Fathers, Daughters and St. Thérèse

By Nancy Ward

 

An interview with Connie Rossini, author of Trusting God with St. Thérèse.

Connie gives practical advice for overcoming fears and frustrations that hamper our relationship with God. I asked her about her father-daughter relationship as compared to that of Louis Martin and his daughter St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

Nancy: Thérèse was blessed with parents who were “more worthy of heaven than of earth.” Thérèse had a special relationship with her father, who called her, “my Queen.” She formed her image of God from her father who never denied her love, affection and care. How did your father-daughter relationship compare to this?

Connie: In some ways, my relationship with my father when I was growing up was miles apart from the relationship between Thérèse and Louis. I am very quiet and reserved. As a child, I was also timid. My dad, in contrast, was outgoing and frank. He was also the primary disciplinarian. My mom often said, "Wait till your dad gets home!" I grew nervous around him. I avoided talking to him about any serious subjects.

In my book, I tell how my dad left me home alone when I was about five. When he returned about an hour later, he didn't show any sympathy for my fears. So that didn't help my relationship with him or God.

Read the entire interview at JOYAlive.net

Win a signed print copy of Trusting God with St. Therese!

 By Connie Rossini

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the day! Happy Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Trusting God with St. Therese is now available on Amazon for the Kindle and in print.  For the time being (at least the next 90 days) the ebook will be exclusive to Amazon. However, the paperback should be available soon at Barnes and Noble and other online retailers. I hope to see it in some Catholic bookstores as well. And those of you who are local or who know me personally are always welcome to purchase the paperback directly from me as well.

The last 14 months writing and publishing this book have been busy but rewarding. I pray you will find them rewarding for you too. I really believe it will help almost everyone but those very advanced in the spiritual life to come closer to Christ.

Now for the fun stuff!


Visit Contemplative Homeschool to enter the contest and see the other contests and events marking the release of  Trusting God with St. Therese.

Is there a magic bullet to holiness?

By Connie Rossini

"I am St. Therese's Jesus. If anyone is a little
one, let him come to me."

 


I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for a magic bullet to bring me closer to God. Let’s be honest: the Christian life can be a slog. Day in, day out, struggling against sin and making little measurable progress. I’m always looking for the secret to help me reach sanctity faster. But is there one?

St. Therese asked herself this same question. She sought a fast way to climb the ladder to Heaven, as it were. The Little Way of Spiritual Childhood was her discovery. She said that if she made herself little, Jesus could lift her up in His arms. His arms would be her elevator to help her advance quickly.

But there is a catch. As much as we might think the Little Way means Jesus does all the work for us, we still have to strive against ourselves. The Little Way is not magic. We can’t just say a few words and be instant saints.

This is challenging. When I first committed myself to daily mental prayer, I thought I had found the magic bullet. After all, St. John of the Cross said that people who devote themselves to prayer “very soon” enter the dark night of the senses and the illuminative way.

But I have been praying faithfully for over twenty years now, and I’m still not there. What gives?


Continue reading at Contemplative Homeschool.

A Little Prayer

By Cynthia Scodova

 

“What pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty.”
                                                       St Therese of the Child Jesus

                                          Google Images                  

                                                                     

Who can press back

 the mountain of night?

Grasp the petals 

of morning 

slipping

 through 

the fields of light?

Or keep 

the song rising out

from the small voice,

where everything is falling

in vaporous flux:

these prayers becoming

the edges of hills 

holding 
the little we are

to the mist 

  of the earth. 

Cynthia blogs at The Mad-Eyed Monk.

Going through God's meat grinder

By Barbara A. Schoeneberger

The Liberation of St. Peter by Terbrugghen (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Our journey towards sainthood can be compared to being put through a meat grinder. I’m old enough to know what meat grinders look like in action, having personally observed the cook use one in the convent where I once lived. A slab of a former cow is reduced to a pile of hamburger on its way to filling the stomachs of the hungry and so it is with us in our transformation along the way to heaven. God, our heavenly chef makes mincemeat out of us to shape us into something useful and delicious to feed those hungry for salvation.

Being ground up to bits is not fun. We can’t endure it without the grace of faith. St. Therese of Lisieux knew this well, writing in Story of a Soul, “I have made more acts of faith during the past year than in all the rest of my life.” In this case she was speaking of the dark night of the soul, but her words could just as easily apply to all the circumstances we face when God allows us to endure situations which afflict, humble, and mortify us.

