Can't you just hear him saying, "You remembered?"

Yes, Padre, we did! Though it is quite a busy day in the Church because your birthday is also the feast of St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi, St. Gregory VII, and the Venerable Bede (who is really St. Bede)! Nonetheless, thanks to two friends reminding us, we here at Miss Marcel's Musings have catapulted you to the top of the post to say, "Happy Birthday!" and we don't even need to add "Ad Multos Annos!" since you are in the heart of eternity as we speak! Or are you . . .?

No, we have no doubt that you are in Heaven, but then we recall your words that you'd stay outside the gates till all your spiritual children get it. What a father you are to us! Thank you! We're asking St. Peter right now to make sure you get a nice piece of cake and some Neapolitan ice cream while you wait for us.

Since there's nothing you need today (except for all of us to join you, and we can't rush that), we've decided, in lieu of giving you gifts, to ask for the miracles we need. Please, dear Padre Pio, attend to the many conversions, healings, reconciliations, and random urgent necessities and heartfelt desires we place at your feet. Jesus whom you have loved so much cannot refuse you any request you make of Him, especially on your birthday . . .

For our part, how about if we offer on this day in your honor a little docility and attention to your fatherly advice? We will thus be a little closer to you and to Heaven, and our earthly pilgrimage will be all the easier, and His yoke all the lighter. I found these words that you wrote in a letter on April 23, 1918. A hundred and five years have not dimmed the brilliance, wisdom, sweetness, and consolation of the Holy Spirit shining and sparkling through your letter, so here it is for our meditation and gratitude:

"Do not anticipate the problems of this life with apprehension, but rather with a perfect hope that God, to whom you belong, will free you from them accordingly. He has defended you up to now. Simply hold on tightly to the hand of His Divine Providence and He will help you in all events, and when you are unable to walk, He will lead you.

"Why should you fear when you belong to this God who strongly assured us: 'We know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him'? Don't think about tomorrow's events, because the same Heavenly Father who takes care of you today will do the same tomorrow and forever. 

"Live tranquilly, [removing] from your imagination that which upsets you and often say to our Lord: O God, You are my God and I will trust in You. You will assist me and be my refuge, and I will fear nothing because not only are you with Him, but you are in Him and He is with you. What can a child fear in the arms of its father?"

Oh how good are your words! How true and wise . . . I am reminded of St. Alphonsus' comment that "One single holy maxim, well ruminated, is sufficient to make a saint.” This is more of a passage than a holy maxim, but your very first line, dear Padre, or any single line of your advice could serve for our single maxim, and the rest as a commentary. 

We are weak at doing what we would, though, so we ask you, good Padre, to obtain for us the grace to ruminate on your words and allow them to settle into our souls. 

"Do not anticipate the problems of this life with apprehension, but rather with a perfect hope that God, to whom you belong, will free you from them accordingly. He has defended you up to now. Simply hold on tightly to the hand of His Divine Providence and He will help you in all events, and when you are unable to walk, He will lead you."

Thank you for thinking of us on your birthday - how like you! And thank you for helping us, as always, think of the goodness and mercy of God, His perfect Fatherhood, and our one simple task: to abandon ourselves into His arms, or if that feels like too much, simply to hold on tightly to His hand.

We love you Padre Pio! Please give Jesus many kisses for us. You will find Him in St. Anthony's arms, and I'm sure St. Anthony will let you hold our dear little Lord today. While you are near your Franciscan brother, please whisper a request that he help us all find what we have lost - physical and spiritual goods that would make life so much more manageable if only we found them pronto!

And we are sending Marcel to give you a good tickle because we know you have a lot of laughter just waiting to explode out from your mouth in that beatific smile! We will praise God with you today, and thank Him for creating you and giving you to us as another father. Thank You, Jesus, for Your miracle worker, Padre Pio!

Draw me, we will run . . . 

Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. - Jesus in John 14:9

An astounding thing happened in the Liturgy this past week, and because the Liturgy inserts us into the truest reality, we can say that an astounding thing happened in Real Life. Jesus has a message He desperately wants us to hear, and He is not holding back in repeating it, for in the course of just five days of the Divine Office and the Mass, Our Savior told us seven times His words to Philip at the Last Supper, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."

His urgent repetitions began on May 3, feast of Saints Philip and James, when to my surprise and delight I found this verse placed by the Church into our mouths and ears no less than five times in the course of that single day!

Beginning in the Liturgy of the Hours with the second antiphon for the psalms at Morning Prayer, Our Lord told us, "Whoever sees Me, sees My Father also." Next, in the Alleluia verse before the gospel at Holy Mass, He proclaimed, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father." Then in the gospel reading itself, from St. John's chapter 14, after Philip says, "Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us," Jesus responds, "Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father?' Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?" And as if this were not enough to convey His meaning to us in the Mass, again we heard at the Communion Antiphon, "Whoever has seen Me, Philip, has seen the Father also." And finally, I was bowled over when yet again at Evening Prayer the first antiphon restated, "Philip, whoever sees Me sees My Father also."

Wowie zowie! Jesus really wants us to get this message!
But wait! There's more!

This past Saturday, May 6, the gospel for the 4th week of Easter was taken again from St. John's chapter 14, and again Jesus asserted, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."

And finally, for Sunday of the 5th week of Easter, the Church began at the opening of John's chapter 14 with those marvelous and ever consoling words from the Spouse of our souls:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in Me. In My Father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to Myself, that where I am you also may be."

Ah, so good to hear! But I wondered . . . will He really say it yet again, this verse so dear to His Heart? And sure enough, right as rain, as if He couldn't repeat these words enough - for now it was the 7th time, the fullness of speech, one might say - the gospel passage continued on to the now very familiar teaching. First, "If you know Me, you will also know My Father," and then in answer to Philip's question, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."

In the homily at that Mass, our good priest focused in part on the words of Jesus' disciples in the Acts of the Apostles, "It is not right for us to neglect the word of God . . . "

This made me realize that I'd better pay attention to what Jesus was saying - saying 7 times for the benefit of those forgetful ones among us. Marcel is always forgetting things that Jesus told him in their Conversations; hence my nickname, Miss Marcel. And I have been, with Marcel, musing, trying to figure out what Jesus is so urgently wanting us to know this Easter season, so important is it that He can't stop saying it to us, as if to be sure we don't forget this particular and urgently needed truth.

I think our sister St. Therese can help us a great deal here. She knew Jesus well and knows Him even better now! If seeing Him means seeing the Father, if having come to know Him, we now know the Father, it makes sense to me to ask, and to ask her, a Doctor of the Church and one who promised to shower roses upon us from Heaven: Just what is the Father like? 

Therese said in her Last Conversations, "The Gospels are enough. I listen with delight to these words of Jesus which tell me all I must do: 'Learn of Me for I am meek and humble of heart'; then I'm at peace, according to His sweet promise: 'and you will find rest for your little souls.'"

We don't usually think of the Father as meek and humble of Heart, and yet Jesus is adamant that when we see Him (Jesus), we see the Father . . . We are so likely to think of Jesus as the gentle one, and the Father as the harsh one . . . or at least we might be thinking that Jesus is merciful, while the Father is our severe Judge. Oh, but how wrong we would be to ever think of the Father as severe! And that is why Jesus wants so badly for us always to see the Father in Him, to know that the Father and He are one, and just as Jesus wants aching mankind to snuggle close to His merciful Heart, as He told St. Faustina, so to does the Father want us to snuggle close to Himself!

In Marcel's Autobiography, he tells us of his first meeting with St. Therese, and he goes on for pages (thanks be to God!) recounting her teaching to him on that day in October, 1941. The majority of her words focus on God as our Father, because she wants Marcel to understand how tender and loving, how merciful and approachable God really is.

Since we, like Marcel, are her little sisters and brothers, she is extremely glad to share her doctrine with us too and provide a commentary on Jesus' words, "Whoever sees Me sees the Father." Her words here don't explicate the deep mysteries of the Blessed Trinity so much as they show us what and Who we are seeing when we see the Father. In her words I find the Father recognizable because He is so much like the Son. Although we would typically say a son is like his father, and perhaps theologically we ought to say the Son is like the Father, still we are taking our lead from Jesus. He tells us in this teaching so dear to His Heart, in this discourse of His last words the night before He suffered and died for us, "You know Me! That means you now know the Father!"

If we look at Jesus, we will see the Father. So what do we see when we look at Jesus? Gentleness, tenderness, meekness, humility, kindness, compassion, patience, forbearance, LOVE! And utter approachability - for someone who has known Him, like the beloved disciple John, the favorite posture is to lean on Christ's breast, to be as close to Him as possible, or like the women who met Him on Easter, to embrace Him. So too this should be our favored posture with the Father! 

But Therese has already explained all this quite beautifully and convincingly to Marcel and us in words much more compelling than mine. She, like Jesus, loves this name, "Father," and she wants us to love it too. Here is what she told our little brother about God when she began to instruct him (these paragraphs and those which follow begin at (598) in Marcel's Autobiography):

"My dear little brother, you see God is our Father. But because man, poor sinner, dominated by fear, dared no longer to give to God the name of Father, God Himself lowered Himself in becoming man, to remind His human brothers of the existence of a source of grace that the love of God had made to gush forth, and which would continue to flow unendingly. So from His own mouth He has taught us to give Him the name of Father.

