Happy Feast of St. Padre Pio! Are you ready for a good and true story?

Once when Padre Pio was a young priest, a Frenchwoman brought him a picture of Sister Therese of Lisieux. He was filled with joy and exclaimed, "She is a saint! A very great saint!"

When, however, the woman asked him to bless the picture, Padre Pio refused, saying, "I cannot bless the image of this nun, for she has not yet been beatified, but one day she will ascend all the altars because she is Saint, a very great Saint!"

A few years later Padre Pio was seen at the beatification of St. Therese, even though he never left his friary at San Giovanni Rotondo. How sweet a devotion he had to her, using his gift of bilocation to witness this big step in her glorification. What a wonderful holy affection our Padre had for this "very great saint!" I like to think that in the picture above he's reading Story of a Soul, the book that took the whole world by storm.

Pio's appearance at Therese's beatification was the only instance I knew of his bilocating for his own edification, until I recently read about his trips to the tomb of St. Pius X in the crypt of St. Peter's. Witnesses saw him there on five different occasions. Later, Padre Pio said, "I never met Leo XIII nor Pius X, but certainly this last one is the most sympathetic of all the popes I know from St. Peter down; for he is so simple and humble that he, more than anyone else, resembles Christ through his simplicity and humbleness."

Considering St. Padre Pio's gift for reading souls, it's fair to guess that his estimation of the popes "from St. Peter down" has more than a mere human calculation to it. And how wonderful that he seizes upon the very virtues that Christ has held up for our imitation in Himself, which are also (no accident!) Therese's most prized "possessions." Or to speak more accurately, her own favorite gifts from God.

I've been rejoicing lately, as Jesus did, in the Father's unexpected but eternal decrees. We didn't get to celebrate St. Matthew's feast on Sunday (because the solemnity of our "little Easter" takes precedence), but here is a passage we can thank him for, even at the same time as we join Our Beloved in thanking the One from Whom all good and perfect gifts come:

At that time, Jesus declared, "I thank Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for such was Thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to Me by My Father and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."

Our little sister St. Therese and our big brother Padre Pio both took Jesus at His word. She insisted on a little way to God that would be "very direct, very short, and entirely new," and found that way smack dab in the middle of Jesus' embrace. Let Him do the heavy lifting, she counsels!

As for Padre Pio, I love asking him to give us his love of the Rosary, for while this was one prayer our dear Therese found (to her surprise, for she loved the Blessed Virgin so much) nearly impossible to say alone, one more charism of Pio's was his indefatigable devotion to saying his beads. When asked, "How can you say so many rosaries each day?" he answered, "How can you not?" I love that the saints find easy what we (and even other saints!) may find far beyond our ken. And yet, how natural, or rather how supernatural, for it is His yoke, not ours, that is easy. O Jesus, let's trade!!!

It is literally wonderful to ponder the resemblances between these two very great saints so seemingly different. Last year at this time, I found the time and place to wax eloquent (and I resemble Therese in that I'm surprised, for I didn't remember these public appearances) at both Catholic Exchange and on Ave Maria in the Afternoon, and you can read or listen, depending on your preference and whether you click on THIS (to read the article at CE) or THIS (to listen to my 10 minutes with Dr. Marcus Peters).

Finally, though, and this time completely unsurprisingly because she is the Doctor of the Church among us, Therese expresses her and Pio's similarities and common sanctity most pithily and best when she says, explaining our Blessed Mother's words in the Magnificat:

"I prefer, therefore, to own in all simplicity that, 'He that is mighty hath done great things to me,' and the greatest of all is that He has shown me my littleness and how of myself I am incapable of anything good." (Story of a Soul, Manuscript C)

Ah, mystery of sanctity and love! How can we be so relieved to find ourselves entirely poor?

Again St. Matthew comes to our assistance with his inerrant account of Jesus' answer:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!

In our poverty, let's not forget to ask for EVERYTHING we need (and for everything needed by those we love, those who've asked for our prayers, and those for whom we've promised to pray - and then those who need our prayers too) with a simple prayer to conclude the second part of our triple novena:

St. Padre Pio and St. Thérèse, come down from Heaven and show us the love that the Blessed Trinity has for us, inspire in us a love for the rosary, and obtain for us the grace to be living tabernacles for Jesus. Amen.

