And the winner is . . . How to be a Saint!

Little Jesus is rolling His eyes . . . I think He can't believe how silly we are . . . which is quite astonishing (that He is the least surprised) after all His conversations with Marcel. But then look at Our Lady - she isn't letting His Divine childhood distress her at all. She's so serene and poised, so adoring of her darling Son and God, so grace-filled, as is fitting for her since she is the Mother of Divine Grace Himself.

And to my great delight, that is the very feast we are celebrating today - Our Lady, Mother of Divine Grace, which falls on July 23rd every year for the Carmelites. And guess what I just found out? I was going to say "figured out" but that would give you a far higher estimate of my figuring powers than would be consonant with Truth. I found out, then, just a moment ago when looking for a suitable picture for this post, that the wonderful feast of Our Lady, Mother of Divine Grace, happily (and we may assume with Divine reason) concludes the Octave of the Solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel!

Before I forget, let me add that a sweet miracle marked the beginning of my awareness of this Feast today. I was leaving the house for the library (ah, the joys of life!) when I realized I needed a couple of holy cards to mark places in Conversations which I wanted to include in this post. Not that I had the places yet, but I was planning on finding them with the tried and true tactic of randomly opening the book while trusting in the Holy Spirit and my guardian angel to bring me to the passages Jesus had prepared.

Thankfully my garage is full of boxes of memorabilia, so I opened one to see what I could find. I pulled out, first thing, a lovely Fra Angelico Christmas card and equally lovely Fra Angelico holy card, both commemorating (one with an inscription from my own hand, the other from the memorial card designed by his family) a great saint (conformable to the Decree of Pope Urban VIII. the Editor declares that in this post and every other such post of Miss Marcel's Musings, the word "Saint" is employed in a purely human sense, and all intention of anticipating the judgment of the Church is utterly disclaimed, etc. etc., etc.) - namely Marcus Reno Berquist. I'll show you the images now. From left to right: Fra Angelico's Christmas card; a detail from his Last Judgement; and Mr. Berquist, who was using these images to remind me of something . . . 

Mr. Berquist was a faithful Catholic, a philosopher, one of the founders of Thomas Aquinas College, a loving husband, father, and friend, but in my memories of him, he was most of all a teacher, because I was lucky enough to have him as my teacher.

Once when he was teaching more than I could learn (okay that was not unusual, but setting that aside), I interrupted him to ask, "Mr. Berquist, wasn't that a huge leap?" With a totally straight face he looked at me and replied that a huge leap for me was surely a small step for him. Too true! And then the gentle smile broke, lighting up his kind face. Can we ever thank God enough for our teachers?

Well, this morning Mr. Berquist was teaching me again. In the garage I'd been thinking - in my haphazard way - that surely this was some Carmelite feast and I ought to get my Proper to take and pray. With mementos in hand, the truth burst upon me: the Feast of the Mother of Divine Grace! The very feast on which I like to send greetings and love to Mr. Berquist's dear wife, founder of Mother of Divine Grace School!

Thank you, Mr. Berquist! And happy feast day, Laura! May Our Lady continue to bless you and your family, and the many families who are part of MODG! May she draw you ever closer to little Jesus, and make saints of us all!

Which brings me to the pith of today's post, although Our Lady, Mother of Divine Grace, is surely enough for one day. Nonetheless, we must begin what we've started, and I did start this day with a desire to share a few thoughts, taken from Marcel's Conversations, on "How to Pray." Except then I thought I'd like to share a few thoughts on "How Not to Worry." (Yes, it was getting crowded up in my noggin. No doubt that's why I needed Mr. Berquist's help to remember the Feast). I decided to let Jesus decide which we'd share, and then before I had a chance to ask Him, I realized what I really, really wanted to mention was this little hint about How to Be a Saint. What a mess of thoughts (mine), and what abundant treasures to share (from Conversations).

As St. Therese has told us, for simple souls there must be no complicated ways. And so I opened the book of Conversations. And there Jesus split the difference (between my first two thoughts-for-posts) by offering the following passage from 5 May 1946 (which Marcel had laughingly re-named, with Therese's approval, 5 Mother 1946):

Marcel: But, little Jesus, why was I so ill at ease a moment ago? I adored the Blessed Sacrament for only a half-hour and I found it extremely long. I had only one desire, to come back as soon as possible. I do not understand why it was so. On the other hand, at the moment of returning, I regretted having not behaved well towards You. I beg You to forgive me. Pardon me, and allow my heart to return with You to the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, to stay there and love You unceasingly.

Jesus: Little brother, why do you concern yourself so? Do you think that I no longer understand? You had to make an effort to remain with Me; that is a greater sacrifice than if you had remained on your knees all day in My presence.

Marcel: So, little Jesus, do I still love you?

Jesus: Why not? And why do you ask Me this question? That's enough, little brother, remain in peace. I am always pleased with you.

Marcel: Little Jesus, I am so sad I do not know what to say.

Jesus: You know, at least, how to breathe and to look; so take your breaths and your glances and give them to Me. Is that not to speak to Me? Would you be afraid that I might not understand? Come, I understand you very well.

+      +       +

I hate to add anything at all. Jesus and Marcel are so perfect together, and such good teachers, like Mr. Berquist. (Yes, properly speaking, Mr. Berquist and Marcel are good teachers like Jesus, but it's casual day today at MMM, and there is little Jesus already rolling His eyes up top, so we may as well enjoy teasing Him.)

But isn't it just like Him to give us exactly the food we need? And as much as we want? I wanted Jesus to decide today whether to teach us something about prayer or something about not worrying, and He with His everlasting solicitude has combined my two somethings in order to teach us about not worrying about our prayer!