"Yes, God is our Father, our true Father, a very real Father . . . To be God's children is for us an incomparable happiness. We are right to be proud of it and never to give way to an excessive fear.

"God is our beloved Father! O dear little brother! I wish to remind you unceasingly of this so-sweet name. I am asking you to make sure from now onwards always to keep the memory of this name of Love, and never to adopt a worried air or a fearful attitude in the presence of this Love which is infinitely paternal! Yes, remember always that God is Father, that He has filled you with graces, that He has never refused to answer your smallest wishes, and that very often He has granted more than you wished for. Truly, everything proclaims the goodness and the power of God, and He only uses this power to show the kindness of His Heart toward His creatures." 

Yes, this is the ticket! Jesus came to show us this Love of God the Father that flows forth unendingly, and to make sure we know that God is the most loving of Fathers. When we, like Philip, ask Him to finally show us the Father, He says, "But I have! He is all that you see in Me - power, yes, but entirely at the service of goodness! Do not be afraid! I tell you not to be afraid of Me, but also do not be afraid of Him, our Father, for He is Love, as I have shown you I am and will show you on the cross: We are Love!"

Therese continues in the same vein of precious Truth:

"Never fear God. He is the all-loving Father. He knows only how to love, and He wishes to be loved in return. He thirsts for our poor little hearts which come from His creative hands."

Remember when Jesus said, "I thirst," from the cross? We were seeing the Face of the Father too and hearing the Father's voice crying out through His Word about His thirst for our love! When we see the Son there, giving all for us, we are seeing the Father giving all for us too.

And how shall we return love for Love? How shall we satiate the Father's thirst, as well as the Son's? Here is where Therese shines. The simplicity of a child is hers, and she urges us to make it our own, painstakingly but gladly telling us:

"Offer all of your little heart to God. Be sincere with Him in all circumstances and in all your points of view. When you feel joy, offer Him this joy which swells your heart and, by so doing, you will transmit your joy to Him. Can there be a greater happiness than a couple loving one another and exchanging all they possess? To act in this way with God is to say thank you to Him, which pleases Him more than thousands of touching canticles. If, on the other hand, you are invaded by sadness, say to Him again with an honest heart: 'O my God, I am really unhappy!' And ask Him to help you to accept this sadness with patience. Really believe this: nothing gives as much pleasure to the good God than to see on this earth a heart which loves Him, who is sincere with Him with each step, with each smile, as well with tears as with little momentary pleasures . . . So when you speak to the good God, do so quite naturally as if you were talking to those around you. You can speak to Him of anything you wish . . . of climbing the mountain, the teasing of your friends, and if you become angry with anyone, tell it also to the good God in all honesty. God takes pleasure in listening to you; in fact He thirsts to hear these little stories with which people are too sparing with Him. They can spend hours telling these amusing stories to their friends, but when it's a question of the good God who longs to hear such stories to the point of being able to shed tears, there is no one to tell Him about them. From now on, little brother, don't be miserly with your stories to the good God. All right?" And then Therese laughed!

Yes, we are miserly, precisely because we are still afraid of the Father and don't know that He longs for us as we know the Son longs for us. But since we have seen and understood this longing and thirst in the Son, then He wants us to know that we have seen and known it in the Father also. We do not need to be afraid of God the Father any more, nor anymore than we should be afraid of God the Son! They are mercy and love!

But we, like Marcel, know the basics of the catechism, and so we know that God is omniscient. He knows everything already! And so, with Marcel we can ask our super smart sister Therese, "But, holy sister, God already knows absolutely all of these things. Is it still necessary to tell them to Him?"

I am guessing the answer before I re-read and write it here for you: God does not want to live alone reflecting on what He knows without us there reflecting with Him! He has made us for Himself and He wants to share all His goodness, love, mercy, kindness, compassion, joy, peace, and intimacy with us - which means He wants us to tell Him everything we are experiencing as if He doesn't already know! Or, in Therese's words:

"It is true, little brother, that God knows everything completely. All is present to Him from all eternity. From all eternity, also, God knows, absolutely, all of that so nobody has any need to speak of it to Him. However, to 'give' and to 'receive' love He must lower Himself to the level of a man like you, and He does it as if He's completely forgotten that He is God who knows everything. In the hope of hearing an intimate word springing from your heart, God acts in this way because He loves you; He wishes by that to fill you with precious graces, to let you know of all the good desires and all the delights that one tastes in His love."

We know what Jesus has done to give and to receive - He became man to live among us, beginning His life as we do in His mother's womb, so tiny He was invisible to the naked eye even if one could have seen into that Immaculate womb! And then He was born in Bethlehem, an adorable infant ready for our caresses, completely approachable, showing us His Face, the Face of God. He didn't want us to be scared of Him - so He made Himself weak and small, He who is Almighty and infinite! But what of the Father? What about His Face? Is it as remote as ever? Is He as remote as ever? Jesus says not. Jesus says that when we see Him, we see the Father! And here is what Therese says to explain the Father's nearness and approachability . . . 

"I want to make use of an example here. When a daddy wishes to give his little child a kiss, of course he cannot remain standing up straight and lazily demand that his child heave himself up to his lips to receive this kiss on his cheek. Could such a kiss be called an affectionate kiss? Evidently not! To give a kiss to his little one, it is understood that the daddy must bend down a lot, right to within reach of his face, or again, take the child in his arms. In both cases he must bend down.

"Have you understood, little brother? God is our loving Father. In order to show us His love, and to receive the love which we offer to Him, He has really wished to lower Himself to our level. For love, there is no difficulty in lowering oneself in this manner. The only problem, before which God appears to be powerless, is to notice our lack of love and confidence in Him. He sees Himself rejected in a totally unfair manner, yet He never rejects us."

We have seen the Son, alone in the Garden. The Father, though invisible in that scene as Christ was invisible in the Blessed Mother's womb, is there in the Garden too for He is in the Son . . . We have then, in seeing the Son, seen the Father, and the Father too awaits our love and confidence . . .

What shall we do? Therese shows us the Little Way to console His Heart:

"Little brother, to comfort the good God, follow this piece of advice: never be miserly in the things I am going to speak to you about. Be always ready to offer Him your heart, your thoughts and all your actions. In welcoming them it will be for Him like welcoming a new paradise where all the Trinity finds its delights. Remember this: although He is God, our heavenly Father never scorns little things. He takes as much pleasure in things which are apparently insignificant, as in the most wonderful spectacle because all of it is the marvelous work of His love."

Remember the widow's mite? I always think this was a parable until I remember that no, it really happened: Our Lord in the temple pointed out to the disciples how this woman who dropped in a small coin was giving more than anyone else because she was giving her sustenance. Small, yet great in His eyes. And those sparrows! He tells us truly that the Father knows of even a sparrow falling to the ground . . . and He clothes the lilies of the field, and feeds the cawing ravens . . . none of these are insignificant to Him, yet all the more so are our little nothings very big somethings for Him, for He loves us infinitely more than the sparrows and lilies and ravens! And we can't forget how He welcomed the children, drew them into His arms, blessed them, used them as examples for His disciples, and would not let His friends send away these little ones who had come to Him.

Finally, our sister reminds us of the knowledge the lover and beloved have of each other, knowledge that is a source and fruit of love, a cause and an effect, we might say. There must be unity for love to exist, and this unity demands "from one side and the other personal knowledge and mutual understanding." Oh how we crave such reciprocal understanding! Half of it is guaranteed when the Lover is God, but then there is our part. She explains:

"On His part, God our beloved Father knows Himself personally, and understands us thoroughly. As for us, we need Him to get to know ourselves and to understand Him. Consequently, if you did not wish to collaborate with Him in the work which leads to unity, telling Him all your intentions, your words, your actions, and all your efforts, you would never attain unity. Try to think about it in order to see clearly. There is no exaggeration in my words. I love you . . . From now on, in your relations with your Heavenly Father, do not fail to follow my advice."

One word of our sister's that I left out in those ellipses is her wish for us. She says, "My only wish is to see you accomplish the works that the divine love desires so ardently for you."

I hope that in my writing this post and your reading it we have done a work that the divine love ardently desires. I think we must have, for we have been learning Who the Father is, and how He would like us to relate to Him. Perhaps it comes as a surprise? Or perhaps you are merely reminded of something Jesus had already whispered to your heart? In seeing Jesus in the Gospels and the Sacraments, in seeing Him in HIs infancy and passion, and now seeing Him in the Blessed Sacrament in Mass and adoration, we have seen and are seeing the Father. He is love and mercy, and we can approach Him with utter confidence in His perfect Fatherhood - which is all condescension and indulgence. Let us pour out our hearts to the Father as we do with the Son. Let us stop being afraid and realize how much we are loved! He is leaning down to us, ready to scoop us up to Himself. Let us let ourselves be scooped!

I find it perfect that Jesus' oft repeated words to Philip come in between two words of advice He has for us, two commandments that are the sweetest in His repertoire. At the beginning of John's chapter 14, Jesus tells us, "Let not your hearts be troubled." Shortly after, He says, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father." But then not long after, He reminds us, "Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid." I love that He feels constrained to add, "or afraid," to His "Let not your hearts be troubled." As if He who is the One Word of the Father cannot help repeating that fear has no place in the presence of His divine love. And He who is present in all things by His essence, His presence, and His power (as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches), will not leave us alone to fret and stew. No, let us obey Him and let not our hearts be troubled nor afraid! And let us gratefully receive this new knowledge of the Father so that we take our rightful places as the apples of His eyes, those eyes which gaze on us always with infinite love.