Divine Intimacy Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene writes:

It will sometimes be easier to accept heavy trials which come directly from Our Lord, such as illness and bereavement, than other lighter ones where creatures enter into play, and for which, perhaps, we experience greater repugnance. The immediate action of creatures, especially if their malice has a share in it, makes it more difficult for us to discover the divine hand. A greater spirit of faith is necessary here, that we may pass beyond the human side of circumstances, the faulty way of acting of such and such a person, and find, beyond all these human contingencies, the dispositions of divine Providence, which wills to use these particular creatures, and even their defects and errors, to file away our self-love and destroy our pride.

Continue reading at Barb's blog  Suffering With Joy.

Like nails on a blackboard

By Patricia

Statue of St. Therese with her father, Bl. Louis Martin
(Wikimedia Commons).

“….I saw only too well how very imperfect was my love for my Sisters; I did not really love them as Jesus loves them. I see now that true charity consists in bearing with the faults of those about us, never being surprised at their weaknesses, but edified at the least sign of virtue.”

The Hidden Face by Ida Gorres, p. 240

Today I had to deal with someone whose total self-absorption gives me that nails-on-a-blackboard feeling. They frequently seek me out to relate their most recent trials and tribulations, which they deem to trump any that others will ever have to bear. Never is there an inquiry as to how I am doing, and if I happen to mention any of my problems, I am met with deafening silence. This goes on regularly, and my association with this person is such that I cannot avoid these encounters.

I am grateful as always for the wisdom of Therese, which makes me look beyond the surface. I know that this is a wounded person, and that they probably need the attention. As for me, should I really be seeking sympathy from others?

When I truly need it, I’m sure the Lord will send it. But most often, I believe He loves us to turn to Him for comfort, rather than to fellow creatures. I know that he permits us to be rebuffed to whittle down our pride, and remind us to be willing to suffer our little travails for love of Him.


Continue reading at  I Want to See God..

St. Therese on littleness

By Michael Incorvia

(Photo in public Domain)

Littleness is what St. Thérèse desired with all heart.  She saw littleness as a way to spiritual childhood, a pathway to heaven, for “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

For Thérèse, littleness was surrendering to Jesus, trusting in God, bathing in Christ’s divine mercy.  In her littleness, she rested in God’s protection and found serenity.  St. Thérèse made God her Father in all aspects of her life.

She became completely dependent on God’s merciful grace.  When asked to describe this littleness, she replied:  “When we keep little we recognize our own nothingness, and expect everything from God just as a little child expects everything from his father. Nothing worries us.”


Michael originally posted this at his blog   To Love and Truth.

St. Therese and judging others

By Rebecca Duncan

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

And it is the Lord, it is Jesus, Who is my judge. Therefore I will try always to think leniently of others, that He may judge me leniently, or rather not at all, since He says: "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”
― St. Thérèse de Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

I would much rather not be judged when I die, like St. Therese.  I know Mother Teresa said that she never judged anyone because if you judge others it leaves no room to love them.

I suppose there are a lot of reasons that people can be judgmental.  Perhaps one reason is that we put a misplaced value on people, their behavior and their way of thinking.  Their ideas can be wrong and their behavior can be wrong, but that's never more important than the person themselves.

Correcting people's errors is a work of charity.  But if we correct without love then there is no good in it.  If we don't have love then nothing we do is worth anything. 

If the only thing we see when we are trying to correct someone is their error then we have a log in our eye that needs to be taken out first.


Rebecca blogs at  Otaku Catholic.

Don't be afraid to approach God

 By Michael Incorvia



 

St. Therese at age 13 (photo credit: Wikipedia).

More fearful than standing before a large audience to deliver a speech, is standing before God.  We fear being found unworthy and sinful.  We need only look to the Gospels to dispel our fears.  Christ welcomed all to approach who felt unworthy because of their state in life or sinfulness.   They needed only call out His name or beg His mercy to approach and be healed.

St. Thérèse teaches that we should have complete trust in the merciful love of Jesus.  His divine heart is irresistibly inclined to pour out its mercy without measure on the abject and the lowly.

