I must be the luckiest girl in the world. Yesterday I received four communications (three delightful emails and one real, live letter in the mailbox) telling me about Marcel’s gifts to three of his little sisters, each a real, live Miss Marcel in her own right, and one little brother.
I love being lucky, but it’s no fun being lucky alone, so I had to share this joy with you, dear reader. I knew you’d understand my joy since you too are lucky, being one of the few, the very little-souled, the delighted (so delighted) able to count yourself in the ranks of the first wave of those who know our brother Marcel. When it’s a question of Marcel, we must ask ourselves how we happen to be so blessed as to know him. He hasn’t yet reached the celebrity status of, say, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Mickey Mouse, or Donald Trump (okay, sorry, I couldn’t resist! I mean President Donald Trump, and yes I’m laughing, as we all should at the marvels of democracy!). Or a better comparison might be the obvious one: our little brother hasn’t yet achieved the celebrity status of his sister Therese of Lisieux, the original Little Flower. The most typical response I get to my tireless introduction of Marcel to everyone I meet (oldest and dearest friend, newest and most random stranger: no one escapes!) is a variation on the theme of complete ignorance – that is, the hearer has never heard of him before. Although I must interject that the most hilarious response I ever got was from my belovedest priest friend who wrote back to my email query: “Have you ever heard of little Marcel Van?” with the simple statement: “I thought everyone who had Therese as a sister already had Marcel as a little brother!” Actually yes, truer words were never spoken and all that, but so few of us know this hidden little brother that it is a constant source of wonder and (again) delight to me to muse on our extreme blessedness in being among these few-in-the-know. Thank You, Jesus! Thank You for giving us Marcel to guide us, to be our companion, to make us laugh and shake our heads in astonishment (even more than politics and our own foibles do). What a wonderful world and what a wonderful time we live in—we may complain, perhaps rightly, about the errors and horrors of the modern world, but Heavens above! This is the first time EVER in all of history that MARCEL VAN and his inimitable CONVERSATIONS are available in English (thank you, Jack Keogan, for being God’s translating pencil!), and we are among those relative few who have the joy and spectacular grace to know of him (Marcel) and them (his Conversations with Jesus, Mary, and Therese), and thus to know them (Jesus, Mary, and Therese) with an intimacy hitherto undreamed of. Wowie zowie!!! Which brings me to today’s topic of littleness. Why, we might ask, are we so lucky? Or why, to look at it from the other side of the widow’s mite or the householder’s lost (and found) coin: why is Marcel so very little known? The answer is right there in the question, actually. Marcel is so very little known because he is so very little. The world loves BIG. And we are among the few (so far) lucky ones who know our sweet and comical brother precisely because we, like him, are very little too. Tiny. Miniscule. Infinitesmal even, thanks be to God! If this doesn’t sound right to you, I don’t like to correct you or argue, so I’ll just say gently (no scolding here, ever): you haven’t been reading Conversations lately, have you? Or before I accuse you of such a serious lapse (haha, just kidding! no serious lapses here in Marcel-land either, only little pecadillos that don’t hurt Jesus at all, to our vast relief), let me compliment you for being such a Miss (or Mister) Marcel yourself. Forgotten again, have you? Welcome to Marcel’s club! But happily, we only have to open the book to re-discover the beauty and attraction of littleness. Let’s see how this works if I open randomly now. Good gracious! Talk about littleness! Here is what we find instantly at (202) where I have just flipped open to Jesus words: “Marcel, it is necessary for you to realize that you haven’t yet the least virtue. If, in these circumstances, I had not spoken to you, I do not know when you would have stopped having red eyes.” How lovely Jesus is! How compassionate and merciful! You might think He’s being a tad rough on Marcel, informing him so directly that he hasn’t the tiniest speck of virtue, but I think Marcel already knew as much. It’s what comes after that anti-climactic revelation that’s so marvelous. Jesus knows that poor as Marcel is, he’d have spent his life crying if Jesus didn’t come to save him, and not merely save him, but actually speak to him. It reminds me of Marcel telling us in his Autobiography of his little friend Hien saying, after Marcel had begun instructing him in Therese’s Little Way (Marcel himself