Draw me, Heavenly Father, and we will run!

Above we have the first page of the papal announcement of Therese's beatification, and a painting by her sister Celine (Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face), made at the request of the Vatican as a model for a painting to be used at the beatification. ​

This is the day the Lord has made - it is 100 years today since Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (Therese of Lisieux) was beatified! Let us rejoice and be glad for 100 years of the Church's recognition that Therese is our powerful intercessor and guiding star in Heaven!

And now, before anything else, let's begin by finishing our novena asking for that intercession:

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Guardian angels, please present to our sister St. Therese all the intentions of our hearts, those commended to our prayers, those for whom we have promised to pray, those who need our prayers, those which spring readily to our minds again and again as well as those forgotten in our littleness. Little Flower, in this hour, show your power!

Novena to St Therese

O Little Therese of the Child Jesus
Please pick for me a rose from the heavenly garden
and send it to me as a message of love.

O Little Flower of Jesus,
please ask God to grant the favors
I now place with confidence in your hands . . . 

St. Therese, help us to always believe as you did,
in God’s great love for us,
so that we may imitate your “Little Way” each day.
Amen. 

And while we're praying, I can't resist sharing this wonderful prayer from the time of the beatification of Thérèse:

O Blessed “little Thérèse”, use now more than ever your powerful credit with God, in favor of those who love you! By glorifying you, as we know, the Church invites us to follow this path of spiritual childhood which He once came to reveal to the world and whose wake you have luminously traced. So attract all souls to humility, by the scent of your sweet perfumes, and lead them, simple and trusting, into the arms of their Heavenly Father.

+   +   +

And finally, here is a marvelous blessing from Pius XI, the one who beatified Therese:

We recommend to her, not only Our poor and humble Person, not only the works of evangelization entrusted to the Order of Carmel and all the Missions that were so dear to her and which inspired in her such fervent accents and such high aspirations, but also the whole Church, all the immense family that the heart of God has deigned to bequeath to Our heart; and from that heart, We draw down the warmest and most abundant blessing for each and every one of you, for everything that occupies your spirit and your heart, in order that that blessing may enter in wherever your thoughts and your affections enter. 

Amen! We here at Miss Marcel's Musings (and that would include Therese and Marcel) join this great pontiff in asking God's blessing to enter in wherever your thoughts and your affections enter! May she who loves to "come down" and help us know God's love, come down especially today with roses in abundance to draw us and all those we love back up with her into our Heavenly Father's loving embrace.

And now, a little more on miracles . . . I know I can never get enough of miracles, and I think it's because they show us not only the power of God, but especially His tender solicitude, as well as the love of His saints who have interceded for us. That they, in Heaven, care for us is a HUGE part of Therese's doctrine. She wrote to her spiritual brother, the future missionary Maurice Belliere, about the genuine concern of the saints for us because he was concerned that they - and soon Therese in particular - knowing our weakness and perhaps even our sins, would think the less of us from their position in glory. Therese found it super important to correct him and wrote:

"I have to tell you, little brother, that we don’t understand Heaven in the same way. You think that, once I share in the justice and holiness of God, I won’t be able to excuse your faults as I did when I was on earth. Are you then forgetting that I shall also share in the infinite mercy of the Lord? I believe that the Blessed in Heaven have great compassion for our miseries. They remember that when they were weak and mortal like us, they committed the same faults themselves and went through the same struggles, and their fraternal tenderness becomes still greater than it ever was on earth. It’s on account of this that they never stop watching over us and praying for us."

Therese had her ways of proving her words, and on the very day of her beatification, thirty remarkable favors were recorded and sent to the Carmel of Lisieux! This was in addition to the little miracle of the splendor of her beatification, as if in eager anticipation of her complete glorification and canonization - Fr. Taylor, her fervent Scottish apostle, wrote in Saint Therese of Lisieux, The Little Flower of Jesus [1927 edition]:

"On April 29, 1923, the Venerable Therese of the Child Jesus was enrolled among the Blessed, to the great joy of the Catholic world. It was the first Beatification by Pius XI [this was slightly more than a year after he became pope]. The attendant crowds, recruited from all parts of the globe, resembled those to be seen at a great Canonization. No one who took part in the ceremony could forget the enthusiasm of the multitude, or the great Te Deum, reserved solely for a Canonization, and intoned on this occasion by a happy mistake."

But back to her shower of roses . . . Therese had told her sisters they would find consolation in the mailbox, and sure enough, the letters that arrived recounting miracles (and asking favors, and requesting relics) grew from hundreds to thousands in short order. In 1910, the Carmel of Lisieux received nearly 10, 000 letters from 5 continents! By the time of Therese's beatification, 100 years ago today, to her canonization two years later, the Carmel received between 500 and 1000 letters EVERY DAY! Whew!

One might think these letters were mostly requesting favors. In fact the Carmel didn't even think to keep the letters recounting the first favors, but once they began, the miracles piled up! The first published "Shower of Roses" with stories of miracles was an appendix at the back of the 1907 edition of Story of a Soul. After that the Carmel published 7 volumes of Showers of Roses, up until 1925, which totaled more than 3,000 closely printed pages! All simply accounts of miracles thanks to Therese's intercession!

With all this talk of miracles, I think I'd better share one of my favorites . . . 

In 1910, there was a poor Carmel in Gallipoli, Italy - I mean destitute - and after reading Story of a Soul (which had been sent around as Therese's circular obituary letter to Carmelite convents in France and had reached these nuns in Italy, in an unofficial Italian translation around 1908), the mother superior led the sisters in a novena to Sister Therese. Though she was but relatively recently deceased, these nuns were no dummies and saw that she was obviously a Saint.  They were praying a novena to Therese who was not yet even Blessed nor Venerable, and their devotion and confidence cheers me when I think of our love here for little Marcel Van (also neither Blessed nor Venerable at this time, but a very dear brother of our Sister now Saint Therese).

Well, listen to what happened to this innocently unprepared mother superior when she prayed to little Therese for financial relief.

Therese showed up in the mother's bedroom and had Mama Superior follow her to the cash box, which had been bare like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, when what to her wondering eyes should appear but MONEY in the box!? Mother thought she was dreaming and in her dream when the little Carmelite whom she'd first mistaken for Teresa of Avila (which made the dreamy nun laugh and say, No, I am little Therese) started to walk away, Mother said, "But you might lose your way," because it was dark except for the light streaming from little Therese. The shining angel-of-a-nun smiled back at her and said, "No - my way is sure."

In the morning, waking up in her own bed, Mother was understandably addled. Her sisters pressed her and she told them of her dream. The other nuns led her to the cash box and sure enough - MONEY! Later the Bishop got involved: he was much impressed by the words, "My way is sure," and as he suspected, these words meant a great deal to the novices and nuns in Lisieux. More miracles occurred (more money) until with their 15 minutes of fame, these poor Carmelites came to the attention of those who could help support them with alms from earth. For her part, Therese had been true to her word, and left no one in doubt: her way is sure. 

When Therese's sister Pauline, now Mother Agnes of Jesus in the Carmel of Lisieux, received this letter, it touched her deeply. She wrote back to the Mother Superior in Gallipoli:

“My good and reverend Mother, imagine with what joy we received your most interesting report. Therese told us when she was down here: ‘If my way of trust and love is suspect, I promise not to leave you in error. I shall return to tell you and, if this way is safe, you too will know’. And now to you, dearest mother in Jesus, this angel comes to say how things stand: ‘My way is safe and I was not wrong.’ Perhaps you gave only a literal meaning to this phrase, but here things are different. What makes me marvel, still, is that Therese has come to tell us this precisely when her cause is being dealt with, where her “way” is being studied. Oh, Mother, since her death my little Therese has worked many miracles, but none has struck me like this latter."

We who have had 100 years of her Little Way being held up by the Church as a sure model can only imagine what joy Mother Agnes felt to have Therese's reassurance as they awaited the Church's verdict. Let us rejoice with her that little Therese didn't want them to have to wait to trust all she had taught them. We, too, can trust Therese, now on the highest authority, and let us, too, not wait any longer to allow her to fill us with her trademark confidence in God. "It is confidence, and nothing but confidence, that must lead us to Love!"

Pope Pius XI confided on the evening of April 29, 1923, that this day of Therese's beatification was the happiest day of his life. As for Therese's sister Celine, her happiest day was when the previous Holy Father, Benedict XV, had proclaimed Therese's heroic virtue a few years earlier, because on that day he spoke to the whole world about her Little Way of Spiritual Childhood, recommending it to everyone. 

And so, in honor of this anniversary and these "happiest days," let's conclude with the Little Way, which is one of the great gifts God has given us through his little Doctor, Therese, and one of her most life-changing roses for us. In Therese's own words describing this Little Way for Mother Agnes:

"It is to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God as a little child expects everything from its father; it is to be disquieted about nothing, and not to be set on gaining our living. Even among the poor, they give the child what is necessary, but as soon as he grows up, his father no longer wants to feed him and says: 'Work now, you can take care of yourself.'

