Lenten Stories (and a novena)

The seasons are flying by, and somehow we've gone from Christmas to Lent in one fell swoop. That's okay, because the faster time flies, the faster we get to eternity, and that's where the real fun begins!

Speaking of fun, I just put up a whole new page at this website, and in it you'll find more fun than ought to be legal during Lent! Thanks be to God, He actually only wants our joy, and so here, for your enjoyment, is my new page of TALKS. You'll find there a talk I gave last St. Therese day in St. Therese dorm to the ladies of Thomas Aquinas College, and also a vintage recording (a film, even) of me giving a talk on Novel Writing - and if you haven't given up reading novels for Lent, Marcel and I highly recommend our favorite novel (right after Pride and Prejudice, Enchanted April, and The Scent of Water), namely, The Paradise Project!

Speaking of giving up novels for Lent, I once tried it, only to discover it was a really dumb idea. It reminds me a little of a friend who was working the 12 steps and, in a moment of foolish generosity, decided for Steps 6 and 7 ("6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings") that she'd give up all her "escape mechanisms." In other words, in order to help God do miracles, she'd offer her good will by no longer eating fun things, watching fun things, reading fun things, and basically give up having any fun at all!

Bad idea, mustard seed!

Reminds me of another Miss Marcel (not me, I promise, though I've had my share of abandoning Lenten resolutions, just like Elizabeth in The Paradise Project) who loves, loves, loves chocolate, and so decided to give it up for Lent a few years in a row. And almost died! It's one thing to empty ourselves so God can fill us, it's another to give up something that might crack us on Day 2! . . . I've been realizing how very kind God is to give us the period between Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday of Lent. Plenty of time to revamp our entire Lenten program after we realize we've bitten off more than we can chew. Okay, that seems like the wrong metaphor, but as an old and holy Carmelite friar once said, "Food is our only consolation!" I'm reminded now of friends who were having the worst Lent ever - they'd moved far away to a new place, they missed family and friends and even the weather of their old home, and to top it all off, their well stopped giving water and their sewage system backed up. At least that's how I remember the story! And so, to save their sanity, when the wife's beloved (and fun!) mother came to visit, they had champagne and shrimp cocktail on a Friday in Lent. Was it Good Friday? I don't remember, but if so, they did it while fasting and abstaining. They've been my role models ever since!

My favorite Lenten story, though (oh, but there are so many!), may be the one I've already told a few times in as many days since the recent Ash Wednesday:

My husband and I were at Mass on a college campus (haha, we've been on many authentically Catholic college campuses, or at least 4 that I can think of, so no one in particular need be implicated!), it was in Lent - perhaps Ash Wednesday or a Friday in Lent - and the earnest priest was doing that hilarious thing a priest can do - that is, preaching against another priest's preaching! And while God didn't strike him down, He did strike down a couple others in order to make His point. (You see why I love capitalizing personal pronouns that refer to God - so much easier to know which "He" is acting and which is being acted upon!)

In particular, the priest was saying from the pulpit, "I know there are those who say you are students, and thus you shouldn't fast in Lent. This is absurd! Of course you can fast in Lent!"

And then, CLUNK!

Down went a girl in a dead faint in one of the pews!

After a brief pause to make sure other students came to her aid, the indefatigable priest continued preaching: "It's true, you are called to study, but there is no reason you can't fast and study!"

CLUNK!

Yes! Another girl in another part of the church fainted dead away . . . we could only imagine from fasting!

I can't remember how the sermon ended, although I know the girls were fine (phew! No Flannery O'Connor morals or allegorical endings here!) and while I can't recall when exactly, at the end of that year or the next the priest was transferred to a better assignment (better for us all!), and as far as I know and trust, he is doing great things for God. The moral of the story? There is such a thing, especially among earnest Catholics, as fasting too much. Haha, yes, you may be sensing a theme here. I call it "The Little Way!"