I slipped in that last bit about being living tabernacles because it was another miraculous grace Pio and Therese shared, and one which they highly recommend to us! I'm so convinced of their determination to share this gift that I even wrote a book about it: Something New with St. Therese: Her Eucharistic Miracle.

One of my favorite passages from St. Therese, and one which I never tire of quoting, is her letter to her sister and godmother Marie of the Sacred Heart (the famous Letter 197 from September 17, 1896) in which she joyfully insists that "It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love." What a perfect note on which to begin the final jaunt of our triple novena to her feast. If you worry that you don't have enough confidence, relax, because our sister in Heaven is ready to share hers! Let's listen to her reassurance:

"Ah! I feel that what pleases the Good Lord in my little soul is to see me love my littleness and my poverty, it is the blind hope that I have in His mercy... This is my only treasure, darling, why shouldn't this treasure be yours?...
                O my darling Sister, please understand your little girl, understand that to love Jesus, to be His victim of love, the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more fit one is for the operations of this consuming and transforming love... The mere desire to be a victim is enough, but you have to agree to remain poor and without strength and that is the difficult thing because “The truly poor in spirit, where to find him? You have to look for it far away” said the psalmist... He does not say that you have to look for it among great souls, but “far away,” that is to say, in nothingness ... Oh! so let's stay far away from everything that shines, love our littleness, love to feel nothing, then we will be poor in spirit and Jesus will come to get us, however far away we are, He will transform us into flames of love... Oh ! how I wish I could make you understand what I feel!... It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love... Since we see the way, let's run together. Yes, I feel it, Jesus wants to give us the same graces, he wants to give us His Heaven for free."

And to this, I hear Padre Pio concluding with his Italian accent, "Amen!"

But wait, dear Pio! We don't want to forget to say our novena!

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 us the favors
We 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.

Our triple novena ends on October 1st, our sister's feast AND the day her relics arrive in the USA! I hope you can find your way to her since she's traveling so far to get to us. You can check the schedule here:

https://stthereseusa2025.com/

And just in case you, like Padre Pio, can't get enough of prayer, here's a final one specifically for the joys and graces of the relic visit to come to fruition:

Heavenly Father, we thank You for bringing the relics of St. Thérèse here to us very soon. Continue to bless our preparations, and give us Your guidance, Your strength and Your peace. May our prayers and sacrifices help build up the Church: Give us conversions, healings and vocations. Fill our churches and our hearts with Your presence and Your joy. “May we love You and make You greatly loved.”  

Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our Lady of the Smile, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, pray for us.
St. Thérèse, pray for us.

​Draw me, we will run!

And now, since it's our dear Padre's feast day, how about one last laugh?

Today is the feast of St. Joseph of Cupertino, a saint who is described (in traditional accounts) as "remarkably unclever." And yet, mysteries ever ancient, ever new, he's the very one whom generations of students have called upon to help them in exam time. Why?

Let's allow St. Therese to tell the story, for she too knew of our hero. Her sister Celine (Sister Genevieve in the Carmel) remarked to Therese on July 12, 1897 (just 2 and a half months before Therese flew the coop for Heaven):

"God will not be able to take me immediately after your death because I won't be good enough."

Therese replied:

"It makes no difference; you remember St. Joseph Cupertino, his intelligence was mediocre, and he was uninstructed, knowing perfectly only this verse of the Gospel: Beatus venter qui te. Blessed is the womb that bore thee from St. Luke. Questioned precisely on this subject, he answered so well that all were in admiration, and he was received with great honors for the priesthood, along with his three companions, without any further examination. For they judged after hearing his sublime answers that his companions knew as perfectly as he did."

Therese concludes:

"Thus I will answer for you, and God will give you gratis all He will have already given to me!"

This is glorious news for the rest of us! I take from this that all we need to do is hang onto the skirts or coattails of some kindly saint (and they are ALL kindly!), and we're in!

