Date: Fri 23-Feb-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

Wismar-Saints-and-Angels

Full Text:

w/photo/bookcover: Local Pastor Writes About Saints and Angels

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

God has a way of finding the right person for the right job at the right time,

and sometimes he does it in unexpected and surprising ways. Ambrose was one of

those right people, but he didn't know it - at least not right away.

With this passage, the Rev Gregory J. Wismar, pastor of Christ the King Church

in Newtown, sets off on the stories of 40 saints and angels in his new book,

Saints & Angels All Around , which was published January 15 by Concordia

Publishing House (paperback/$8.95).

Those who think the lives of saints make for ponderous reading will be

pleasantly surprised to discover this book. As the opening passage suggests,

Dr Wismar is a talented storyteller who brings these early Christians to life

in a way that he says is intended to "jump start" the reader's interest in

learning more about them.

"It's a teaser - to whet your appetite," Pastor Wismar explained in an

interview this week as he prepared for a March 2 booksigning in Danbury.

The saints were people like us, people with problems, people who didn't always

succeed, he said. The common thread is that they loved their faith and they

lived it.

"Take St Ansgar for example," he said. "In St Ansgar's life everything that

could possibly go wrong seemed to go wrong. If people knew about Murphy's Law

1,200 years ago, they might well have called it Ansgar's Law."

Two hundred years after St Ansgar's death in 865 AD, however, his groundwork

helped Christianity take root and spread throughout Scandinavia.

"When people see the names of towns like St Ansgar, Iowa, and St Augustine,

Fla, and the symbols of saints around us, they should know a little about

where they come from," Dr Wismar said. "How many people realize the three gold

balls that traditionally hang in front of pawnbroker shops symbolize the three

bags of gold that St Nicholas, the bishop of Myra, (now part of Turkey) gave

as dowries for the three daughters of a very poor man?"

Whether we realize it or not, saints and angels are all around us, he said,

angels by their presence and saints by memories passed along from generation

to generation.

"Getting to know saints and angels better can encourage us in our faith and

inform our lives," he explained. "In our day and age, when heroes and heroines

are so hard to come by, it would be nice to know more about them."

"We remember St Patrick every March 17, but when did he live? Ask most people

and you'll get a variety of guesses, many saying the Middle Ages. But St

Patrick was actually one of the early Christians," he said.

In recent years, interest in angels has grown, as seen by cover story articles

in Time magazine and Newsweek. The Bible names two angels, Gabriel and

Michael, while literature from biblical times names two others, Raphael and

Uriel.

Dr Wismar decided to do 40 profiles - 36 saints and the four angels - because

in the Bible the number 40 often stands for completion.

"It's nice reading for Lent because Lent has 40 days," he said. "You can pick

up the book and read one section a day."

Each profile includes portions of scripture and historical commentary and

concludes with a prayer thought. Each is rich in human interest, warmth and

relevant points for life application.

"I tried to use both men and women (saints), and to run the gamut from the

first century to the 14th century, before the Reformation, because these are

saints all Christians have in common," Dr Wismar said. "There are a smattering

of different ethnic groups and a large geographical spread."

The appendix includes a chronology of the saints, a calendar of the saints'

days, biblical references and a listing of the traditional symbols of the

saints and angels, symbols which were especially important in the early church

when few Christians were literate.

The cover of the book, a painting of the angel Raphael by the painter Raphael,

is the only remaining fragment of an altar piece from a church in Brescia,

Italy, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1695.

The book is the second that Dr Wismar has written for Concordia. In 1991,

during his second three-year term on the Lutheran Church's National Commission

on Worship, he wrote a three-year prayer book to accompany the church's new

three-year lectionary. His editor then thought it was time for a "readable"

book about saints and angels.

Dr Wismar already has begun work on another project, assisting Afro-American

congregations who are putting together a worship resource. There are many

black saints, including some of the early European saints like St Augustine

and his mother, St Monica, who are profiled in Saints & Angels All Around.

"The church is home and the saints are all part of our family," Dr Wismar

said. "In many ways I am just telling family stories, which help the reader

discover family roots."

On April 15 he will leave on a week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, leading

a tour through Galilee to Nazareth and Sepphoris, to Jerusalem and Bethlehem,

into Jordan and back to Isreal to the Dead Sea. Pastor Wismar will host the

tour along with the Rev Scott Cady of St Peter's Lutheran Church in Cornwall

and the Rev Robert Schipul, chaplain of the Lutheran Home in Southbury. The

Rev Steve Gordon, who is on sabbatical from Newtown Congregational Church,

also is going. (There are a few reservations ($1,523 per person) still

available, according to Dr Wismar. Call Christian Tours USA 1-800-887-9988.)

Dr Wismar will be at The Living Word bookstore in the Plum Trees Shopping

Plaza in Danbury from 11 am to 2 pm on Saturday, March 2, to sign copies of

his new book. The book also is available at The Book Review in the Sand Hill

Plaza, Newtown.