having just met and been instructed by Therese herself): “Van, if I hadn’t discovered someone in my life to understand me like you do, I would have died of sadness.” {And I must interject: I just translated that, by love, empathy, intuition, the slightest memory of French instruction, and those miraculous cognates, from my dear little French book "Van, petit frere spirituel de Therese" by Fr. Pierre Descouvemont. For all I know - which is not much! - my translation may be slightly off, but here is the glory I discovered in my little French dictionary Therese gave me to go with my little Van book: the word I've translated "understand," which in the infinitive is the verb "comprendre" also means "to include and contain." Yes, Marcel! What would we have done without you to include and contain us in yourself on Jesus' lap!} Dear Hien! Dear Marcel! Dearest of all, Jesus who has compassion on our littleness and reaches us in time to prevent us from dying of sadness! I submit that He’s given Marcel to us like He gave him to Hien, well before the dawn of our little brother’s world-wide fame, in order to keep us also from dying of sadness in this too-often too sad world. “Here I am,” He says to us. “You don’t need Me to speak to you audibly. I’ve said every word you need to hear, every word that will prevent your crying – let alone dying of sadness. I have spoken every single word you need from My infinitely loving, limitlessly loving Sacred Heart to your brother Marcel who has written it down at My request. I have conscripted Fr. Boucher to translate it into French so that Jack Keogan could translate it into English for you. A whole line-up of little secretaries so that you, dear little ones, could find comfort in Me each time you are tempted to feel lonely or alone. I am with you! I have not left you orphans, nor have I scolded you. Let me change your tears to laughter. I am right here in Conversations speaking to you!” Leapin’ lizards! Holy guacamole! What a wealth of words! What a wealth of limitless Love is waiting for us in Conversations, new each morning, noon, night, and middle-of-the-night, whenever we need it, 24/7. But lest we are frightened off by something so very new, there’s a way in which, like every good thing, every perfect gift – all of which come from God from all eternity – there’s nothing new here, though it’s new to us constantly. With Marcel in particular, there’s a way in which everything he says, Therese said first (and she got it all from the Gospel). Even when Jesus is speaking to him, there is occasionally the charming reminder from Our Lord Himself: “Marcel, didn’t your sister little Therese teach you this already?” (Along with the smiling, “Ah, but you’ve forgotten!”) Jesus quoting St. Therese – how marvelous! When it comes to littleness, this is something new that Marcel got from Therese after Therese got it from the gospels and St. Paul. Long have I appreciated her admission to her novices that she often, even at the end of her life, said something foolish that she regretted. But far from letting it worry her, she would laugh and say to herself gently, “Ah, I’m no further than I was before!” in realization that her littleness was secure. This comforted her, for being little meant she could find refuge, like the child she was and rejoiced to remain, in her true Father’s arms. And what does Jesus say about Therese and her littleness? He who is Truth can neither deceive nor be deceived, so whatever our impressions of Therese may be, we must believe Him. Here are His words from the passage quoted above, from the page of Conversations to which I randomly opened in order to learn more about littleness. Jesus continues there: “Little Marcel, you have not the slightest virtue. And, to speak frankly, in your case there is nothing; one finds there nothing of beauty. But do not be sad because of it. Do you understand? Look at the flower which is your sister Therese; she recognized that she possessed nothing but in reality she possessed everything because, in possessing nothing, she obtained everything . . .” There it is. Truth itself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true, as Gerard Manley Hopkins translated St. Thomas’ song of the Blessed Sacrament. “She recognized that she possessed nothing.” Right as rain! And my goodness, you’d think Jesus was quoting St. John of the Cross for the sequel: “But she possessed everything because in possessing nothing she obtained everything.” (Which is proof, as if we needed it, that just about everything in Marcel was in Therese first, and while we’re on the subject of “what’s old is new again” or vice versa, it turns out that everything in Therese was in St. John of the Cross first!) I don’t know about you, but I like things. You know, stuff. The thought of possessing nothing (not to mention trying to understand that last sentence