The golden thread: Nancy Drew & theological mysteries
You were designed to be attracted to the mysterious + a podcast recommendation
Growing up, I devoured every classic, yellow hardback Nancy Drew novel I could get my hands on. And over the course of the next decade and a half, I collected all 33 Nancy Drew computer games (all closet Herinteractive fans, raise your magnifying glasses), playing them over and over again. They remain one of my most prized earthly possessions.
In college, I discovered my love for all things Agatha Christie, the early 1900s murder mystery queen. Now I collect the Agatha Christie Mystery Collection, a gorgeous navy blue, gold-lettered hardcover set of her novels first published in the 1980s.
Around that same time, I plowed through my first two Sherlock Holmes novels. I couldn’t believe it had taken me almost two decades to meet the quirky, enigmatic, arrogant, but tragically brilliant character that was the man-in-the-trenchcoat.
Even the mysterious and supernatural nature of the hunt for archaeological artifacts made Indiana Jones one of my favorite movie series of all time. And whether it was the lost Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, it instilled in my young mind a certain fear and awe of the uncontrollable power of God.
I love a good, classic mystery. In fact, most people do.
There are many reasons why detective and mystery stories hold such cultural esteem. Or why the “golden age” of detective fiction between 1920-1939 flourished right after the first world war. (I’ll link to a great podcast conversation on this topic at the end of the post!)
The captivation of secret things
So why detective stories? They follow a general formula. They open with a community and a crime. An injustice has occurred, and the ripple of evil creates pain and chaos that needs to be righted. Friends and family don’t know who to trust. Relationships are broken.
Then in walks the detective: the bringer of justice, the restorer of order. A hope for eventual healing.
It can be strangely cathartic to read a story where you know the bad guy gets caught and the good guy wins, especially if you’ve faced a real-life injustice that may never be completely “righted” on this side of Heaven.
But the whole process in-between the crime and the captured criminal, of facing and investigating the unknown, connects with the human heart in a powerful way. There’s something about “secret things” (from the Latin mysterium) that beg to be uncovered, like clues. Clues that point you discreetly, gradually, to truth.
I will bet that at some moment in your life, literary or not, you have felt a curious captivation by “secret things” too. Because everyone is attracted to mystery. Even if they’ve never read an Agatha Christie novel.
The golden thread
And I’ll let you in on my layperson theory: it’s because humans were Divinely designed to be attracted to mystery. It’s intentional, it’s supernatural, and it is good.
Unfortunately, the intersection of mystery and the Divine has been tragically denied (atheism) or distorted (the occult) for as long as sin has existed. But these “secret things” of God are not shameful or dangerous things. At least, they aren’t dangerous to your soul, or even to your joy.
They can, however, be very dangerous to the love of a mediocre life.
Mystery is a golden thread that has connected me, through my everyday life, to the Divine. But not until I picked it up. Or picked it back up, if I’ve metaphorically dropped it. For some confounding reason, it’s remarkably easy to reject the mysterious for the monotonous.
And yet, if God truly “works in mysterious ways,” then I actually don’t know a better way to seek Him than through mystery.
Because we really weren’t made for a monotonous, un-mysterious existence. We were made to participate in God’s steady unveiling of Himself to each of our souls.
Come further up, come further in
I was raised a cradle Catholic, but when I began my first major internal conversion in high school, which deepened dramatically in college, it began with questions (mysteries) in my heart that needed answers. There were things I couldn’t fully explain about my faith. I wanted to be in on the “secrets.”
God delights to unveil the secrets of His love and truth to us. These weren’t mysteries meant to stay hidden, reserved only for a list of canonized saints. It is simply asked that we take the initiative to seek.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you,” (Matthew 7: 7).
Of course, it helped that my high school boyfriend (who would eventually become my husband) was a Baptist, and curious about Catholicism.
And when I began genuinely asking and searching for answers, the door was opened, usually leading to other doors. Other questions. Other mysteries. It was all a maze, but not one that led to overwhelming confusion and dead ends. It was the unicorn in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle inviting me to “come further up, come further in.”
I couldn’t stop knocking. I had to know more.
So I kept going, through high school and then college, where I formally studied in a theology program, and I dipped my toes into more than I ever imagined possible. Slowly, I unveiled the mysteries God set like little wrapped gifts before me. Like a bride who slowly grows in intimacy with her bridegroom.
In fact, it lit a fire in my soul so strong, sometimes I swore I could feel it burning in my chest as I read Scripture and scholars and saints with students and professors as passionate or more than I was. If only others could understand what I’m barely beginning to understand, I would think desperately.
And yet…it was all only a drop in an ocean of Divine mystery that could never be fully unveiled on earth. And yet…not a drop of it was withheld from me. It was my inheritance. An ocean I was invited to swim in. Or dare I say drown in, only to be reborn into a new, baptized creature.
The fires of truth burned me. Convicted me. Terrified me. Thrilled me. Made me incredibly uncomfortable, but stayed lodged in my heart that somehow knew them, to my core, to be true.