But back to giving up novels for Lent. I really shouldn't say it's a terrible idea, because it helped bring my novel to publication. Not because I was writing instead of reading, and not because my novel was a Lenten penance (heaven forbid!) but because a very dear friend to whom I'm indebted for about a million things (okay, I'm exaggerating, I probably owe her for only seven thousand things) once gave up reading novels for Lent, and luckily for both of us, it was after I'd not only written the first draft of my novel, but the year after I'd had a year or two to polish it up.

This friend is also good enough to have her birthday in Lent every year, so for her birthday that year I gave her two fat binders with the latest draft of the manuscript that would become the book The Paradise Project. This was not unsolicited. I had been at her home when her very artistic family was doing Pysanki, making the Ukrainian Easter eggs that are so beautiful. Over the course of this Lenten evening, one of her numerous talented daughters had just made an exquisitely gorgeous egg while we visited - they making lovely eggs, me drinking tea and sharing in the magnetic warmth of their happy home. When I realized what daughter #4 had accomplished, I oohed and aahed as anyone would have done. Except to my surprise the girl herself, who was pointing out to me the defects of this gorgeously pysankied egg. And then to my further surprise, her mom (the artistic font from which the talent of these girls flowed) agreed with her. "It's not perfect," she said in answer to my exclamations of wonder. "You wouldn't sell it anywhere."

WHAT?!?!?! 

I argued that if it wasn't perfect, it was absolutely marvelous, and then I realized what was happening. They were so talented that they had a very high standard of perfection, plus they were afficionados, so they knew what perfectly pysankied eggs looked like. Thus what I as an amateur would admire was not all that wonderful to them. I explained this, but in the heat of my admiration I may have sounded a little critical. And so my friend, let's hope inspired by the Holy Spirit, shot back, "Oh yeah! Well what about your novel? You've never let us read it even though you've been working on it for years! You probably think it isn't any good just because it isn't Jane Austen!" 

I paraphrase, but that was the gist of our conversation, and the consequence was life changing.

A few days later I handed my friend two large binders full of my manuscript freshly printed out, all wrapped up nicely for her birthday gift. And so that you can see the whole story play out, lest I failed to give a clear enough description of this friend let me add that she has long sun-kissed, burnished auburn tresses AND, possibly more to the point, she LOVES reading. Finally, she's full of charity, and so in charity she had to read my novel even though she had given up reading novels for Lent and was, happily for me, starving for fiction at the exact moment that charity compelled her to stay up all night reading mine!

Suffice it to say that there can be a happy sequel to giving up novels for Lent. She read mine, she over-rode my objections to its imperfections, and the next thing we knew, she and her daughters were helping me create the cover for my new publisher because said publisher was amenable to my choosing what went on the front of the book. This is in contrast to most publishers (so thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear Margot!), and it helps the author not only feel good about what's on the cover, but also prevents the author and future readers from wondering what drugs the cover-makers were taking (whether legally or illegally) while working on the book. One of the funniest examples that comes to mind (lest you think I'm exaggerating again, which I promise I'm not) is the complaint by a favorite author, Elizabeth Goudge, who commented that the publishers clearly didn't actually read her books, or at least they didn't convey any knowledge of the contents to the cover designers. She was so right! My copy of The Scent of Water featured on the cover a picture of a man and a woman embracing in a field. It's true there was a field in the book, and there were men and women in the book, but this couple represented none of them, and the story wasn't a typical boy-meets-girl with the conclusion of a clinch!

​Now I can't close without showing you the beautiful cover to this fun novel (that is, mine!) which I'm happy to report is quite seasonal, as it features a chapter on Lenten resolutions. Not to spoil the story, but it does proceed throughout the months of a full year, so it can be read in any season, but there's no better time than the present to help the time swoosh by and get us quickly to Easter!