Who will it be for you?
I've got the bottom of Marcel's soutane in one hand, and Therese's habit in the other.
But if you are looking for someone bigger (they are awfully little), you could grab that rope tied around Padre Pio's waist!

He had a lot to say too on the subject of getting his friends and spiritual children into Heaven. Let's see what we can find for our happy contemplation. He and St. Joseph Cupertino were both Franciscans, and it's just the Franciscan way to generously help others (the poorer the better) into the embrace of Christ. . . 

Oh, here's a good Padre Pio quote! Forget holding onto coattails - why not climb on his shoulders? For it was our dear father Pio who said: 

"When the Lord entrusts a soul to me, I place it on my shoulder and never let it go."

And what else does he say? I've found something even better, just in case you were worried you'd be lonely up there on his shoulder with all your loved ones grabbing at the skirts and cassocks of other saints, or worse yet, not having seen this post, perhaps your loved ones aren't grabbing at all! But no worries, it's against our religion! Instead, listen to Padre Pio's reassurance:

"I love my Spiritual Children as much as my own soul and even more."
and
"Once I take a soul on, I also take on their entire family as my spiritual children."

Okay, then! What shall we do to become spiritual children of Padre Pio? Well first off, let's stop being afraid of him. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm going to give you a good thousand on not fearing such a loving father:

And he's not only smiling, he's holding a book in his arms. What do you think? Therese's Story of a Soul? Marcel's Conversations? Perhaps it's a P.G. Wodehouse! It's sure making him chuckle!

The point is, no more worries any more ever, as Jesus told Marcel. And we here at Miss Marcel's Musings add: Not even a worry about whether Padre Pio will take you on as his spiritual child (and whether he'll be gentle and mild with you if he does). We have it on good authority: the Church has proclaimed Padre Pio a saint, and we know saints are like Jesus. What is Jesus like? He tells us, "Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart." No more worries then, just confidence that you'll be treated like the remarkably unclever child that you are. Which means Padre Pio will get Joseph of Cupertino or St. Therese or even St. Thomas Aquinas to answer the tough questions for you. Your job is simply to sit on his shoulder and enjoy the view!

Here, then, in the midst of our triple novena, is a prayer to become a spiritual child of Padre Pio's. Don't be scared - there's no scary thing, only Love here! 

Ready, set, go!

Dear Padre Pio, I recall your promise to the Lord, “I will stand at the gates of heaven until I see all my spiritual children have entered.” Encouraged by your gracious promise, I ask you to accept me as your spiritual child.

And just to keep up with our triple novena prayer to Our Lady:

Blessed Mother of those whose names you can read in my heart, watch over them with every care. Make their way easy and their labors fruitful. Dry their tears if they weep; sanctify their joys; raise their courage if they weaken; restore their hope if they lose heart, their health if they be ill, truth if they err, and repentance if they fall. Amen.

St. Padre Pio, pray for us!
St. Joseph of Cupertino, pray for us!
Remarkably unclever but delightful little brother Marcel, pray for us!
​St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, pray for us and don't forget to shower down roses on all those who have asked for our prayers, all those for whom we've promised to pray, all those needing our prayers, and . . . us!

Draw me; we will run!

Blessed Mother of those whose names you can read in my heart, watch over them with every care. Make their way easy and their labors fruitful. Dry their tears if they weep; sanctify their joys; raise their courage if they weaken; restore their hope if they lose heart, their health if they be ill, truth if they err, and repentance if they fall. Amen.

As we finish the first nine days of our triple novena, we find ourselves on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, originally (in the 12th century) the Feast of Our Lady of Compassion.

Just as she had compassion for Jesus in His sufferings on Calvary, so too she has compassion on us in all our sufferings. On Good Friday of 1946, Jesus explained to our little brother Marcel Van the depth of Our Blessed Mother's love for us, and I can't find any words better for this feast. Jesus said, speaking of His Passion:

Finding myself in the presence of my Mother, I suffered with joy. At that moment, when all the creatures of the world seemed to have abandoned me, only my Mother remained to comfort me. Even God the Father seemed to wish no longer to look at me; but my Mother Mary did not cease to look at me until the time when I escaped from suffering. Oh! Little brother, Mary is your real Mother as well as mine. When she sees you suffer, she is closer to you to console you, for all time until you, too, will have escaped all suffering. Mary, you are the true Mother of Marcel, the real Mother of all souls; never be far from your children.