Mystery & sacrament are intertwined
The Catechism says that “the Greek word mysterion was translated into Latin by two terms: mysterium and sacramentum” (CCC 774).
Mystery and sacrament.
As it turns out, mystery is built extensively into the framework of 2000 years of Tradition, Scripture, and liturgies. The golden thread that I had picked up as a college student stretched back through two millennia, and had been held by saints and theologians and the hidden lives of innumerable faithful laypeople before me.
Here are just a few of many, many examples of mystery in the Church:
Jesus’ passion, crucifixion, death, burial, descent into hell, resurrection, and ascension are called the “Paschal Mystery” (CCC 512).
The entire second part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is titled “The Celebration of the Christian Mystery,” which talks about the liturgy and sacraments and their place in our daily life.
The seven sacraments are sometimes called the “holy mysteries” in the Eastern Church. The broadest definition of a sacrament could be described as an outward “sign of something sacred and hidden,” something mysterious.
The rosary consists of twenty different “mysteries,” grouped into the glorious, joyful, luminous, and sorrowful mysteries. Each one invites us into a biblical or traditional scene, to seek and discover new treasures and revelations about His living Word.
The next time you attend Mass, count how many times you hear the mention of “mystery.” For example, at the end of the Penitential Act, the priest will say “brethren, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.” (Or you could cheat and “Ctrl F” all the times “mystery” appears in the order of Mass.)
The Trinity is the prime example of a mysterium fidei, or a “mystery of faith.” The Catechism explains that these are “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (CCC 237). The mysteries of faith are innumerable.
I had been surrounded by the language of mystery my entire life, but I wasn’t listening for it.
I drop the golden thread
Now I’m no longer an eager theology student in college. I’m a mom (pregnant with baby #3) with a husband, two toddlers, a home, and an *amateur* garden.
[Spoiler: my Baptist boyfriend became my Catholic fiance, who came into the Church nine months before our wedding, ultimately drawn in by the mystery of the Eucharist. It was a day that ranks only after our wedding and the births of our children.]
I go through most of my days distracted by the very real stresses of a more tangible daily life. I drop the golden thread more often than I grasp for it, because there is no obvious room or purpose for “mystery” when kids are crying, dinner needs to be made, and toys are spilled in every narrow walkway in our 1970s house.
How often supernatural mysteries are forgotten, hidden, or buried, and often, I’d rather they wouldn’t interfere.
And yet, Jesus:
“Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2: 6-8, emphasis mine).
And St. Therese of Lisieux lovingly declared:
“I cannot fear a God who made Himself small for me.”
If God made Himself human, made Himself small, somehow He must have infused Divine mystery into small, human moments too. Maybe even into my own small, human children, little walking mysteries with eternal souls in a 35-pound toddler body.
Where Divine mystery meets the ordinary
So where is the mysterious, the golden thread, that manifests in the ordinary?
I think, like those detective novels, mystery is often hidden. It isn’t unravelled unless someone is actively looking for clues, interviewing witnesses, reading written evidence, and spending a lot of time in silent contemplation of the facts they’ve learned.
And suddenly, solving the mystery looks a lot like actively searching for God, listening to testimonies, reading Scripture, Church documents, and the saints, and then silent prayer and contemplation.
And perhaps most important: the sacraments. What better way to seek Divine mystery than to partake in the “divine mysteries” themselves? Where the natural is guaranteed an encounter with the mysterious supernatural.
Sherlock Holmes didn’t struggle to appreciate the very real mysterious in the very real ordinary. In one scene, he reproaches Watson, who chronicles his friend’s cases, for “somewhat embellishing” his adventures:
“You will remember that I remarked the other day…for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination. Source

Pick up the golden thread
In the eighth book of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, Nancy’s Mysterious Letter, her boyfriend Ned compliments her on her ability as a “girl detective.” She replies, with typical Nancy humbleness:
“I have solved some mysteries, I'll admit, and I enjoy it, but I'm sure there are many other girls who could do the same.”
Even now, I feel like Nancy is speaking to me. I like to believe I felt the same when I read that line for the first time as a much younger girl. I like to believe a small fire was lit inside me. Yes, I could do the same.
I hadn’t yet connected the titian-haired girl to the supreme Mystery that is God and the Faith. Or that I would look back years later and recognize those books as one of the first places I learned to ask, seek, and knock. But I have realized with a certain sort of nostalgic satisfaction, that like Nancy, I can now say those same words:
I have solved some mysteries. And I have enjoyed it immensely. But I’m sure there are many others who are called to do the same.
You can pick up the golden thread. You can knock.
As a thank you for reading 2000 words…
Something that enriched me
I highly recommend sparing time for this episode from one of my favorite podcasts: The Literary Life Podcast, where the hosts discuss the important and fascinating history of the relatively new genre of detective fiction, and even its significance in the Christian life.