Listen to this story:
By Elise Gower
Stories are living invitations, sites of encounter. I recently spoke with Dr. Meredith Bacola, associate professor and acting director of the Jesuit Centre for Catholic Studies at the University of Manitoba’s St. Paul’s College. Her research centres on the social and cultural history of early medieval Europe, with a specific concentration on the stories of saints.
She portrays her life and work as the embodiment of a vocation for stories. Dr. Bacola suggests that through curiosity and an openness to surprise, saintly stories can become guides for mission.
A Journey Inspired by the Saints
Dr. Bacola’s own journey is inspired by saints like St. Columba of Iona, Scotland (d. 597). She speaks of the Irish concept peregrinatio — to go where God wants you to go — and is enthusiastic about its impact on her own geographic movements throughout her life.
Her interdisciplinary background launched opportunities to explore saint shrines in England, leading her to the Bollandists, a Belgian group of 17th-century Jesuits who also wanted to critically examine the cult of saints. Inspired by their work, Dr. Bacola began a journey of excavating saints’ stories, recovering details lost over time or through violence. Her mission is to share these stories, upholding and expanding the Jesuit mission.
She also invokes St. Brigid of Kildare (d. ca. 525) whose purpose was motivated by the recognition that “every guest is Christ.” Dr. Bacola is deeply aware of Christ among her earthly companions — colleagues, family and friends from whom she learns “every day, how to be the best version of myself.” She reflects that saints remind us that ancient values can have modern applications.
Community of Saints, Communal Discernment
Indeed, Dr. Bacola frames studying saints as an exploration of communal discernment. As we learn about values reflected in saints’ lives, we discover what communities hold sacred. Rather than moral trophies, saints emerge as mirrors, reflecting something accessible to our own stories. Saints can cultivate our spiritual knowledge. Storytelling as lived theology illuminated the holy life of saints among us prior to their canonization. The Church is the people, and through its people, God continues to act in the world.
Saints emerge as mirrors, reflecting something accessible to our own stories.
Saints’ relevance is rooted in and transcends time and place, as we can see in Dr. Bacola’s life. In conversations with international students, she was reminded of the vastness and importance of enculturation of the global Church. For many students, a woman in leadership is an unfamiliar concept. She long contemplated feminist values but recently discerned the importance of bringing the stories of saintly women who were leaders — agents of change — to the forefront. Dr. Bacola reflects that she “never really felt at the centre of a lot of things.” This led her on the path to centering marginalized voices.
Discernment and Science
Dr. Bacola speaks of discovery with grace and passion as she describes the interplay between science and faith, as well as the parallel practice of discernment.
“Science requires a hypothesis that is essentially a leap of faith. It hasn’t been proven yet, but you feel, based on what you already know, that you want to investigate the outcome. Discernment is somewhat like this. You must listen to the evidence that you feel in your heart, know in your mind and experience through your emotions.”
Studying saints is not about arrival at certainty; nor is discerning our path. It is about walking with the guides who reveal God in all things — a diversity of cultures, ages, places, bodies and histories that shape our individual and institutional faith. This walk, this pilgrimage, is both a physical and interior journey.
Ignatian spirituality, she offers, is a model of interior pilgrimage ”providing a well-tested format for understanding your place in the world as much as knowing Jesus better. For many Christians, this quest is one of the most transformative of faith journeys.” On each pilgrimage, she asserts, we are walking toward something but are not yet there. Pilgrimage moves us from method to encounter.
A Continued Road
Dr. Bacola speaks of her personal experience of the Spiritual Exercises as deepened by her graced history. Understanding how the Holy Spirit has led her to this field of research, her role, where she lives, and connection to her guides has offered her the greatest fruit of pilgrimage: surprise. Surprise is where she continues to discover the limitless possibilities of Jesus’ vision.
When our questions along the journey leave the page and enter the road, we become pilgrims. A pilgrimage that begins in stories, moves through discernment and experience, and arrives at the present moment is what our Jesuit mission calls us to. Stories — the stories of saints — Dr. Bacola suggests, do not conclude, they commission.