We are to approach Christ in “trustful humility” with our sinfulness, brokenness, and imperfections before us.  Through His mercy our sins will be forgiven, our brokenness healed, and our imperfections refined.

In “trustful humility” we should offer ourselves as an “empty vessel” to be filled with the love of God and ultimately absorbed in love in Him.  We should never fear His loving mercy.  We should approach unhindered, to embrace His merciful love.


Michael blogs at  To Love and Truth.

Mary is my real mum

By Melanie Jean Juneau

Madonna and Child by Bellini (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

God has inscribed a moral code on my heart. It is  hidden in my deepest self. Actually, if  as an adult, I can block out my own ego and simply stop to listen, I can live a holy life. In fact Christ  offers an easy way to sanctity, to loving God and each other.  A spirituality that a child understands. A spirituality that St.Thérèse of Lisieux understood. Relax. Give up striving.
Surrender to His love and let it saturate every cell of your body. Then simply let His love flow through you. It ends up being a long journey to embrace such a carefree lifestyle because pride and ego get in the way. It is so simple that it seems complicated to our adult, logical minds.

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).

And in even stronger terms: “'I assure you,'” He said, 'unless you are converted and become like children,  you will never get into the kingdom of heaven…’” (Matthew 18:4).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church:  To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little. Even more: to become “children of God” we must be “born from above” or “born of God”. Only when Christ is formed in us will the mystery of Christmas be fulfilled in us. Christmas is the mystery of this “marvelous exchange”:

O marvelous exchange! Man’s Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity. (526)

A relationship with the living God is child’s play. Listen to this exchange between my young children:

One afternoon, I was making dinner, standing at the counter with my back to our three youngest children. Grace and Daniel were lounging around the kitchen table, with three-year-old Rebecca perched like a little elf on a high stool, happily swinging her legs. Simply making conversation, Grace who was eight, asked Rebecca,“Rebbecca, whose your favorite, Mum or Dad?”

Rebecca replied,”Both!”

Still facing the counter, I looked over my shoulder and intruded on their conversation, “Smart answer, Rebecca.”

Rebecca was not done though, “But she’s not my real mum, Mary is.”

Grace rolled her eyes, slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand and said incredulously, “Where does she get this stuff?”

I tried to explain as simply as I could, “Well, the Holy Spirit is in her heart and she listens to His voice.”

Rebecca jumped right back into the discussion and chanted in a sing-song, lilting voice, “That’s right. God the Father in my heart. Baby Jesus in my heart. Holy Spirit in my heart. Mother Mary in my heart…but…I still like Mum and Dad the best!”

Grace rolled her eyes and plunked her head down on the table with a loud sigh, “Where does she get this stuff?”

I just laughed.

Continue reading at Melanie's blog The Joy of Nine.

Everyone can be a saint

by Connie Rossini

 

I’ve been re-reading St. Therese’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul. Almost at the beginning she writes about her view of the “world of souls” as a flower garden. She is one little flower in it, surrounded by others. Each has its own size, color, strength, and beauty.

“[God] has created the great saints who are like the lilies and the roses, but He has also created much lesser saints and they must be content to be the daisies or the violets which rejoice His eyes whenever He glances down. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being that which He wants us to be.”

It’s easy to have spiritual envy. We read about the graces God gave St. Therese and think, “That’s not fair. Why didn’t He give such graces to me? I’d like to be a saint too.”

But notice that Therese does not mention any soul in God’s garden who was not made to be a saint–just greater and lesser saints. We all have different graces, but we are all called to be saints.

St. Paul wrote:

“If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable…” (1 Corinthians 12:17-22).

Are you weak? You are indispensable to God’s plan for the Church!


Continue reading at Connie's blog  Contemplative Homeschool.

Practical mysticism

by Connie Rossini

St. Francis de Sales (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

CSBN has been running a series on spiritual idiolects, a phrase I coined to mean the unique way each person relates to God. I hope that you will find "kindred spirits" in these posts, and be drawn to follow bloggers who have a similar spirituality to yours--or those whose are surprisingly different.

My spiritual idiolect is practical mysticism. I've always hated the saying, "He's so heavenly minded that he's no earthly good." The truly heavenly minded do the most earthly good. Think of St. Therese, who even wanted to do earthly good while in Heaven. She reached the heights of the prayer life, and actively loved her neighbors. That's what I aspire to. I want to be a contemplative wife and mother. I want to love God and my neighbor.