Mary is your true Mother, and you are really her child. Always think of her; she understands you better than you understand yourself. She knows your sufferings, she is always close to you, carrying you unceasingly in her arms and covering you with kisses . . . 

Little brother, no matter how great your sufferings, always remind yourself that I, also, have suffered, but Mary has comforted Me. It will be the same for you. Mary will never abandon you in your suffering. Besides, when you suffer, it is she who suffers even more, since she is your Mother . . . 

*  *  *

We know from our own experience that those who love each other hate to see each other suffer, and yet what a unique case for Jesus and Mary. They knew the great good this suffering of Jesus on the Cross and Mary at His feet would gain for the rest of us, and so in the mystery of God, they could find joy too. 

Thank you, Blessed Mother, for accepting all your sorrows and suffering with us too. Now as we head toward your beloved son Padre Pio's feast, help his sentiments and his love for you become ours too!

We have nine days to September 23rd, and many miracles to request. Padre Pio, like our sister St. Therese, loves to shower miracles upon those who seek his help. I know for myself I have trouble remembering all the intentions I want to pray for, and new ones are added each day. Let's trust Our Lady to know the deepest desires of our hearts as well as the needs of those we love, and let's begin again:

Blessed Mother of those whose names you can read in my heart, watch over them with every care. Make their way easy and their labors fruitful. Dry their tears if they weep; sanctify their joys; raise their courage if they weaken; restore their hope if they lose heart, their health if they be ill, truth if they err, and repentance if they fall. Amen.

St. Padre Pio, pray for us!

Draw me; we will run!

​From the canonization homily of Pope Leo XIV:  "In the first reading, we heard a question: "Who has learned Your counsel, unless You have given wisdom and sent Your Holy Spirit from on high?” (Wis 9:17).  This question comes after two young Blesseds, Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, were proclaimed saints, and this is providential . . . 

Jesus, too, in the Gospel, speaks to us of a plan to which we must commit wholeheartedly.  He says: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27); and again: “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (v. 33).  He calls us to abandon ourselves without hesitation to the adventure that He offers us, with the intelligence and strength that comes from His Spirit, that we can receive to the extent that we empty ourselves of the things and ideas to which we are attached, in order to listen to His word.

Many young people, over the centuries, have had to face this crossroad in their lives.  Think of Saint Francis of Assisi, like Solomon, he too was young and rich, thirsty for glory and fame.  That is why he went to war, hoping to be knighted and adorned with honors.  But Jesus appeared to him along the way and asked him to reflect on what he was doing.  Coming to his senses, he asked God a simple question: “Lord, what do You want me to do?” From there, he changed his life and began to write a different story: the wonderful story of holiness that we all know, stripping himself of everything to follow the Lord, living in poverty and preferring the love of his brothers and sisters, especially the weakest and smallest, to his father’s gold, silver and precious fabrics.

How many similar saints we could recall!  Sometimes we portray them as great figures, forgetting that for them it all began when, while still young, they said “yes” to God and gave themselves to Him completely, keeping nothing for themselves.  Saint Augustine recounts that, in the “tortuous and tangled knot” of his life, a voice deep within him said: “I want you” (Confessions, II, 10,18). God gave him a new direction, a new path, a new reason, in which nothing of his life was lost.

In this setting, today we look to Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati and Saint Carlo Acutis: a young man from the early 20th century and a teenager from our own day, both in love with Jesus and ready to give everything for Him.

Pier Giorgio encountered the Lord through school and church groups — Catholic Action, the Conferences of Saint Vincent, the Italian Catholic University Federation, the Dominican Third Order — and he bore witness to God with his joy of living and of being a Christian in prayer, friendship and charity.  This was so evident that seeing him walking the streets of Turin with carts full of supplies for the poor, his friends renamed him “Frassati Impresa Trasporti” (Frassati Transport Company)! Even today, Pier Giorgio’s life is a beacon for lay spirituality.  For him, faith was not a private devotion, but it was driven by the power of the Gospel and his membership in ecclesial associations.  He was also generously committed to society, contributed to political life and devoted himself ardently to the service of the poor.