"It was so as not to hear this that I never wanted to grow up, feeling that I was incapable of making my living, the eternal life of heaven. I've always remained little, therefore, having no other occupation but to gather flowers, the flowers of love and sacrifice, and of offering them to God in order to please Him.

"To be little is not attributing to oneself the virtues that one practices, believing oneself capable of anything, but to recognize that God places this treasure in the hands of His little child to be used when necessary; but it remains always God's treasure. Finally, it is not to become discouraged over one's faults, for children fall often, but they are too little to hurt themselves very much." (from her Last Conversations)

I hope you haven't been discouraged recently. It happens so easily, not only when we fall, but when our novena doesn't yet obtain every miracle we've requested, and when we blame ourselves for not praying well enough. Let's be little children and keep tugging at our daddy's coat and asking Him for everything, and when He seems busy and His face is turned away, let's take refuge in our sister's arms, and take her advice about how to get His attention. Maybe He would like some roses too, our roses of a little sacrifice - a smile or kind word when we feel churlish, holding back a harsh word (or apologizing for it after it slips out!), or even the sacrifice of offering up our self-criticism and being more gentle with ourselves! Turn on a favorite song and dance - it's so wonderful to see little children dance! And by all means, don't forget to eat a cupcake, drink a cup of tea or glass of wine, and rejoice in our dear sister Therese's 100 years of making herself known to us as Blessed!

This day also is the feast (in the new calendar) of St. Catherine of Siena, for it is the day of her death on this earth, the day on which she entered Heaven. St. Catherine, pray for us that we may follow your advice and be who God meant us to be so that we may set the world on fire! 

And little St. Therese, named Blessed on this day, obtain for us the fire of His love and the illumination of the Holy Spirit that we may do His will in joy today and every day, with that extra gift of childlike surrender you so exemplified.

May the roses in your life - and the miracles they represent - be plentiful!

Draw me, we will run!

P.S. I found this wonderful statement from Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart (Therese's oldest sister and godmother Marie) from her testimony at the beatification process. It is so lovely, I had to share it with you! 

Marie is asked, "Do you especially love the Servant of God?" and responds:

"Obviously; I wonder how someone can ask me this question. I love her because one naturally loves her sister, but more because she struck me as an angel. I very much want her to be beatified, because we will see what she wanted us to see: that we must trust in the mercy of God which is infinite and that holiness is accessible to all kinds of souls. I think much more than that, but I don't know how to say it. I also want her beatification because she will be able to realize her desire to do good on earth even better, souls having more confidence in her."

Oh yes, now that Therese has been not only beatified, but canonized, made patroness of the Missions (with St. Francis Xavier), patroness of France (with St. Joan of Arc), and a Doctor of the Church (with St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Catherine of Siena, et al.) - let us believe her that we can and must trust in the mercy of God which is infinite, that He can make us holy, and finally, let us help her realize her desire to do good on earth, let us have confidence in her intercession which has proven itself countless times over. Yes, we may still have more favors to ask, but she has more roses of grace to bestow, so we can say with perfect truth that little Therese in Heaven and the likes of us on earth make the perfect match! May she obtain for us the conversions, healings, reconciliations, mercy, peace, joy, and love that we seek for ourselves and all those we love. And thank You, dear Jesus, for giving us such a friend to lead us straight to You! Alleluia!

Alleluia! He is risen!
He is risen, as He said!

As you can see, little Therese wants to make sure we get our Easter greetings in and celebrate the Great Feast of the Resurrection and our Salvation before we move on to celebrating anything else! So Happy Easter, and may this image of Our Risen Lord greeting and consoling Our Blessed Mother be a consolation for you too!

But now we're just in the nick of time to get ready for another feast - lesser, but exciting nonetheless! We are a novena away from the 100th anniversary of the Beatification of our Sister St. Therese, and we at Miss Marcel's Musings couldn't let the opportunity pass without seizing the day and presenting your petitions to one so known for showering roses and miracles.

Yes, it's almost here - this April 29 (Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, a fellow Doctor of the Church) will be 100 years since Pope Pius XI beatified St. Therese in 1923! And since I love ending a novena on the day we are celebrating, today is our day to start asking Therese for every single thing we can think of for ourselves and all those we love.

I'm eager to tell you about the two miracles that were approved to make way for Therese's beatification, but shall we pray first? That way if anyone gets distracted and wanders off as this post continues, the main work will have been done - and as with every novena here, we are happy to include your multitude of intentions (those you remember and those you don't!) as our novena continues . . .

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Guardian angels, please present to our sister St. Therese all the intentions of our hearts, those commended to our prayers, those for whom we have promised to pray, those who need our prayers, and those which spring readily to our minds again and again as well as those forgotten in our littleness. Little Flower, in this hour, show your power!

Novena to St Therese

O Little Therese of the Child Jesus
Please pick for me a rose from the heavenly garden
and send it to me as a message of love.

O Little Flower of Jesus,
please ask God to grant the favors
I now place with confidence in your hands . . . 

St. Therese, help us to always believe as you did,
in God’s great love for us,
so that we may imitate your “Little Way” each day.
Amen. 

*    *     *

And now, as we anticipate our own miracles (or rather those which we confidently expect Therese to obtain for us), let's hearken back to 1923 and what was happening in the minds and hearts of those who had gotten to know Therese in the short time since she'd entered eternal life. 

It's really nuts to realize she was only 24 when she finished her earthly life. She had lived very quietly with her family in a small town, then entered a small Carmelite monastery at age 15, then died 9 years later. That's it. Or so it seemed . . . but from her earliest years, Therese had known God's love, and she had responded with love from her own overflowing heart. So we can say that while she was only on earth physically for 24 years, those were years packed with love and intimacy with God, and therefore what looked like a little and inconsequential life was really the highest and fullest kind of life anyone could have lived, no matter how many years they spent in this world.

Our Lord says that by their fruits you shall know them, and it is in the fruits (and flowers) that follow Therese's life that we know her.

First there was the fruit of her Story of a Soul - the memoir her sister Pauline (Mother Agnes in the Carmel) put together from Therese's writings to serve as an obituary circular to the other Carmelite monasteries in France, but which by the force of its truth and beauty quickly spread throughout the world to teach Therese's Little Way of Spiritual Childhood everywhere.

But next was the fulfillment of the promises Therese had made before leaving earth for Heaven. She had told her sisters she would Come Down. She had promised to spend her Heaven doing good on earth. And more specifically, she had promised to let fall a shower of roses. These roses signified graces, but also came (and continue to come) in the form of - well, simply, roses! Actual roses, images of roses, fragrances of roses - all of these she has sent in profusion from 1897 until now, and she intended to keep showering them "until the last trumpet sounds," so we have over a hundred years of miracles behind us to help us believe in the many miracles ahead!

Here are some words from the wonderful Scottish priest Fr. Thomas Taylor, the first to suggest to her sisters that Therese ought to have a cause for canonization, and the compiler of the many editions of her autobiography and other writings in English. From the 1927 edition of St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus:

"Another marked characteristic is the familiar footing on which she stands with those who love her. She lives with them on terms of closest intimacy, assisting them in the smallest details of the daily round, a sure guide and a compassionate friend. Thus the strewer of roses spends her eternity, supremely happy in Heaven with her divine Spouse, and supremely busy on His behalf upon earth. A selection from the countless records of her favours already fills seven volumes [at the Carmel of Lisieux], and the harvest is by no means completely garnered. We may apply to this new autobiography what St. Therese said of the old: 'Many of its pages will be read only in Heaven.' But those we are privileged to read reveal to us a heart burning with compassion for every phase of human misery, physical or moral, and wonderful in its sympathy with the lowly and the poor."

100 years ago, beatification required 2 miracles. For Therese, 6 were submitted to Rome, and 2 were selected for investigation. The first was from 1906, just 9 years after Therese died. A seminarian from Lisieux was dying of tuberculosis, and his friends first thought to pray a novena to Our Lady of Lourdes, but through St. Therese's intercession. Nothing changed after this novena, so they decided perhaps they ought to single out St. Therese and say a novena to her alone, so that if she obtained Charles Anne's healing, his priestly vocation could owe itself in some way to her. Charles had been the great champion of Sister Therese among his fellow seminarians, and now, after things started looking even worse in his illness (after a terrible hemorrhage, in fact), he called out to her, "I did not come here to die! I came to work for God! You must cure me!"  Then, as Fr. Taylor relates, Charles "fell asleep, clutching a relic of the saint which just then came mysteriously into his hands. When he awoke, he was perfectly cured." Delightfully, 17 years later, Father Charles Anne assisted at Therese's Beatification ceremony in St. Peter's!

Did you notice how it took two novenas before Charles was healed? The second miracle approved for Therese's beatification gives us even more reason to think that whatever happens, we ought to just TRUST and KEEP PRAYING!

