie McMahon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The personal nature and intensity of God’s love in Jesus Christ deems no one too small, no experience too peculiar, for becoming a beacon of light for the world.”

“Do we live in a world that, at best, has fleeting moments of beauty, or do we live in a world where beauty abounds but our receptiveness and responsiveness to this deep beauty varies?”

“Complexities and grit cannot be observed in maxims, but only in the peculiarities of embodied experience.”

“How often do we allow ourselves to truly, deeply wonder? It seems that the common modern practice is to analyze, explain, and categorize phenomena to account for them according to predetermined standards of interpretation. We tend to fit new experiences into fixed world views. … If nothing else, wonder is the implicit admission that what confronts us is something unique, something new, and perhaps something that will stir, challenge, or even revolutionize what we previously assumed.”

[Sofia Hutchens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a class I will be taking next semester related to the Notre Dame Vision program I will be doing over the summer. This book was a great reminder that everyone has a story to share. It was lovely to hear all of the story excerpts present in the book.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent resource for teaching theology, especially in the context of beginning to help students tell moments of their lives and rethinking the way they can view them. A helpful resource for any level of ministry in the Christian church.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book! It was both insightful and inspiring. As a writer and as someone who works with middle school aged kids in religious education/youth group, I found the book to be a great help and it gave me a lot to think about.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This small book on learning about sharing the presence of grace in our lives is a very good introduction to the graced art of revealing God's presence in the details of our lives.

I found some of his suggestions - including the importance of sharing a story not to relieve one's unfinished stories but to open up our stories so that those who hear us can see God's grace at work - as very helpful.

I worked with young people in campus ministry for many years, helping with retreats and retreat talks. I wish this volume had been available then to help young people craft their stories not for emotional impact but for opening up the channels of grace. I'd recommend this to campus ministers and all involved in retreat ministry.

Our style of retreats here in Honduras is somewhat different - except for some groups that tell personal stories very often for their emotional impact.

But this books is helping me craft my homilies as well as my blog posts, where I try to share stories of grace. It will also help me in sharing my story to others. This past year, I shared my discernment process (toward the permanent diaconate) at the national seminary. As I look back on that story in the light of this book, I found that in some ways I had written it with some of what Dr. DeLorenzo has in mind, although my talk was an hour-long presentation of my life and not a short story of grace of one moment. Re-reading this book will help me in any future presentations.

My one regret is that the book is too short. I found myself hoping for more.

[Janka H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book I would like to like very much. After all, I strongly believe in the power of storytelling and sharing the raw and real things. And there are many things to love: mostly how the author is in love with the beauty of the language. Also I love some beautiful citations, stories and tidbits of wisdom incorporated. Yet there is something missing amongst all of the facts, teachings and very detailed explanations - simplicity. To tell the complicated things simply is the true art of the storytelling.
Also, the book so often read like an academical thesis.
Maybe it would be better (and more engaging) to use more of stories and less factual explanations?

But there also things that would stay with me: pieces of wisdom to help me grow. I am thankful for that.

[Christian Rappuhn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Half of the book was wonderful; half of the book was tough. In the first half of the book, DeLorenzo creates the perfect tone for this instructional book and gives a great wealth of information. In the last half, he takes entirely too long hammering the point home and finishes with some applications that need a bit more explanation. My issues with the book can be demonstrated in how quickly I read it: after reading three-quarters of the book in twenty days, it took me twenty days to read the last quarter. With all this said, this book definitely serves its purpose and should be much help to a small audience with more patience than I have.

[Armani Carreon · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐️ | 2 Stars

🍎 | School Read

I liked the content of the book, but I just connot overlook the fact that it was really difficult for me to read. Having to reread paragraphs over and over again to fully understand them did not add to my enjoyment of this book, hence the low rating. On a different note, as someone who will be having to write her own "story of Grace" in the upcoming school semester, I do believe that this is a good source. I have never put into words a practice that I have actively participated in. It's a beautiful thing to know that your story can impact other people's stories and that other people's stories can impact your own.

📖 | Favorite Quotes

"The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine" (49).

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity" (49).

"What does light talk about? I asked a plant once. It said 'I am not sure, but it makes me grow'" (99).