Carlo, for his part, encountered Jesus in his family, thanks to his parents, Andrea and Antonia — who are here today with his two siblings, Francesca and Michele — and then at school, and above all in the sacraments celebrated in the parish community.  He grew up naturally integrating prayer, sport, study and charity into his days as a child and young man.

Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo cultivated their love for God and for their brothers and sisters through simple acts, available to everyone: daily Mass, prayer, and especially Eucharistic Adoration.  Carlo used to say: “In front of the sun, you get a tan. In front of the Eucharist, you become a saint!”  And again: “Sadness is looking at yourself; happiness is looking at God.  Conversion is nothing more than shifting your gaze from below to above; a simple movement of the eyes is enough.”  Another essential practice for them was frequent Confession.  Carlo wrote: “The only thing we really have to fear is sin,” and he marveled because — in his own words — “People are so concerned with the beauty of their bodies and do not care about the beauty of their souls.” Finally, both had a great devotion to the saints and to the Virgin Mary, and they practiced charity generously.  Pier Giorgio said: “Around the poor and the sick, I see a light that we do not have."  He called charity “the foundation of our religion” and, like Carlo, he practiced it above all through small, concrete gestures, often hidden, living what Pope Francis called “a holiness found in our next-door neighbors.” 

Even when illness struck them and cut short their young lives, not even this stopped them nor prevented them from loving, offering themselves to God, blessing Him and praying to Him for themselves and for everyone.  One day Pier Giorgio said: “The day of my death will be the most beautiful day of my life."  On his last photo, which shows him climbing a mountain in the Val di Lanzo, with his face turned towards his goal, he wrote: “Upwards."  Moreover, Carlo, who was even younger than Pier Giorgio, loved to say that heaven has always been waiting for us, and that to love tomorrow is to give the best of our fruit today.

Dear friends, Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces. They encourage us with their words: “Not I, but God,” as Carlo used to say. And Pier Giorgio: “If you have God at the center of all your actions, then you will reach the end.”  This is the simple but winning formula of their holiness.  It is also the type of witness we are called to follow, in order to enjoy life to the full and meet the Lord in the feast of heaven."

*    *    *

St. Pier Giorgio and St. Carlo, pray for us, and pray with us as we begin our triple novena of love! We ask you to be near us, and help us see more clearly her whom you now see face to face, our Blessed Mother of Joyful Surprises, the birthday girl! She drew you to Jesus in your lives and in your holy passage to Heaven - ask her to bring Jesus very close to us too, and take care of all the intentions we present before her now: those remembered, and those we have forgotten, the intentions of those we love and of those who need our love. Pray with us brothers, in this octave of your glorification, and ask our Mama with us:

Blessed Mother of those whose names you can read in my heart, watch over them with every care. Make their way easy and their labors fruitful. Dry their tears if they weep; sanctify their joys; raise their courage if they weaken; restore their hope if they lose heart, their health if they be ill, truth if they err, and repentance if they fall. Amen.

*   *   *

Due to technical difficulties beyond our control (i.e. the Holy Spirit), this post didn't automatically fly to the inboxes of subscribers yesterday when it was first written. As always, God's will is quite a bit more brilliant than ours, and the delay brought to our attention that our triple novena (which started yesterday, but if you missed opening day, just hop in now, there's plenty of days left) began on the Vigil of Mary's Birthday!

This makes more sense of my invoking Our Lady of Joyful Surprises (I'll credit the Holy Spirit with that one too) even though the first of our three novenas ends on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Well, now's the time to cash in on that saying which always seemed so dubious to me (though no doubt it's true) that they're all the same Our Lady!