Jesus said about Therese) doesn’t cheer me tremendously. But wait! How about obtaining everything? That sounds like fun! Especially if most of it is (I’m guessing) immaterial, so it won’t take up too much space. I’m no minimalist, but darned if I know where to put all my books, let alone everything else! Really, though, the point is simple: Little ones need big ones to help them. If we are totally little, we need God (totally big) to help us. In everything! And if God is with us in everything, we lack nothing. We’re safe! What does a child need that its mother and father would not gladly give, provided they are good and have it in their power to give? Well surely God is good! And certainly He has the power to give! We, then, for our part, have nothing to do but receive! Is there a condition? Why yes, I’m glad you asked! The condition is that we recognize our need and ask our Father, or Jesus our Spouse and Brother and Best Friend, or the Holy Spirit who is Love, for everything. And as Therese told us in her own writings, and as she and Jesus and Mary tell Marcel again and again in their Conversations with him, never fear: a sigh, a glance, a cry is plenty of prayer, plenty of asking, plenty of our need showing itself to the Holy Trinity (or Our Mama Mary). Yes, but will He answer? Are we sure? Yes, He will, we're sure, and if you are impatient for His answer, read Conversations. It’s all there, especially our littleness and His infinite, that is, absolutely limitless Love for us in our littleness. Although He just told Marcel that “in your case there is nothing; one finds there nothing of beauty,” you must know (that is, He wants you to know so I’ll tell you if you’ve forgotten or haven’t yet come across this) that elsewhere Jesus admits that everything about Marcel attracts Him and He finds everything about him beautiful! Oh, Love! Love which in gazing upon us makes us beautiful! (This is St. John of the Cross to the very letter for us!) And this limitless Love says even more to us in today’s reading (202), Though He must restrain His kisses so as not to make us swoon or even whoosh to Heaven right this second to live forever in His loving arms, He says nonetheless: “Do not be discouraged, Marcel, all you will ask for, all you will wish for, I will grant to you. Do you now wish that I give you some kisses? How many do you want? But it is first necessary that you tell Me: ‘Dear Jesus, I love you.’ Without that who would wish to kiss you? When you have said: ‘Jesus, I love You,’ I will give you as many as you wish for.” Let’s ask for so many kisses! Jesus’ kisses are like no others. As He tells Marcel elsewhere, one real kiss from Him, His first real kiss to us, and we’ll be goners, straight to Heaven we’ll go. Ah, for that kiss! But not yet; all in His good time. Meanwhile, the lesser kisses we must settle for are still enough to console our hearts, dry our red eyes, and remind us that even this life is well worth living, since we get to be loved by Jesus here and now. First, though, He requires us to do our part. Nothing too big, simply say the magic words: “Jesus, I love You!” Let’s go then. We know the little way, let’s run in it, and we’ll have the whole world join us (for we can ask Him for anything we want, He just said so, and we’ve got the prayer that asks for everyone to join us): Draw me, we will run! Jesus, I love You! We love You! Give us Your kisses! Oh, and one last note. For those who are aware of Mother Teresa’s explanation of suffering and Jesus’ kisses, beautiful as that understanding is, kindly disregard it in Marcel-land. My policy is to studiously avoid suffering (and talking about it here) because although Jesus has much to say about it to Marcel (and thus to the rest of us), He well knows that the very word sends me back to bed to pull the covers over my head . . . But what’s not to love about Marcel and his Conversations with Jesus? Just when we wondered, fearfully, if kissing was a code name for suffering, Jesus starts laughing and leaves us in no suspense. For us little Marcels and little Miss Marcels, kissing is kissing. Little Jesus has an adorable mouth that loves to make smacking noises when He plants His sweet lips on our faces. So tell Him you love Him a lot, and then enjoy His darling face snuggling up to yours. No worries! He’s got you covered – with kisses, and everything else you may happen to need. Comments are closed.
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Miss MarcelI've written books and articles and even a novel. Now it's time to try a blog! For more about me personally, go to the home page and you'll get the whole scoop! If you want to send me an email, feel free to click "Contact Me" below. To receive new posts, enter your email and click "Subscribe" below. More MarcelArchives
December 2024
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