Becoming Saints with Il Padre, La Petite Fleur, Elizabeth, and the Big Mac

“Jesus wants to make us holy at all costs . . . He offers you continual proof of this.” - St. Padre Pio

"Oh I beg you, become a Saint. God is begging this from you." - St. Therese, Last Conversations

​“I thank you very much for sending me yet more writings of our friend [Elizabeth of the Trinity] . . . If, after this valley of tears, I am to save my soul, I know she will have had a significant part in my success. Not all the learning in the world—not the inductions, the syllogisms, the mastering of arguments, the analyses, the syntheses, or the reading of great books will do any of us a bit of good unless we, in our own way, rise, if ever so little, toward the wisdom one finds bursting out from all her writings.” — Ronald P. McArthur, founding president, Thomas Aquinas College

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Alleluia, sing to Jesus! Today is the feast of our dear spiritual father, Padre Pio, 56 years exactly (if I did the math right!) since his birthday into Heaven, and it happens also to be 22 years exactly since DJAEA (son #2, but the names have been shortened to initials to protect the innocent) had his birth into this life of exile. Not quite accidental since a planned c-section meant I got to choose the day, and the first feast of Padre Pio after he'd been canonized seemed a magnificent day to have a son.

We are finishing our novena to Padre Pio (Il Padre) and beginning our novena to St. Therese (La Petite Fleur; this is our chance to imitate those wonderful old books that bandy foreign words about like there's no tomorrow), and before I get lost in the wonders of Elizabeth and The Big Mac, the other two friends gracing our title above and our post below, why don't we say our prayers?

Concluding Prayer to The Padre

Dear Padre Pio, you promised to stand outside the gates of Heaven until all your spiritual children had entered. You know that we, like you and Jesus, want that group of spiritual children to include EVERYONE, so we ask you to bring all of us and all those we love, all those who have asked for our prayers, all those for whom we have promised to pray, and all those who need our prayers, under your fatherly care. Let us be your spiritual children despite our tendency to wander off, and with the help of your guardian angel and ours please bring us back always to your and Jesus' side until we can rest forever in our adorable Savior's sweet embrace. Please wake up Marcel (if he's sleeping) and ask him to wake Jesus (Who is almost always sleeping) and ask for the innumerable favors we need, including Suzie's instantaneous, complete, and lasting cure from cancer. Amen.

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: 
for Marcel to obtain a miracle for Suzie, 
for us all to become great saints,
and for the countless other miracles we need
for ourselves, for those we love, and for the whole wide world.

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

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We are late to mention that yesterday was the 100th birthday of another spiritual father of ours, at least as dear to us as our beloved Padre Pio . . . And who is this mystery man?

He was called throughout his life by various names:
Ronnie, Ronald, Ron (no, I'm not talking about Reagan, God rest his soul, though I did love the recent movie with Dennis Quaid) . . .

More specifically, he was also "RPM," and eventually, to give it away completely, he was called Dr. McArthur, or formally, officially, and in print, Dr. Ronald P. McArthur.

Our favorite of his many names, though, is "The Big Mac," and believe it or not, despite my love of McDonald's fast food, it never occurred to me until now that this nickname may have been a play on words.

However the moniker started, it sure fit because RPM was a very tall man (I think 6 foot 6 inches was his wingspan in his prime), and yet there was something extremely down to earth about him (I think of "Mac" as a wonderfully working class kind of name) even if he was, according to his amazing wife Marilyn, never destined to be a carpenter as I think she said his father was.

Once I asked Mrs. McArthur how she felt when her husband said he wanted to start a college. I figured she must have had her hesitations, like the early Thomas Aquinas College benefactor who said, when approached in his office on a high floor of a sparkling Los Angeles skyscraper by two of the would-be-college-starters (later revered as founders), "You have about as much chance of starting a college as you do of jumping out of that window and flying!"

God bless hilarious and skeptical rich men! As the college's website states in its Brief History of the school, "From the very beginning, the College would rely on the generosity of many friends and benefactors. Among the first were oil magnate and philanthropist Henry Salvatori, whose initial $10,000 grant funded the College's incorporation on October 14, 1968." 

Right after Mr. Salvatori told Dr. McArthur and Mr. DeLuca (the last founder standing today) what he thought of their chances, he pulled his checkbook out of a drawer and began writing, saying as he wrote, "But everyone deserves a chance to fail." God rest his soul! Henry, don't forget us now either. You might well be looking down on us from above and saying we have about as much chance of getting to Heaven as we have of flying, but you're in a good place to know that all things are possible with God!