The truth, which I've mentioned here before, is that Marcel and I are not big fans of sorrow. He is constantly complaining (well, he was back in the day when he wrote his wonderful and highly recommended Conversations with Jesus, Mary, and St. Therese) of "degout" which turns out to be a French-Vietnamese version of disgust. Marcel found that while he loved Jesus like crazy and got to spend time with Him every day, he still suffered the typical ups and downs (suffering particularly from the downs) the rest of us experience . . . but Jesus, Mary, and Therese kept reminding him to love Jesus in joy. Whether he experienced sorrow and needed to cry, or happiness and needed to laugh, they encouraged him to be joyful in his love for Jesus.

So with us too, as with Marcel and St. Therese before him, let's ask Our Lady for the Joy that first dwelt incarnate in her womb. She is the cause of our joy and full of joyful surprises because she is the Mother of Jesus, source of all joy. 

Little Jesus, on this day of your beautiful Mother's own birth, please shower us with the gifts she holds in her Immaculate Heart in such abundance: Joy, confidence, hope, charity, love, peace, gentleness, sweetness, and the miracles that will bring all these beautiful sparkling facets of Our Lady to those for whom we pray!

Draw me; we will run!

Last night at the tale end of St. Mother Teresa's feast, I looked for her Collect and found a treasure trove. It turns out that when Holy Mother Church chose the liturgical readings to accompany her feast, she gave us Mother Teresa's last letter, written just a few hours before she died on September 5, 1997. And what a letter it is!

What moved me most in this most moving of letters was the conclusion. In the final words Mother wrote, words of gratitude which the Church now presents to us every year in the liturgy, we find her joyfully pointing us to none other than her patron saint and inspiration, St. Therese, the Little Flower!

I was stunned. The first part of Mother's letter contains a wealth of good counsel, most notably her reminder to her sisters (and now to us) of our route to Jesus through Mary. But then she takes the next step along the Little Way and thanks God for the gift of St. Therese and her newly announced Doctorate. I would have been simply delighted to find that Mother Teresa herself delighted, hours before she went to join her patroness, in the news of St. Therese's impending honors, but to find that the Church has captured and saved these words - not just as a snapshot or memory, but as a liturgical text! - has filled my cup to overflowing.

I think the best way to give you this treasure chest is not to show you its gems one by one, but simply to hand the whole thing over. Here, then, for your enrichment and delectation, is the second reading of the Office of Readings for the Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours) of September 5th, St. Mother Teresa's feast:

 My dearest Children,

This brings you Mother’s love, prayer and blessing that each one of you may be only all for Jesus through Mary. I know that Mother says often–“Be only all for Jesus through Mary”–but that is because that is all Mother wants for you, all Mother wants from you. If in your heart you are only all for Jesus through Mary, and if you do everything only all for Jesus through Mary, you will be a true Missionary of Charity. Thank you for all the loving wishes you sent for the Society Feast.

We have much to thank God for, especially that He has given us Our Lady’s spirit to be the spirit of our Society. Loving Trust and Total Surrender made Our Lady say “Yes” to the message of the angel, and Cheerfulness made her to run in haste to serve her cousin Elizabeth. That is so much our life--saying “Yes” to Jesus and running in haste to serve Him in the poorest of the poor.

Let us keep close to Our Lady and she will make that same spirit grow in each one of us. September 10th is coming very close. That is another beautiful chance for us to stand near Our Lady, to listen to the Thirst of Jesus and to answer with our whole heart. It is only with Our Lady that we can hear Jesus cry, “I Thirst”, and it is only with Our Lady that we can thank God properly for giving this great gift to our Society.

Last year was the Golden Jubilee of Inspiration Day, and I hope that the whole year has been one of thanksgiving. We will never come to the end of the gift that came to Mother for the Society on that day, and so we must never stop thanking for it. Let our gratitude be our strong resolution to quench the Thirst of Jesus by lives of real charity–love for Jesus in prayer, love for Jesus in our Sisters, love for Jesus in the poorest of the poor–nothing else.

And now I have heard that Jesus is giving us one more gift. This year, one hundred years after she went home to Jesus, Holy Father is declaring Little Flower to be a Doctor of the Church. Can you imagine–for doing little things with great love the Church is making her a Doctor, like St. Augustine and the big St. Teresa! It is just like Jesus said in the Gospel to the one who was seated in the lowest place, “Friend, come up higher.”