Sister Louise of St. Germain, who lived in southern France, had been ill since she entered the novitiate of her order (The Daughters of the Cross at Ustarritz), suffering throughout 1911 and 1912. Then in early 1913 they found  she had a terrible stomach ulcer. When she was on death's door, in 1915, they gave her the Last Sacraments and said a novena to Sister Therese, and Sister Louise would periodically breathe in a celestial fragrance that wafted about to remind her of Therese's nearness. Well, one guesses at least some of the sisters were hoping for Louise's healing, but not every prayer is answered immediately, and so it was another year later, in September of 1916, that Sister Louise started another novena to Therese. Her persistence was rewarded: Therese appeared to her on the night of September 10 and said, "Be generous with God. I promise you, you will soon be cured." And then, the roses! Fr. Taylor relates, "Next morning the floor around the bed was found thickly strewn with rose petals of various colors. How did they get there? No one could explain." And then, I love this, "Sister Louise grew worse, but was occasionally comforted by the same heavenly perfume as before. Then, after a fearful crisis, she slept peacefully all night, and woke on the morning of September 25 completely cured, and quite able to join her community that same day. It was a veritable resurrection." And a famous surgeon from Paris wrote a paper to prove her miraculous cure!

Did you notice the dates, though? Therese appeared to Sister Louise during her novena on September 10, which means that when Therese finally obtained Louise's healing on September 25, the novena was long over! (Not to mention the sisters had been praying to Therese for over a year already . . .) Which says to me, and I want to tell you too: We gotta never give up! These Saints, even the best of them, are waiting on God as we are, and sometimes it takes a few extra days (or longer) - but the roses will come!

And if your days are packed (or empty) and your head and heart are packed too (or, alas, empty!), don't worry about standing on ceremony. Just keep turning to our sister Therese and say simply, "Hey, you promised! Let's see some roses, please, and these miracles . . ." Or you can say the short, easy prayer that I learned from dear friends - and which I was later totally surprised to find originated about 100 years ago too, not in the 1960's! - but which does the job of boldly reminding Therese of her promises and her history and her future. God started it by loving her, and she continued it by loving Him and then us, so let's keep the miracles flowing and the roses showering by doing our part too:

Little Flower, in this hour, show your power!

Draw me, we will run!

Are you ready for the feast of St. Joseph? This year we had an extra day, since that wonderful happy date of March 19th fell on the 4th Sunday of Lent, and so Holy Mother Church liturgically transferred the solemnity to March 20th . . . though it's hard not to then simply celebrate our dear father St. Joseph on both days!

You may have been praying away, preparing by a traditional novena, or you may have made it a little novena, forgetting some days, or you may be saying "oops!" right now. That last especially would make you ready to dive into our novena, but you're more than welcome to pray it in addition to yours even if you've been very together! Here at MIss Marcel's Musings, we like to end novenas on the actual feast day, and we LOVE St. Joseph. Consequently we've been praying to him for days and days and it's unlikely we'll stop after today  - and all your intentions are included! We find it easy as pie because God our Heavenly Father wants to give us so many things, and He loves to give them through the request of dear St. Joseph who was His stand-in on earth.

So come on down! Let's importune St. Joseph and get those graces showering upon all our near and dear ones, all who have commended themselves to our prayers, all who are in need of our prayers (whether we're aware of their needs or not) and all for whom we've promised to pray. Whew, that's quite a list! Good thing our guardian angels are with us to keep track - we don't need to name every name (in fact we couldn't, come to think of it), but just trust. And as always, we can fortify our small supply of trust by drawing on the HUGE confidence of our sister St. Therese. Now that she sees Our Lord face to Face, she has no need of her trust and is happy to give it to us!

I'm not aware of our dear Marcel Van having written on St. Joseph, but I do love what Jesus told him in Conversations about the Heavenly Father's love for us, and I'm certain these words apply to good St. Joseph in his capacity as our father too. Jesus said:

"Come, come, little brother, the goodness of your true Father is without measure, as I have told you many times already. Even if, in His Love, He indulged you in everything, filling all your desires, He would never find it enough for His Love; He would only be afraid that you might not have the strength to receive all His treats." (492)

St. Joseph must have felt exactly this way regarding the Treasures the Heavenly Father confided into his care: Jesus, and Mary, his spouse, when they lived on earth, and the whole universal Church now. I'm sure St. Joseph wants to indulge us just as he would have wanted to indulge Mary and little Jesus in everything! And I've been thinking about how Mary and Jesus must have felt about him too. I imagine that St. Joseph was such a tremendous comfort to Our Lady and Jesus. He was both strong and gentle, prudent and loving, faithful, devoted, always near and ever ready to help in any task that arose in their little household. And when trials came - the first intimations of the cross in the flight to Egypt, their exile, and later the three day loss of the boy Jesus when He remained in the temple - St. Joseph was no doubt a refuge for Our Lady and a reminder of the faithfulness of the Father who would never abandon them.

I have a favorite St. Joseph novena prayer that I say a lot, and you'll be glad to hear it works! In his kindness and knowing my timorous heart, St. Joseph sometimes answers a petition even before I've said his prayer two or three times, let alone nine, and I'm so grateful. What a way to show us that our confidence is well placed! He would never neglect us, his children, and he is even now working out the answers to as many needs as we present to him.

One reason I love this particular prayer - okay, besides that it has been the means of obtaining many favors and graces over the years - is that it's replete with hope and childlike dependence, plus a lot of great reminders about how reliable St. Joseph is, how responsive, how quick to hear and answer.

Full disclosure: Some of my petitions have been trotted out again and again, and I know that doesn't sound like "quick to hear and answer" on St. Joseph's part. Rest assured that many others were answered by him pronto, and I know he would take care of every intention that way except that he wants to be as obedient to God as God always was to him! Are some of your petitions like some of mine, and you find yourself commending to him the same needs that have been with you for more than one or two of his feasts? I suspect I'm not alone in this, but I have a story to boost your perseverance.

In the beautiful Year of St. Joseph which unfortunately ended in December 2021 (I would have liked a decade of St. Joseph or maybe a century!), I was able to assist my two earthly fathers, that is my dad and my father-in-law, in their passages Home to God. They both were blessed with holy deaths, and for my father-in-law this was particularly marvelous because we had been praying for his return to the sacraments for decades! God knew and waited. St. Joseph heard and persisted in reminding the Father. We just kept praying and trusting and trusting and praying - and voila! Wonderfully, two weeks before he left this life for Eternal Life, my father-in-law cheerfully consented to receive the sacraments and did! The prayers of his parents from long ago, of his wife of 62 years, of his children from their childhoods, of his grandchildren and eventually great grandchildren, these were answered at last in one fell swoop of grace and mercy at the perfect moment God had in mind from all eternity.

Don't worry, then, if some of your prayers are still unanswered. God's timing is always perfect, and He loves that you continue to turn to Him with these persistent requests. And when you go to Him through St. Joseph, you are bringing in one who has great power over God's heart! We have much power over His Heart too, He loves us so much, but with St. Joseph there is that added business of obedience, since the Heavenly Father made St. Joseph the earthly father for Jesus Who was perfect in obedience as in everything else. As Marcel's father in the Redemptorists, St. Alphonsus, explains: "Just as Jesus Christ wanted to be subject to Joseph on earth, so He does everything the saint asks of Him in Heaven."

So what do you say? Shall we pray together? Let's honor St. Joseph with our filial confidence and take refuge in him as our Blessed Mother and little Jesus did. And the bigger your needs, the more challenging your requests, the better! This will give Jesus a chance to thank St. Joseph for the years of tender care he provided, and since God will never be outdone in generosity, He is delighted to have the opportunity to provide the tender care St. Joseph now asks on our behalf. May St. Joseph win the day and obtain God's answer to your petitions as swiftly as he obeyed the angels' messages when he was caring for Our Lord and Our Lady!

Marcel and Therese and I (and St. Andre Bessette) wish you the happiest of feasts. May St. Joseph spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, obtain for you an abundance of heavenly graces to more than answer all your deepest desires and petitions. And we pray he throws in a cupcake, or something equally sweet and fun, just to seal the deal!

As for that prayer I can never get enough of, here it is. I gladly pray it again, with you and for you, asking our angels fill in the blanks:

With childlike confidence I present myself before you, O holy Joseph, faithful foster father of Jesus! I beg your compassionate intercession and support in this, my present necessity. . .(and I pray too for all those who have asked my prayers, all those who need my prayers, and all those for whom I have promised to pray).

I firmly believe that you are most powerful near the throne of God, who chose you for the foster father of His well-beloved son, Jesus Christ. O blessed Saint, who saved that treasure of heaven, with His virginal mother, from the fury of His enemies, who with untiring industry supplied His earthly wants and with paternal care accompanied and protected Him in all the journeys of His childhood, take me also, for the love of Jesus, as your child. Assist me in my present difficulty . . .  with your prayers before God. The infinite goodness of Our Savior, who loved and honored you as His father upon earth, cannot refuse you any request now in heaven.

How many pious souls have sought help from you in their needs and have experienced, to their joy, how good, how ready you are to assist. How quickly you turn to those who call upon you with confidence! How powerful you are in bringing help and restoring joy to anxious and dejected hearts! Therefore, do I fly to you, O most worthy father of Jesus, most chaste spouse of Mary! Good St. Joseph, I pray you by the burning love you had for Jesus and Mary upon earth, console me in my distress and present my petitions . . .  through Jesus and Mary, before the throne of God! One word from you will move Him to assist my afflicted soul. Then most joyfully shall I praise Him and you, and most earnest shall be my thanksgiving!
Amen.
​
Draw me, we will run!