I loved St. Therese from the first time I read about her as a child. Her personality appealed to the romantic idealist in me.

Later, my older sister urged me to read Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales. Now, there's a great book! St. Francis taught lay people how they could be saints, giving them tips on every area of life. How do you know when temptation becomes sin? How can you practice Christian meditation? How can a lay person live in the world and be properly detached from it? St. Francis answers all these questions. I need concrete direction. That's why I love St. Francis.

The next saintly influence on my spiritual idiolect came from Teresa of Avila. Although I didn't really understand The Interior Castle the first time I read it, it drew me to a life of prayer. Eventually, I joined the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites. They explained St. Teresa's teaching to me. They also introduced me to St. John of the Cross.

Today I am no longer OCDS, but I am thoroughly Carmelite in my spirituality. St. John in particular taught that mysticism is not a matter of visions, locutions, and altered states. Rather, it is a matter of a deep communion with God in prayer. Aspiring to be mystics as the world sees mysticism can be dangerous. Aspiring to grow in prayer is the call of every Christian.

Now I try to give practical spiritual help to others through my blog and ebooks. (I'm working on a full-length one right now to add to my short ebook published in June.) I like to teach people, including children, about the differences between true and false mysticism, Christian and eastern meditation, and Christian and pagan asceticism and detachment. I am striving to be holy in the little things of every day life. I am working to be heavenly minded and earthly good.


Connie Rossini is the administrator of Catholic Spirituality Blogs Network. Her personal blog is  Contemplative Homeschool.

What is mental prayer and how can you do it?

by Connie Rossini

St. Therese of Lisieux (photo in public domain).

 


Catholics divide prayer into 2 broad categories – vocal and mental. Vocal prayer includes prayers written for recitation. Mental prayer is prayer in one’s own words.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote, “Mental prayer, in my view, is nothing but friendly intercourse, and frequent solitary converse, with Him Who we know loves us.” St. Thérèse of Lisieux likewise wrote, “With me prayer is an uplifting of the heart; a glance towards heaven; a cry of gratitude and love, uttered equally in sorrow and in joy.”

Catholics are generally comfortable with vocal prayer, but mental prayer can leave us at a loss. How can you spend 20 minutes or more in prayer without a pre-written text? How can you keep your prayer from becoming mere rambling?

St. Teresa strives to make mental prayer simple and accessible to all. Since each soul is unique, each person’s prayer is unique as well. There is no one-size-fits-all model. The method of mental prayer takes 2nd place to the attitude of the heart. Still, for beginners especially, a general format to follow is helpful.


Continue reading at  Contemplative Homeschool  for a suggested method of mental prayer.

St. Therese's astonishing trust in God

by Connie Rossini

St. Therese trusted God daringly (Photo Credit: Wikipedia).

The other day, I read this passage from one of St. Therese of Lisieux‘s letters, in Jacques Philippe’s The Way of Trust and Love:

“[A child who has sinned] throws himself into his father’s arms, telling him that he is sorry to have hurt him, that he loves him, and that he will prove it by being good from now on… Then, if that child asks his father to punish him with a kiss, I don’t think the happy father could harden his heart against his child’s filial trust, knowing his sincerity and love.”

St. Therese is saying that when we sin, we should trust God so much as to ask Him to bless us in lieu of punishment.

Does this astonish you? It did me. Human nature says that when we sin, we should run away from God like Adam did. We expect God to reject us, even when we do come to Him in repentance.

Be daring in your trust

But Therese is bold, “daring” as she herself said. She asked for a kiss from God whenever she sinned. And she became “the greatest saint of modern times,” according to Blessed John Paul II!

You might be thinking, “Yeah, but Therese’s sins weren’t like mine. She only committed tiny venial sins, while I…” (You name it.) You’re right. Your sins probably are worse than hers. So are mine. But if you are a Christian, your God is exactly the same as hers was. And that’s the whole point.


Read more about St. Therese's trust at  Contemplative Homeschool.

The mother of all parenting books

by Anabelle Hazard

Catholic Mothers of the world, drop whatever book you are reading and read this one, The Mother of the Little Flower by Celine Martin. 