So let us keep very small and follow Little Flower’s way of trust and love and joy, and we will fulfill Mother’s promise to give saints to mother Church.

*    *     *

"We will never come to the end of the gift . . . and so we must never stop thanking for it."

These 19 words from St. Mother Teresa constitute my new spiritual maxim. How true! How wise! How encouraging a little way this is! For as St. Therese puts it, our own Doctor encouraging us to become saints as she encouraged Mother Teresa before us:

"Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but simply surrender and gratitude." (Story of a Soul)

And since God's love is infinite, since He is goodness itself and goodness is diffusive of itself, since His mercies never end, but in fact are new every morning, there are more gifts (and thus more gratitude) in our near future . . . 

Tomorrow, Sunday, September 7, 2025, the solemn Canonization Mass for Blessed Carlo Acutis and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati will take place at 10:00 a.m. in St. Peter's Square, Rome. That's 4:00 a.m. for East Coasters and 1:00 a.m. for West Coasters. Apparently, you can watch the event via livestream through Vatican News or EWTN, or alternatively, in line with another liturgical text, since "He pours gifts on His beloved while they slumber," you can dream happily of the canonization while you sleep (or simply sleep like a rock) and wake to find two new saints lighting the Little Way for us.

I'm thrilled to announce that with the delay of first Carlo's canonization and then Pier's, and finally with their dual canonization happening tomorrow, Holy Mother Church has given us a special double anointing to consecrate the Return of the Triple Novena!

Yes, tomorrow will begin our novena from September 7 (day of canonization of Saints Pier Giorgio and Carlo) to September 15, Our Lady of Sorrows, on which day we'll begin our second novena leading from Our Lady of Sorrows (Sept. 15) to St. Padre Pio (Sept. 23). Then on Padre Pio's day (Sept. 23) we'll begin our third novena to Our Guiding Star, Little St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, to end on her feast (October 1st), perhaps in exhaustion, but certainly in exhilaration over all our answered prayers and the miracles raining down like roses around us for our families, our friends, and the Church and the world!

If that looked, sounded like, or felt like a lot of gobbledy-gook and a jumble of dates and feasts and too many novenas, sit back and relax (or close the computer and go for a nice, brisk walk), and leave the details to us. We here at Miss Marcel's Musings started this mess of a triple novena, and it's up to us to finish it. 

As always, we'll be praying for ALL your intentions, and the terms of the Triple Novena, like Calvinball from Calvin and Hobbes of yore, while not quite ever-changing, have a few innovative aspects worth noting. First, just by reading this, you are enrolled! Second, by saying one of the prayers or even a simple, "Help, please" shot up toward Heaven, you're considered to have participated in the whole thing. And third, well worth repeating, Every Single One of your intentions ever - those you remember, those you've forgotten, and those yet to come - will be included in our prayers.

We won't make this complicated, despite the sound of it, because in the words of our little Doctor St. Therese, "Prayer is a burst from the heart, it is a simple glance thrown toward Heaven, a cry of thanksgiving and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy." 

We plan to have one prayer for the whole 25 days (and see how we've made our triple novena, which you'd think would be 3 x 9, so 27 days, come out even littler!), and I'm hoping by the end to have memorized it, though I doubt I'll manage that since I seem to put one more thing in my little Pooh brain only to have something else fall out the other side!

We'll officially begin tomorrow, but if you want to get a jump on things, or simply read to the end of this post, here is our time-honored and well-proven Triple Novena prayer. 

Blessed Mother of those whose names you can read in my heart, watch over them with every care. Make their way easy and their labors fruitful. Dry their tears if they weep; sanctify their joys; raise their courage if they weaken; restore their hope if they lose heart, their health if they be ill, truth if they err, and repentance if they fall. Amen.

Draw me; we will run!

p.s. I almost forgot: here is a LINK (just click on LINK) to the rest of Mother Teresa's liturgical texts. It is stunningly beautiful how the Church chooses the favorite gospels and messages from the saints to adorn their feasts and inspire us to follow their lead . . . St. Mother Teresa, pray for us!