"'You have taught me from my youth, O God, and until now I will declare Your wonderful works. And until old age and gray hairs, Oh God, forsake me not.' What will this old age be fore me? It seems this could be right now, for two thousand years are not more in the Lord's eyes than are twenty years, than even a single day." - St. Therese, the first Little Flower (from Story of a Soul)

My goodness, our favorite brother and sister are getting old! Or they would be, had they not departed for heaven when they were young . . . This year on January 2nd we celebrated the 150th birthday of St. Therese, and here we are with her little brother Marcel, and he is 95 today! The remarkable thing about this is to realize that although he went to heaven in 1959, aged 31, if he had stayed on earth he would be only 95 today! What a wild and wonderful thought! Why just the other day my husband and I spent the day with a dear friend who is 95 . . . and to think that would be Marcel too!

So Marcel, dear brother, here's to you - and I see roses and presents which I can only imagine are from you to us, since you're in need of no such party favors where you are in Light and Love . . . and I have a very good idea what is in at least one of those boxes. I think you want to give us the Little Way today, because you've been knocking on my door in the middle of the night, not to ask and receive, but so that you could give and give and give!

Last night (or perhaps this morning, in the wee small hours) I opened Conversations and read from April 9, 1946, about the vision you had of Jesus, dear little brother. You wrote:

"Then I suddenly saw a cross appear beside little Jesus. At the top of the cross a piece of cloth was suspended on which was printed the Face of Jesus. Little Jesus looked at me with a joyful expression, then, showing me the cross He said to me, 'Little brother, here is your portion of the inheritance, here is the portion of the inheritance of the children. Do you see it clearly?' Then little Jesus, indicating Himself added, 'Little brother, here is the elevator which will allow you to take possession of this inheritance, and it will also be the same for the children. Do you understand? This is the way your sister Therese has led you up till now, after having followed it herself. Little brother, tell that to the children.'"

I know this way, it is the Little Way! And since Jesus is the Way, little Jesus must be the Little Way!

You tell us, Marcel, in your Autobiography, about being led by Therese, when you write in these words to Jesus:

"You have aroused in my mind the desire to become a saint. Then You made me find in a very simple manner the little way by which You guided St. Therese of the Infant Jesus. In short, You have used the hand of this little saint to write for the use of souls the sweet counsels to which You have led her on her little way. Today, I know that You love me, and that in Your immense love You behave towards me as with a little child. Oh, how You deserve to be loved in return!" (577)

Thank you, dear Marcel, for letting Jesus use your hand, too, to write for the use of souls the sweet counsels of the little way! But what did our sister say that showed you Jesus and His way? She did not see Him in a vision as you did, and yet she, the littlest Doctor of the Church, could tell us with certainty what she had experienced, and you are like an echo of her heart. She wrote:

"I have always wanted to be a saint. Alas! I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and the obscure grain of sand trampled underfoot by passers-by. Instead of becoming discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealizable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new.

"We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs, for, in the homes of the rich, an elevator has replaced these very successfully. I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. I searched, then, in the Scriptures for some sign of this elevator, the object of my desires, and I read these words coming from the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: 'Whoever is a LITTLE ONE, let him come to me.' And so I succeeded. I felt I had found what I was looking for. But wanting to know, O my God, what You would do to the the very little one who answered Your call, I continued my search and this is what I discovered: 

'As one whom a mother caresses, so will I comfort you; you shall be carried at the breasts, and upon the knees they shall caress you.'

"Ah! never did words more tender and more melodious come to give joy to my soul. The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more." (Story of a Soul, Ms C, Chapter X)

Well!
Here we have your word, Marcel, with Jesus in your sight. Then we have Therese's word, with Scripture in her hands. And then . . . may I have a word?

Being a bear of very little brain and so forgetful (just like you, dear brother), I was entirely moved, as if for the first time, by a passage in Isaiah yesterday. And then it began to dawn on me, this passage wasn't entirely unfamiliar. It had moved me just so the day before! Ah, the eternal newness of Scripture and Jesus' message! Today I at least remembered it from the get go, but since the third time is the charm (for the Trinity!), here is my third day of Isaiah 63, 7-9, and it makes the third testimony to our elevator. What a charming Little Way for sure! 

Our passage is a dialogue, beginning with our lines, then switching over to our Divine Lover's:

The favors of the Lord I will recall, the glorious deeds of the Lord, because of all He has done for us; for He is good to the house of Israel, He has favored us according to His mercy and His great kindness.

He said: "They are indeed my people, children who are not disloyal." So He became their Savior in their every affliction. It was not a messenger or an angel, but He Himself Who saved them. Because of His love and pity, He redeemed them Himself, lifting them and carrying them all the days of old.

*  *  *
Marcel, if ever anyone has shown us in all the particulars, in each tiny detail day by day, how He became our Savior in every affliction, how He Himself saved us, how because of His love and pity He came down and lifted us and carried us - oh Marcel, I am saying "us" but you have shown us it is true by showing how He did each of these things for you in your little life on earth. You are the one who has shown us, just like our sister St. Therese did before you!

And so we owe you much, dear brother, and on this birthday we do what birthdays inspire us to do best: We thank God for you!

Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for giving Your Beloved Son Jesus to Your beloved son Marcel! 

Thank You, Jesus, dear Spouse of our souls, for giving us Marcel as Your little secretary. Thank You for carrying him through all the vicissitudes of his 31 year life on earth and escorting him to Heaven when You finally gave him that first real kiss. Thank You for lifting him to Yourself, and showing us through his words that You desire to lift us too!

Thank You Holy Spirit of Love for teaching Marcel the Little Way through our sister, the angelic Therese, and yet not resting content with her experience, but filling his heart with Yourself that he could be another apostle for us children . . . and yet assuring us through him, as through Therese, as through Your own Inspired Word of Scripture, that finally it is Jesus Who is embracing us in all these words and teachings, that it is Jesus Himself who is the One Word of the Father, a Word which comforts and consoles, and then becomes Flesh to love us in Person, to be with us as we are, to show us all the way to the Cross this depth of Love from the Trinity . . . and remain with us in the Blessed Sacrament to continue to embrace and carry us!

Marcel, do shower us with roses on your birthday! Help Therese to cover the world with these roses, and especially all those we pray for through the intercession of St. Joseph, in these days leading to his feast. Oh, and don't stop teaching us the Little Way. You know we forget all the time, so we need your constant companionship to make us laugh, take ourselves more lightly, and look at Jesus, standing before us with open arms, ready to embrace us and press His lips to our faces. 

Hooray for birthdays! Hooray for Marcel! Hooray for Jesus!

Draw me, we will run!!!

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, because on this day, February 11, in 1858, our beautiful Mother Mary appeared to 14 year old St. Bernadette Soubirous for the first time. Our Lady came back to see Bernadette (and Bernadette came to the grotto to see Our Lady) 17 more times, their final meeting here being on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel! How's that for ecumenism?

This feast is very dear to my heart because in high school I got to be Bernadette in a play my senior year. Then a few months later, I visited the campus of Thomas Aquinas College for the first time, and the first Mass I attended there was on Februrary 11, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, 40 years ago today! Some years later when St. Thomas and his college and Our Lady had changed me forever, my husband (yes, now I had a husband) interviewed for a teaching job at Christendom College - on Februrary 11th! And then some years after that, I found in the Christendom College library a book (Celine's Memoir of My Sister St. Therese) that led me to another book (Beyond East and West, by John C. H. Wu) that led me to another book (Forever Love by Fr. Nicholas Maestrini, P.I.M.E.) that led me to a wonderful Italian missionary priest (the same Fr NM, P.I.M.E.) who had "met" St. Therese when he served in his youth as an altar boy for Pope Pius XI at St. Therese's beatification and canonization Masses in 1923 and 1925! (That was many years before I met Fr. Maestrini, no longer an entirely young boy when we became friends! Though he was forever impish, like Marcel!)

In short, I love this day, and I love Our Lady of Lourdes and dear St. Bernadette, a little one if ever there was one! And so another little one, Marcel by name, and I were chatting (not much like an apparition nor even like a locution, but much more like me thinking of something and Marcel NOT appearing to say I got it wrong). And here is what I thought of and Marcel tacitly approved, and I'm SO very excited to share it with you, because it's about Our Lady and Our Ladies, so how fitting for the day!

In fact it would be very strange if Marcel had any objections to my idea, because it comes straight from Jesus, Truth Himself. I just had to tweak it a little to make it apply to Mary, but see what you think - I think it works perfectly in this new context!

Jesus is speaking to Marcel on April 23, 1946 (Easter Tuesday that year), and He says in Conversations:

"Why do I have to choose many apostles for the expansion of the reign of my Love? Because it is necessary that there should be some for every category of person. You, for example, you must use a certain manner of speaking, while another will have to use a different one, which responds to the feelings of his audience" (512)

Actually, upon re-reading this passage, I see I don't have to tweak it at all. Our Lady's reign of Love is no different than her Son Jesus' reign of Love - she is only and always about spreading His Love and bringing His Kingdom of Love to all souls (and all souls to it), and so, I'm sure that my idea is just as sensible and brilliant as I thought!

But what is my idea?

Well, I've mentioned in the past that I have friends who find Padre Pio a little scary, and I've often resolved never to give up helping them see how un-scary he is, how very gentle and generous, how assuredly loving and mild, despite those true stories of his yelling at PEOPLE WHO LIED TO HIM in the confessional. Really, as long as you don't intend to lie to Padre Pio in the confessional (too late to do so anyhow!) or snip off a piece of his habit for a relic when he's walking by (too late as well, though had I been there when he was walking by, I'd have been tempted to snip for sure!), as I say, as long as you won't do these things (and you can't now, so you're quite safe) you're in like Flynn with him! And that brings to him everyone you love too!