But what was Mrs. McArthur's reply, the persevering reader may wonder. Let me set the stage by saying Mrs. McArthur always struck me as even more no-nonsense than Mr. Salvatori apparently was. She is also an extremely direct person, and I say "is" because while she passed away nearly two years ago, I'm convinced we don't lose our personalities in Heaven, so I'm betting she's still very direct. In fact, right now I can hear her (in my imagination) telling me not to go around telling you that she's already in Heaven. Pray for her soul, I'm supposed to tell you.

Well, sure, we do always want to keep praying for those who have gone before us. Our dear Therese, whose novena we have just begun, loved to offer suffrages for the departed, and she prayed to the end of her life for her "firstborn," the notorious murderer Pranzini who had converted on the scaffold as a result of her prayers and sacrifices. She called him "very naughty" and wanted to help him for as long as he needed help.

And yet this same doctor of the Church, St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, also liked to say, "For those who love, there is no purgatory."

By this she meant that the love of Jesus - ours for Him but especially His for us - is more purifying than all the flames of purgatory, and by one simple glance He can cleanse us in an instant of all our sins, their effects, and their punishments, making us just as instantly saints ready for direct entry into Heaven and our place before the Face of God.

I also like to remind myself and others that Holy Mother Church, in offering us many opportunities to gain plenary indulgences (which similarly wipe away all our sins and their effects and punishments) extends to us the sweet privilege of offering these indulgences back to Her to apply to the souls in purgatory. Just using our common sense we can say it would be an unkind mother indeed who held out a treasure like this only to snatch it away each time we tried, by hook and by crook, to take it from her in order to help our friends! 

No, we can rest assured our Mother, the Church, is a kind Mother, the best Mother, and she has made this plenary indulgence gig very possible. When she says that just by doing the Stations of the Cross in a church, or by reading Scripture for half an hour, or by saying a Rosary in a family or in a church, or by praying before the Blessed Sacrament for half an hour - just by these simple acts plus "the usual conditions" (receiving Holy Communion, prayers for the Holy Father's intentions, and going to confession within 20 days before or after, and being detached from sin - which means asking God to detach us right then if we're not already) we can obtain a plenary indulgence for the dead EVERY SINGLE DAY, I gotta think this means we can actually obtain a plenary indulgence for those we love.

Hilariously (and yes, I do find almost everything funny these days, which I attribute to a magnificent influx of grace due to your prayers, so thank you!), lately I've been doing the Stations after daily Mass so I can grab that brass ring for a poor soul each day, and I pray like Fr. Aloysius Ellacuria did that my angel will hide me as I move through the church. It's a requirement for gaining this plenary indulgence that, if possible, you walk and visit each Station as you pray, but in case anyone does see me, I'm wondering if they're thinking it's very edifying that this dying woman is always saying the Stations!

Truth be told I'm no more dying than we all are (this life is terminal, they say, and I'm sure hoping they're right!), and my love for the Stations is based on the quick manner in which they get me that daily plenary indulgence! You don't have to say any exact formula of words as you move from one Station to the next, and although I love our Stations of the Cross with Our Sister St. Therese, I prefer to just look at Jesus in the image on the wall, say the title of the Station, make the sign of the cross, and think whatever comes to mind (that has some relation to the Station!), then move along. I insert little prayers like "We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world," and some in my own words, like, "Jesus, some people are really suffering today, please help them," but all in all, it's so quick and easy!

But there. Forgive me, I've still not told you what Mrs. McArthur said.
I asked her what she thought when Dr. McArthur decided he wanted to start a college.

She said, "I thought it was a great idea." 

I was stunned. I thought she, of all people, would be thinking of the practical side of the situation.

And she was, as it turned out.

He was a Catholic college professor in the 1960's, and he was thinking of abandoning his profession due to the failure of Catholic colleges to stay Catholic. Naturally, he'd need to find another profession, and he suggested to Marilyn that he might become a carpenter. She said he was terrible at carpentry! So when he suggested he might start a college, an endeavor we've gratefully seen occur many times over in recent decades but which was unheard of in the late 1960's, she thought, "Now there's something he could actually do!"