I almost forgot! On the TALKS page, you'll also find an invitation to contact me to get a copy of another seasonal book, Stations of the Cross with Our Sister St. Therese. It's available in English, but also in bilingual Spanish/English and Vietnamese/English editions, and I've got copies of all three versions on hand, so ask and it shall be given!

Meanwhile, we have a novena to start.

Today is not only the First Sunday of Lent, but also the most unexpected and very little known feast of St. Alberic Crescitelli, P.I.M.E. which happens to be a very special day for me. On this day in 2001, St. Alberic did me an enormous and priceless favor, and I owe him. So, let's give him what he wants more than anything - the chance to help St. Therese with her mission of making God more loved! (This may sound like it's just Therese, Therese, Therese around here, and it is, but you can also be sure that every saint worth his salt is simply about loving God and making Him more loved - a win/win for everyone!)

Here is a link to some info on St. Alberic and some of his best friends, but if you don't have that extra moment to click over just now, I'll cut to the chase and tell you he was an Italian missionary priest who went to China around 1900 and in thanks for his giving his all for God, he got his head chopped off! Which meant he swiftly flew to Heaven where he now knows it was SO worth it, and where he is in a great position to ask the Blessed and Adorable Trinity for favors for us.

What shall we ask for?

I hope you have a dozen or a couple hundred dozen things to ask for - let's ask for them all! - but I'm putting on the top of our list a super special triple intention that I'll leave nameless for now, except to call it The Most Important Things I've Been Wanting and Asking for seemingly Forever.

Hmm, that's rather unwieldy. We'll just call it my special intention.

And how shall we pray?
I'm super excited that I've been invited to give a couple of talks in the near future, one on St. Therese and the Blessed Sacrament for our parish and one on Prayer (and St. Therese will come into that one too, no doubt) to the girls at our West Coast campus of Thomas Aquinas College again. I don't know everything I'll say, but one thing I want to mention is that We Should Pray as We Can (not as we Should)!

I recently re-read a great piece by Monsignor Ronald Knox from A Retreat for Lay People. I'm not sure if I already mentioned it on a former post, but I'll try to post it here soon because it is so spectacular. It's called "Liberty of the Spirit in Prayer" (if I'm remembering rightly), and the main point I can tell you is the same as St. Therese told us and is quoted in the Catholic Catechism:

"Prayer is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy."

Or in the words of our dear Marcel Van, as quoted in the epigraph to Stations of the Cross with Our Sister St. Therese:

"May your soul, may your heart, may everything about you be filled with candour in your relations with Jesus."

Even as I'm finding these quotes, my heart and mind are filling with petitions so important and pressing for those I love. Let's pray!

Dear St. Alberic and friends, St. Therese, Marcel, and Leonie, Sts. Louis and Zelie, St. Joseph and Blessed Mother, come to our aid and plead for us before the throne of God. We have many needs today, and those we love have many more. We want to help make God loved, we want to do His will, we want those who make decisions to make them according to the desires of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus our Love. Please obtain from the Blessed Trinity an outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that wounds and divisions will be healed and hearts transformed! As we anticipate the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, prevail upon our loving Heavenly Father to fill our Holy Father and all Bishops and priests with the fullness of His Wisdom and Love. Ask that He may send us more laborers for the harvest, especially in mission fields, and bring back our countries to the center of His Will. Finally, as we approach the feast of Therese's sister Celine, please grant the grace that Therese received when Celine was allowed and even warmly invited, against all expectation, into the Carmel which already harbored three of her sisters. We ask again that hearts be transformed, and may every one of our dearest hopes be fulfilled. We ask this through Jesus' sweet and powerful name. Amen.

There! 
And now, in case none of us remembers to say this for nine days in a row, let's ask our angels to say it for us:

Angel of God, my guardian dear,
To whom God's love commits me here,
Ever this day, be at my side,
To light, to guard, to rule, and guide.

And for our short cut novena prayer:
​Little Flower, in this hour, show your power!

Draw me, we will run!