But somehow I'm getting away from the point . . . which is that like Padre Pio, sometimes certain Our Ladies can seem a bit scary. But unlike with Padre Pio, I've realized that I'm perfectly fine with allowing Our Lady of Fatima, for instance, to fend for herself, with the help of Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia (who are the ones who got me to fall in love with her, and come to think of it they started on February 11, 2013!).

Why this disappearance of my previous compulsion to convince timid souls that Our Lady of Fatima was just as full of love and gentleness as the other Our Ladies? And yes, despite my goofiness, I do realize they are more or less the same one, single, uniquely wonderful, loving and lovable Mother of God, but isn't it fun that she is so very multifarious?!

Well, though . . . what did Jesus just tell us?

"Why do I have to choose many apostles for the expansion of the reign of my Love? Because it is necessary that there should be some for every category of person."

Heavens above!
I think that means that Our Lady comes to us in many guises (and sometimes seeming disguises) so that she might "use a certain manner of speaking" here, to suit the needs of her children, while over there, she "will have to use a different one, which responds to the feelings of her audience."

Wowie zowie! Isn't this awesome? Our Lord is so infinitely solicitous, so tenderly concerned with each of our souls and our feelings - that He is determined, as is His so beautiful Mother who in a certain sense taught Him these sweet manners, to come to us each in a way we can best recognize and receive Him!

And that makes sense because with the proliferation of Our Ladies, there is the perfect representation of our dear Mother to meet the needs of each of her children.

I have long found this to be true of St. Therese as well, not that it takes away from who she really is, but like St. Paul she was concerned to be all things for all men, and so there were times when, with her novices for instance, she would speak to one in an entirely different way than she spoke to another. Celine made sure to explain in the beginning of her Memoir of My Sister St. Therese that as Fr. Pichon (the Martin family's spiritual director) used to say (and I think he followed St. John of the Cross in this), "There as many differences between souls as between faces." So, Celine warned, because she wanted to share absolutely all Therese's counsels to the novices - but these counsels were different depending on the recipient's temperament and disposition - the reader should (in a familiar modern saying) "Take what you like and leave the rest." Some counsels will suit and help one reader, while other counsels could be detrimental.

So, too, I think we ought to follow our natural attractions and not worry when one particular Our Lady speaks to our heart - and another doesn't!

Marcel, for instance, loved Our Lady of Perpetual Help, an Our Lady particularly confided to the Redemptorist Order to which he belonged. Therese loved the Virgin of the Smile - the representation of Our Lady in a family statue which Our Lady had used to smile upon her and cure her of her childhood illness. My Fr. Maestrini loved the image of Our Lady of Confidence (whose bookmark fortuitously marks the page from which I quoted Our Lord's words about His needing different apostles, and which I've extended to different Our Ladies). 

Luckily none of us really has to choose - we can receive Our Lady's love from whichever of her appearances appeals to us most, even on a given day - and since we are here liturgically at the feet of Our Lady of Lourdes, I have something special to share about her which I hope you too will find irresistible. 

It comes from one of Our Lady's children who felt the deep meaning of Lourdes and expressed it much better than I can: namely, St. Teresa of Jesus of the Andes. She lived in Chile and died a little more than 100 years ago in 1920, and like Therese and Marcel and Elizabeth of the Trinity she burned out young due to the ardor of her and Jesus' love. She was only in the Carmel (for yes, she was another young Carmelite nun when she died) for 9 months, dying when she was 19, and shooting to heaven straight into the arms of Jesus and Mary. But here is what she wrote when she was 17, and I have to agree with every word. It sums up the true Immaculate Heart and attraction of all Our Ladies exactly!  

From her Spiritual Diary:

Lourdes, Mary, Mother Full of Sweetness; February 12, 1917

The day before and yesterday we went to Lourdes [the Grotto of the Virgin of Lourdes in Santiago]. Lourdes! This word alone causes the deepest chords to vibrate in the Christian, the Catholic.
Lourdes! Who doesn’t feel moved when pronouncing that word! It means Heaven in this exile.
The word bears under its mantle of mystery whatever great things the Catholic heart is capable of feeling. Her name causes past memories to be taken away and deeply touches the intimate feelings of our soul. It contains joy, superhuman peace, whence the pilgrim, fatigued by the sorrowful journey of life, can find rest; can without fear put down his baggage, which is our human miseries, and open his mouth to receive the water of consolation and comfort. It is where the tears of the poor are mixed with the tears of the rich, where they meet only a Mother who is gazing on them and smiling on them. And in that celestial gaze and smile there gush forth sobs from all breasts so that their hearts are filled with happiness and they cannot pull themselves away. It makes them hope and love the eternal and the divine.
           
Yes, Mother, you are the celestial Madonna who guides us. You allow heavenly rays to fall from your maternal hands. I didn’t believe such happiness could exist on earth; yesterday my heart, while thirsting for it, found it. My soul was ecstatic at your virginal feet, listening to you. You were speaking and your maternal language was so tender. It was from heaven, almost divine.
           
In seeing you so pure, so tender, and so compassionate, who would not be encouraged to unburden his intimate sufferings to you? Who would not ask you to be his star on this stormy sea? Who is there who would not cry in your arms without instantly receiving your immaculate kisses of love and comfort? If he be a sinner, your caresses will soften him. If one of your devoted ones, your presence would enkindle the living flame of divine love. If he be poor, you with your powerful hand will aid him and show him his true homeland. If rich, you will sustain him with your breath against the dangers of his very agitated life. If one is in affliction, you with your tearful gaze will show him the cross and on it your Divine Son. Who will not find balm for his pains by considering the torments of Jesus and Mary? The sick man finds in your maternal heart the water of salvation that allows your enchanting smile to blossom forth, and makes him smile with love and happiness.

Yes, Mary, you are Mother of the entire universe. Your heart is filled with sweetness. At your feet let the priest prostrate himself with the same confidence as the virgin in order to find in your arms the fullness of your love. The rich as well as the poor can find in your heart their heaven. The afflicted as well as the happy can find on your mouth a celestial smile. The sick as well as the healthy can find caresses from your sweet hands. And, finally, sinners like myself find in you a protecting Mother who can crush beneath her immaculate feet the head of the dragon. And in your eyes I see mercy, pardon, and a shining lamp to keep me from falling into the muddy waters of sin.

Yes, my Mother. At Lourdes I found heaven. God was on the altar surrounded by angels and you, from the concave of the rock, offered Him the cries of the multitude kneeling before your altar. You asked Him to hear the supplications of the people banished in this valley of tears, while at the same time, together with their hymns, they were offering you their hearts full of love and gratitude.

*    *    *

I forgot to mention that I had the privilege of going to Lourdes in France when I was a girl. What struck me most was the little "house" of Bernadette and her family at the time of the apparitions. I put "house" in quotes because it was actually an abandoned prison, so damp and rank that it was considered too awful for prisoners! But the Soubirous family needed a place to live, and so they lived there. On the wall (in French, but my angel helped me translate it at the time) were stenciled the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians:

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world that He might shame the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world that He might shame the strong. 

Being foolish and weak myself, like my brother Marcel, I'm charmed to think that God chooses the likes of me, of Marcel, of Bernadette, and no doubt of you too, as apostles who have the delight of receiving and sharing His message of love. 

And since they really all are one single lovely Our Lady, why not allow the words of one of them to suffice as our meditation for today? From Our Lady's heart (at Guadalupe) to ours:

Hear and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little one:
Let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you. 
Let nothing alter your heart or your countenance.
Am I not here who am your Mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not your fountain of life?
Are you not in the folds of my mantle?
In the crossing of my arms?
Is there anything else that you need?
Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain.

Or as Jesus assured Marcel, and thus sends to us the message:
"Do not worry! Mary is very happy with us both!" (Conversations, 386)

He is so good, and His kindness is at its most merciful when He gives us all our Our Ladies. I am finishing a novena to Our Lady of Lourdes on her feast, and I ask her to take your intentions (for yourself and those you love, for whatever graces you may need), to her dear Son, Who waits lovingly to fulfill our desires. May Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception, bring healing and joy to us all today, and to all those we love, as well as the whole Church and the whole world! 

Draw me, dear Mother, we will run!

How time flies! There was a day when St. Therese, at age 24, explained to her sister, "As far as little ones are concerned, they will be judged with great gentleness. And one can remain little, even in the most formidable offices, even when living for a long time. If I were to die at the age of eighty, if I were in China, anywhere, I would still die, I feel, as little as I am today. And it is written: 'At the end, the Lord will rise up to save the gentle and the humble of the earth.' It doesn't say 'to judge,' but 'to save.'"

Therese died - or rather, as she liked to say, was born into eternal life - only a few days later. She never made it to age 80 on earth, but today we celebrate the 150th anniversary of her birth, so there's a way in which she's made it way past 80! And guess what? Although she is, according to Pope St. Pius X, the greatest saint of modern times, she is also - still - little. Her advice hasn't changed, and she wants us to be little with her, however old we may be on this day and in the future. 