Here are some of the 7 quick things I’ve learned from Blessed Zelie Martin:

1. She encouraged her children to perform acts of self-denial for heaven and had them slide rosary beads or fill a drawer with nuts for each good deed.  I was so inspired that I sprinted off to Hobby Lobby with a project.  My flower-picking girls placed baskets on our altar and decorated it with a flower for each good deed/self-denial.  The bouquets will be offered up when we renew our consecration to Our Lady.

 

2. Bl. Zelie “was constantly busy with lace-making, housekeeping, working for her children and correspondence.”  I note the ‘correspondence’ with glee because what remains of her letters have been used as evidence for her canonization and gives me justified permission for the time I spend online. It’s certainly possible that if Bl. Zelie were living today, she’d be e-mailing, blogging or face-booking to keep her friends and family inspired.

3. She was vigilant at correcting her children’s faults: from poutiness, to selfishness, to vanity. But did her children call her a nag?  No!  Pauline, her oldest praised her:  “My parents always seemed to me to be saints.  We were filled with respect and admiration for them. I sometimes asked myself if it were possible to find their equals on earth.”

Read the rest of this guest post by Anabelle at her blog  Written by the Finger of God.

What is Carmelite spirituality?

by Connie Rossini

What is Carmelite spirituality? A couple of readers have asked me this question, and I assume several more have wondered and not asked. So I'm going to write this as a post (for maximum visibility and readership), then make it a permanent page soon.

Carmelite spirituality stems from the teaching and lifestyle of one of the oldest surviving religious orders in the Catholic Church. Like the Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, and others, the Carmelites have a particular way of living out the faith, which has been approved by the Church. St. Therese of Lisieux, one of the best-beloved saints of our age, was a Carmelite nun.

From ancient Mt. Carmel to medieval Europe

 

In the 12th century, a group of Christian hermits settled on Mt. Carmel,  where the prophet Elijah had once lived in a cave. St. Albert of Jerusalem wrote a rule of life for them to follow. They built a monastery and came together for prayer, but each lived in his own cell. They dedicated their oratory to Mary, becoming known as the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel.

As always, tensions were high in the Middle East at this time. Soon the Carmelite brothers left the Holy Land for Europe. There they assumed an active life--that is, living and working in the world. Blessed John Soreth established the Carmelite nuns in 1452. The Third Order, for seculars, began two centuries later.

The reform by Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross

 

Throughout the centuries many saints and blesseds in various countries reformed the Carmelites in their lands. The most significant reform came from saints Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross in 16th-century Spain. The communities they established eventually became the separate Discalced Carmelite Order. "Discalced" means "shoeless." They wore sandals as a sign of poverty and penance. Teresa and John were later named doctors of prayer by the Church. This means the Church not only approves their teaching, but recommends it to all Christians.

These days, the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance (O. Carm.) and the Discalced Carmelites (OCD) see themselves as two branches of the same family. Though their goals and teachings are somewhat different, they share much in common. There are also at least a half-dozen new members of the Carmelite family that have been approved by the Church, including the Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, to which my brother belongs.  They would probably all agree with the spirituality posts on this blog. Nevertheless, when I speak of Carmelite spirituality, I am speaking about OCDS spirituality, which is what I know most about. I was a member of the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCDS) for about 15 years.

Continue reading at Contemplative Homeschool.

You can be holy today

by Connie Rossini

There seems to be a dilemma in the spiritual life. We want to do great things for God, but we are caught up in the little tasks of everyday life. We think holiness must wait until some future time: when the kids are grown up, when the job is less demanding, when we retire, when we can go on retreat. But if, as Vatican II taught, holiness is meant for everyone, shouldn’t it be accessible in every circumstance? How can we become holy now?

Although some saints have been martyrs, missionaries, or miracle workers, others have been parents, kings and queens, businessmen, and even children. How did they become great? Through “abandonment to divine providence” as Fr. Jeanne-Pierre de Caussade called it.

Don’t let the big words confuse you. This is simply the “Little Way” of St. Therese of Lisieux, who said that even when she picked an object off the floor, she did it out of love for God. Likewise, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said, “We must do little things with great love.” This practice has also been called “the sacrament of the present moment.”

Continue reading about the Little Way at http://contemplativehomescool.wordpress.com.