Plato’s Phaedrus and Longinus’s On the Sublime describe the human soul’s longing for union with the transcendant, the true end for which we were made, and Christians have always loved reading the lives of the fathers, martyrs, and confessors because of their motivational power in moving us to that end. St. Augustine’s Confessions is not only a wonderful example of the long and painful process by which many have been driven to union with the eternal Christ, but contains a glorious account of the tremendous power of models to impel us, however reluctant or incapable we are, to our goal.