Therese's sister Celine was older, and in fact lived on this earth much longer, all the way to 1959 when she was not only 80, but almost 90! Only then did Jesus take her to Himself and reunite her with her parents and siblings and her dear Therese . . . and Celine remained little even amidst many and varied projects in the Carmel (where she was Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face) by which she spent her life living and making known St. Therese's Little Way. Celine knew this Little Way intimately because not only had Therese formed her in the novitiate, but Therese couldn't help but teach it in everything she did and wrote . . . And so, in the spirit of birthdays (having so recently celebrated Jesus's own birthday!) here is what Therese wrote to Celine for her (Celine's) 25th natal day: words to encourage her - and which can encourage us now:

"Céline, do not fear the storms of earth.... Your guardian angel is covering you with his wings, and Jesus . . . reposes in your heart. You do not see His treasures; Jesus is sleeping and the angel remains in his mysterious silence. However, they are there with Mary, who is hiding you also under her veil!...Do not fear, dear Céline, as long as your lyre does not cease to sing for Jesus, never will it break.... No doubt it is fragile, more fragile than crystal. If you were to give it to an inexperienced musi­cian, soon it would break; but Jesus is the one who makes the lyre of your heart sound.... He is happy that you are feeling your weakness; He is the one placing in your soul sentiments of mistrust of itself. Dear Céline, thank Jesus. He grants you His choice graces; if always you remain faithful in pleasing Him in little things He will find Himself OBLIGED to help you in GREAT things. The apostles worked all night without Our Lord and they caught no fish, but their work was pleasing to Jesus. He willed to prove to them that He alone can give us something; He willed that the apostles hum­ble themselves. "Children," he said to them, "have you nothing to eat?'" "Lord," St. Peter answered, "we have fished all night and have caught nothing." Perhaps if he had caught some little fish, Jesus would not have performed the miracle, but he had nothing, so Jesus soon filled his net in such a way as almost to break it. This is the character of Jesus: He gives as God, but He wills humility of heart...."

Dear Therese, on this beautiful anniversary of your birth, now that you are happily ensconced in Heaven but continuing to come down and work to show us the Little Way on earth, please grant our requests as so many birthday gifts . . . Let us find Jesus in His extreme littleness and poverty in the manger, and let Him find us and remain with us in our true littleness and spiritual poverty. We love you, dear sister Therese! Happy Birthday!

Draw me, we will run!

Four hundred and ninety-one years ago on this day, the Mother of God appeared in Mexico to the one she loved and whom she called her dearest and youngest son, Juan Diego.
The Nican Mopohua, written in the Aztec language by the Indian scholar Antonio Valeriano around the middle of the sixteenth century, tells how it happened:

"On a Saturday just before dawn, he was on his way to pursue divine worship…As he reached the base of the hill known as Tepeyac, came the break of day, and he heard singing atop the hill, resembling singing of varied beautiful birds…He was looking toward the east, on top of the mound, from whence came the precious celestial chant; and then it suddenly ceased and there was silence. He then heard a voice from above the mount saying to him: “Juanito, Juan Dieguito.” Then he ventured and went to where he was called. He was not frightened in the least; on the contrary, overjoyed.
"Then he climbed the hill, to see from where he was being called. When he reached the summit, he saw a Lady, who was standing there and told him to come hither. Approaching her presence, he marveled greatly at her superhuman grandeur; her garments were shining like the sun; the cliff where she rested her feet, pierced with glitter, resembling an anklet of precious stones, and the earth sparkled like the rainbow. The mezquites, nopales, and other different weeds, which grow there, appeared like emeralds, their foliage like turquoise, and their branches and thorns glistened like gold. He bowed before her and heard her word, tender and courteous, like someone who charms and esteems you highly."

She speaks to him, and unlike in the apparitions later at Lourdes and Fatima, Our Lady is clear about her identity from the beginning.

"She said: “Juanito, the most humble of my sons, where are you going?” He replied: “My Lady and Child, I have to reach your church in Mexico, Tlatilolco, to pursue things divine…” She then spoke to him: “Know for certain, dearest of my sons, that I am the perfect and ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God, the Lord of all things and Master of Heaven and Earth. I ardently desire a temple to be built here, where I will show and offer all my love, compassion, help, and protection to the people and those who look for me. I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of all who live in this land and of all mankind. I will hear the weeping and sorrows of those who love me, cry to me, and have confidence in me, and I will give them consolation and relief. Therefore, so that my designs might be fulfilled, go to the house of the Bishop of Mexico City and tell him that I sent you, and that it is my desire to have a temple built in this place.”"

Juan made it to the Bishop’s house, and eventually saw the Bishop, but like any Bishop worth his salt, this one didn’t immediately congratulate the seer on his good fortune at meeting the Blessed Mother—he said he’d take the matter under consideration, and Juan went away sad. He returned to Our Lady for his second visit with her that day and told her of the Bishop’s rebuff.

“I perfectly understood by the manner he replied that he believes it to be an invention of mine…for which I exceedingly beg, Lady and my Child, that you entrust the delivery of your message to someone of importance, well known, respected, and esteemed, so that they may believe in him; because I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf, and you, my Child, the least of my children, my Lady, you send me to a place where I never visit nor repose. Please excuse the great unpleasantness and let not fretfulness befall, my Lady and my All.”

No wonder Our Lady loved Juanito: he’s meek as Moses, yet poetic as David. He is a tail end, a leaf—and she, who at her first appearance as the Mother of God rejoiced that the Almighty would exalt the lowly, had certainly found a lowly son in Juan. Needless to say, she wouldn’t let him off the hook, and he promised to go on the morrow to see the Bishop again.

The rest of the history can briefly told: the next day, December 10, 1531, Juan returned to the Bishop and the Bishop asked for a sign. Our Lady promised Juan to give him the Bishop’s sign the next day, but that next day, December 11, Juan didn’t come for the sign—he was caring for his uncle, whom he’d found gravely ill at home.

December 12 dawned and Juan set out to get the priest to administer the last sacraments to his dying uncle. And in the rush to help his uncle, Juan did what any of us would have done—he avoided the Blessed Mother, because he didn’t want to be rude, but he had important things to accomplish.
He went round the other side of the hill “so he could not be seen by her who sees well everywhere,” but because she does see well everywhere, she didn’t wait for him, but approached and asked where he was going. Explaining his concern for his uncle, he promised to return soon, the next day for certain.

And then, just as we must thank the Bishop for demanding a sign which yielded us a miraculous image of Our Lady, so we must thank St. Juan for avoiding Our Lady – thus prompting, in his worry and fear, words of Our Lady—to us, through him—as lovely as her unfading image:


"Hear and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little one:
Let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you.
Let nothing alter your heart or your countenance.
Am I not here who am your Mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not your fountain of life?
Are you not in the folds of my mantle?
In the crossing of my arms?
Is there anything else that you need?
Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain.
Do not be afflicted by the illness of your uncle, who will not die now of it. Be assured that he is now cured.”
​

Some years ago, when this feast of St. Juan Diego came around, I noticed the wonderful window between his feast and hers, between December 9 and December 12, between her initial appearances to him and the day she gave him a sign. And seeing this window, there was nothing to do but climb through it so that I could spend time with the Mother of God and her humble servant Juanito.Our Lady then sent Juan to pick roses – out of season, for it was winter – and he found abundant roses the likes of which he’d never seen before: colorful Castilian roses which were familiar to the Spanish Bishop and the answer to his own previous prayers to Our Lady. And then, in the surprise ending which attracts millions of pilgrims in a steady stream to see Juan’s “incorrupt” tilma hanging in Mexico City, Juan dropped the roses before the Bishop and revealed Our Lady’s image on his cloak.

Life rushes by so quickly, the liturgical year included, that no sooner has a feast come then it’s gone again, gone for another year before we’ve had time to catch our breath, let alone take in the meaning of the day.

But this delightful triduum that brings us from December 9 to December 12 seems to me the antidote to our hurry and our fears. Our Lady herself couldn’t rush Juan, and the consequence is an opportunity to imitate both of them—by pondering in our hearts, like Our Blessed Mother did, by pondering her words to him, as Juan must have done.

And so I came up with the idea of a triduum in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a kind of mini-novena, a chance to accompany Juan in his days with Our Blessed Mother. The plan is simple: Read Our Lady of Guadalupe’s words (“Hear, and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little one…”) each day from today, St. Juan Diego’s day, to Monday, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. You will notice in these words that she asks us only…to trust her! And if you miss a day, that’s fitting—Juan did too.
​
As we progress through Advent, and the very day after Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, here is another chance to discover what Infinite Mercy is all about. At Cana Our Lady said, “Do whatever He tells you,” and at the Last Supper He said, “Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid.” So whether you listen to Mercy Himself, or His Merciful Mother, the message is the same: there is no more need to worry. She’s got us covered (with her mantle), we are in her arms and heart, and she means every word she says.

And in case you'd like to see her words again without having to scroll up (oh how I love these words!), Juan Diego himself offers them to us from Our dear Lady of Guadalupe:

"Hear and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little one:
Let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you.
Let nothing alter your heart or your countenance.
Am I not here who am your Mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not your fountain of life?
Are you not in the folds of my mantle?
In the crossing of my arms?
Is there anything else that you need?
Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain.
Do not be afflicted by the illness of your uncle, who will not die now of it. Be assured that he is now cured.”

Draw me, we will run!