Which leads me to what I realized this morning about How to be a Saint.
First, what is a Saint? 
I was thinking it over, and I concluded that a Saint is someone so filled with the love of God that there's no room for anything else.

Which sounds good, but a problem can arise in understanding that phrase "the love of God."
I've found it's a common mistake (for me, as well as for others) to guess that "the love of God" in a Saint is the Saint's love for God.
But actually, the first love of God in a Saint, the important love of God that makes a person into a Saint, is not the Saint's love for God, but God's love for the Saint!

And once this all became luminously clear to me as I drove to the library (fortunately I was driving to the far away library rather than the near one), I had the answer to How to be(come) a Saint.
Happily, it's an answer that can allay our worries and provide our prayer with words (although I like Jesus' solution of breathing and glancing as prayers - these will do when words fail us ), and thus we can tie our whole post together with a simplicity that would please St. Therese.

I know it would please her, for our answer comes directly from her, and it's not just any of her many great answers, but her final word, her definitive act.

If a Saint is someone filled with God's love, then what we need is a sure fire way to be filled with God's love. We can't fill ourselves with God's love, but we can ask Him to fill us, and it really is that easy, because He who is the Truth said, "Ask and you shall receive." And I must add that since He is God, to say it is to effect it. (Remember "Let there be light?" He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.)

Perhaps our hesitation, our long experience telling us, "Surely it's more complicated than merely asking, for many a time have I asked and not received," is only the result of our asking for things that God couldn't give us (or not yet) because they weren't compatible with His infinite love for us . . . But without worrying about anything (especially about how we've prayed - He's so glad we have prayed that it's not worth worrying that our prayers were imperfect), let me tell you the simple solution. 

We can become Saints by asking God to fill us with His love, and we can ask Him to fill us with His love by our praying with St. Therese and Marcel her "Act of Oblation to the Merciful Love of God."

If you know this prayer, you'll be quite right to opt for Jesus' shorter versions of breathing and glancing. (In other places, He and Our Lady suggest sighing too. I love that prayer!) Because I must say that the full text of Therese's Act is quite long.

Enter our Mother, the Church.
She has, from the time her children asked her to put her stamp of approval on this prayer, selected for us the last few paragraphs of the Act as the most important part, and so, let's start with this last part, the Act Proper, we might call it.
We want to be Saints.
We will ask God to make us Saints by filling us with His love so that it drives out all unnecessary fear and everything else contrary to it . . . Isn't that the answer to everything?

For those subject to the time pressure problem, we'll start with our best and shortest words to Jesus, asking Him for absolutely everything for everyone:

Draw me, we will run!

And then (now) for a prayer to delight the Heart of God and make us Saints with our little Sister Therese and our brother Marcel Van, here are the words we can say to join them in asking Him to fill our hearts with Himself:

In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a victim of holocaust to Your merciful love, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!
     
May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.

I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!

+             +             +

Gee whiz. Now that I've given you this easy little way to become a Saint, it occurs to me that you might be somewhat startled by the dramatic language. I guess I could've made it easier by just giving you the formula that came to my mind as a child - the natural thought of any child who hears the news that martyrdom can be as swift as one blow of the ax, the very thought that occurred to me when, as a young girl, I saw "Mary, Queen of Scots."

Want to become a Saint? Just go for martyrdom!

But as my holy mother St. Teresa will tell you (she set off as a child for martyrdom, but was caught by the grown-ups within a short while and long before she reached the Moors), and St. Francis of Assisi, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Francis Xavier, and so many others - martyrdom is not always had for the asking!

Therese has the answer for everything (she is a Doctor of the Church, and no slouch among Doctors), and she proposes a martyrdom of love, rather than of blood. This is within our reach, and she promised her sister Marie (Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart in the Carmel), that to offer oneself as a martyr of love is absolutely NOT to ask for suffering. Suffering may come (I haven't found a way to avoid it yet, though I'll let you know a.s.a.p. if I come up with anything), but to pray the Act is definitely not to ask for more suffering. It's to ask for more Love.

Now I'm smiling (I can't laugh aloud because I'm in the library; shhh...) because it all seemed so simple and clear when I was driving, and now I imagine a hundred questions flying in from all quarters as you, dear reader, are assailed with doubts about my very simple solution. I'm such a bad teacher! No matter, though, there are plenty of good ones: Mr. Berquist and his wife, Therese and Marcel, and above every other, Jesus Himself.

When I think of Jesus the teacher, I think of the Gospels, but I also think of Conversations, where His words are directed to the littlest souls, those (including us) who are studying in the School of Therese alongside Marcel. Perhaps, then, I should have ended with His words to us for today, but no regrets! It's never too late for Love to remedy our little mishaps, and nothing in a blog post that a little copying and pasting can't fix, so let's try again:

Jesus: You know, at least, how to breathe and to look; so take your breaths and your glances and give them to Me. Is that not to speak to Me? Would you be afraid that I might not understand? Come, I understand you very well.

*             *             *

How comforting to hear our True Love tell us that He understands us well. With a breath and a glance, then, and our five favorite words, I wish you a very happy conclusion of the Octave, in the arms of Our Lady, Mother of Divine Grace, snuggling close to her with Jesus, our Love, to Whom we whisper:

                                                               Draw me, we will run!

P.S. You can find the full text of Therese's Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, as well as other beautiful prayers (words, words, words - very lovely words!) for the making of Saints, by clicking on PRAYERS at the top of the page. Or for those who want instant gratification (without any extra scrolling up), click HERE. Happy day!