And so he, along with Marcus Berquist, Jack Neumayr, and Peter DeLuca, not to mention many, many other hardworking and hard praying men and women, lay, priests, and religious, and those generous benefactors we can never cease thanking (or begging from), did start a college!

With tears in my eyes I think of how this college changed my life and taught me first and foremost what riches God has given us in the Catholic faith, and second, how much fun you can have following the ten commandments.

I went seamlessly from high school days that were far from carefree (when you are allowed to do almost anything, life becomes very unhappy), where my friends and I could only think of the mall or the movie theatre for entertainment (if we weren't up to things I wouldn't want to repeat here!) to an immersion experience like no other. I was suddenly up to my neck in Catholic friends who had so many great ideas about what to do when we weren't reading great books that it's impossible to remember and name them all. Grunyon running anyone? Hiking? Singing? Making home movies more hilarious than SNL skits back in the day? Going on calls for Legion of Mary in Jon Syren's truck? Baking, dancing, eating, confessing (ah, the joys of a clear conscience, at least for the first thirty seconds or so, as our dear Fr. Steck liked to quip), laughing, teasing, joking, and sometimes taking naps to make up for the late nights eating popcorn in the dorm  . . . I can't say those were the best days of my life, because the days keep getting better, but I can say they were the beginning of the best days.

When I think of all we've been given, it's hard to ask for more. Ha, at least for thirty seconds! and then I remember all the needs of those I love . . . and so I thank God for His many good gifts, chief among which are the saints I have known, and then I shamelessly ask away!

If you want to read more about Dr. McArthur and St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, you can go HERE to my article on "Books and Friendship with the Saints."

If you want to read my latest article on Padre Pio and St. Therese (that came out today on Catholic Exchange!) you can go HERE.

And if you want to read some super fabulous sayings from Padre Pio, just scroll down in this post. But in order not to keep you if you've got to go get ready for a CT scan (oh! That's me! My two CTs were authorized - thanks to your prayers! - and will hopefully happen today) or a birthday party (me again for that mysterious DJAEA, whose link and mystery identity you can find HERE - and then you can have a birthday party in his honor too, or for Padre Pio's birthday into Heaven or for The Big Mac's big day yesterday), I will close now with our two simplest and favoritest prayers.

Let these be your novena prayers to Therese if you find the one above too long, She's always about little, and the beauty of her novena is that you can miss a day or two and call it a little novena! Over here at MMM we'll do our best to say nine days worth, and your intentions are definitely included.

Little Flower in this hour show your power!
Draw me, we will run!

Words of Padre Pio, taken from padrepiodevotions.org and their Words of Faith page:

Be of good cheer; abandon yourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and let Him take care of everything.

You think you know my love for you but you don’t know that it is much greater than you can imagine. I follow you with my prayers, with my suffering and with my tears.

Oh my daughter, how beautiful is His face, how sweet His eyes and what a good thing it is to stay close to Him on the mount of His glory. We must place all our desires and affections there.

Place all your trust in the heart of sweet Jesus……Never abandon your faith and renew it always. Faith has never abandoned any man, and far less so will it forsake a soul that yearns to love God.

Every Christian soul ought to be familiar with this saying of the holy apostle St. Paul, “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:2). I live for Jesus Christ, I live for His glory, I live to serve Him, I live to love Him. And when God wants to take our life from us, our sentiment and our feeling should be those of a person who at the end of his toil goes to collect his wages, who, at the end of the fight, goes to receive the prize.


By justice, Jesus Christ once risen should have ascended at once to the glory of the right hand of the Father. . .And yet we know very well that for 40 days He wanted to be seen as risen. And why? To affirm, as St. Leo says, by such an excellent mystery, the good news of our faith. . .These 40 days before our ascent to Heaven will pass for us too. Perhaps they will not be days, but months and years. I wish you, my brothers and sisters, a long and prosperous life full of heavenly and material blessings. But finally this life will come to an end. And then we will be happy, if we have assured for ourselves the joy of a happy transit to eternity. Then our resurrection will be complete. There will be no more danger of losing the grace of God. There will no longer be any suffering, no more death, but instead everlasting life with our Savior Jesus Christ in Heaven. May our Lord bless these wishes of mine which I am happy to have demonstrated to show how much I have your happiness at heart, how much I worry and unceasingly pray for it.

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Padre Pio, be a padre to us!

And if you didn't already come here from there, this link will lead you to a lovely Happy Birthday to Dr. McArthur!