Living with the Saints

"Come from Lebanon, my spouse, come from Lebanon, come: thou shalt be crowned . . .Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse: thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes and with one hair of thy neck."    - Song of Songs 4:8,9

You considered that one hair fluttering at my neck;
You gazed at it upon my neck
And it captivated You . .      - Spiritual Canticle 31, St. John of the Cross

"The book, Story of a Soul, had become my dearest friend. It followed me everywhere and I did not cease reading or re-reading it without ever getting weary of it. There was nothing in this volume which did not conform to my thoughts, and what enthused me still more in the course of my reading was to see clearly that the spiritual life of Therese was identical to mine. Her thoughts, even her 'yes' and her 'no' were in harmony with my own thoughts and the little events of my life. . . Truly, never in my life have I met a book which was so well adapted to my thinking and feelings as is the Story of a Soul. I can confess that the story of Therese's soul is the story of my soul, and that Therese's soul is my very own."     - Autobiography, Marcel Van

"The book, Conversations (with Jesus, Mary, and Therese of the Child Jesus), had become my dearest friend. It followed me everywhere and I did not cease reading or re-reading it without ever getting weary of it. There was nothing in this volume which did not conform to my thoughts, and what enthused me still more in the course of my reading was to see clearly that the spiritual life of Marcel Van was identical to mine. His thoughts, even his 'yes' and his 'no' were in harmony with my own thoughts and the little events of my life . . . Truly, never in my life have I met a book which was so well adapted to my thinking and feelings as is Conversations. I can confess that the story of Marcel's conversations is the story of my conversations, and that Marcel's soul is my very own." - Miss Marcel

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It's been a busy few weeks.

The poodle found a new home! Which is perhaps the understatement of the century because what happened really was that God brought together the perfect family and the perfect dog at the perfect moment, and Voila! Hammy found an ideal new home . . .

One of the photos above is Celine (Therese's next oldest sister and the one who entered Carmel after her) with Therese's dog Tom. And then there is the picture of me with Hammy. Just to make it clear which is which, the photo of Celine and Tom is black and white. But isn't it fun to think that the saints had dogs and loved them, just like we do? And sometimes they had to part with their dogs, but all for the greater glory of God, which is such a very happy thing that I can't find a reason to be sad in Hammy's (and our) new situation. Thank You, Jesus!

The other photos above reflect my recent obsession with hair.

First you see Therese's hair (that's the hair you can see on the wall of her bedroom at Les Bouissonnets, her childhood home in Lisieux when you visit)

Then there's a photo of my birthday hair from this past April.

And finally the photo that solves that perennial question: Why do we think Therese was a brunette when she was really a blonde?

I submit that hair changes colors according to the light, the weather, and whether it is wet, not to mention that if you throw a wad of bills at a hair salon you can likely exit with a different color hair than when you entered!

But perhaps most importantly, it's amazing to me that the colors I see out of my eyes and in the world are not usually the colors that get captured by my photography. And so, when we see the photo of Therese at 14 with her hair piled atop her head to look older to impress the bishop so that he would let her enter Carmel earlier than any bishop in his right mind would, her hair looks black, though clearly from the adorable little girl photos of Therese, we can tell her hair was blonde. 

Did it change as she grew older and before she entered Carmel at 15?
Maybe it darkened a little, as towheads are prone to do, but in fact I think it was just that the black and white photo we have of her with that updo doesn't do justice to her blondness.

And then there is the picture of her in Carmel when she played Joan of Arc in the play she had written for the community. She definitely has dark hair there - but I have to remind myself that she's wearing a wig! Because like most nuns who enter a cloistered religious order, when Therese had her clothing (the day she wore a wedding dress to more definitively leave the world and become a bride of Christ), part of the ceremony was to cut her hair once she entered and exchanged her wedding dress for her new habit. Hence the glorious hair now displayed on the wall of Les Bouissonnets, and this quote from a letter to her Aunt Celine Guerin (her mom's brother Isadore's wife) that accompanied a little lock of her shorn hair arranged on a card to represent a branch of lilies:

"The little gift which our good Mother was happy to have made for your feast will tell you better than I, dear Aunt, what I am powerless to tell you. My heart is filled with emotion when seeing this poor hair which undoubtedly has no other value but the delicate workmanship and the gracefulness of its arrangement, but which nevertheless was loved by him whom God took away from us."

Therese is referring to her papa, St. Louis, who delighted in the hair of his "little blonde rascal."

Well I say what goes around comes around, so when it was my turn to lose my hair (no, I have not entered a cloistered Carmel! More like I cloister myself and eat caramels, or look forward to a trip to Carmel-by-the-sea someday), I thought I ought to share some with Therese. We don't usually think about what her scalp may have looked like under that pretty veil, but hey, I recently got a wig (exactly the color of my hair which is not at all the darkened color of the wet hair Therese is wearing but thanks to Vanity on Main is rather a wonderfully highlighted carmel-and-chocolate), and I figured Therese might like one too!

Which leads us to the latest contest here at Miss Marcel's Musings.

Do you need miracles?
Do you think you are good at asking for what you need?
I sometimes find myself having a really hard time articulating my needs. Usually when I've forgotten to eat and now it's (almost) TOO LATE. At that point it is best to just eat anything, but if I need to express what I would like to eat (say to a waitress in a restaurant), I find myself even more indecisive than usual.

Lately, though, no doubt due to the prayers of y'all, or possibly this is another side to my character (because my long-suffering husband might agree that sometimes, for as long as he's known me at least, I can be quite articulate, nay even demanding about what I "need") - lately, I say, I've been demanding from Jesus exactly what we all need - and that is, to repeat that magnificent word: MIRACLES!

So.
I am not a person very concerned about my health. If I told you my dental history (or rather my history of going to the dentist) you would no doubt be appalled and I would lose all credibility.

Nonetheless, I managed to go get a routine mammogram last spring, and this eventually led to an outpatient surgery on St. Monica's feastday in August (also feast of the 7 Joys of Mary) when a kind surgeon removed a tiny cancerous tumor from my right breast. When that happens, you say you have cancer, bizarre as that sounds.

This led me to City of Hope, a fabulous place where there is tons of hope and even a huge statue of St. John Paul II and another of Our Lady of Guadalupe, both set in an extensive rose garden. Glorious! And the whole huge non-profit cancer center has the added benefit of satellite offices, one of which is much closer to where I live than the main campus where JPII is. So . . . after some tests showed that I would benefit from chemotherapy, I began my post-surgical cancer treatment on the feast of St. Albert the Great, also feast of All Carmelite Souls, on November 15.

Which leads us to now, when I've almost finished the three week "cycle," which means the three weeks following my first chemo infusion - which infusion was just like in the movies where I'm in a pretty room with nice nurses and my doctor wanders in to check on us and I have an IV that drips  important meds into my body so that any lingering microscopic cancer cells will die a quick death and I will be good as new.

The "good as new" part is happening very fast because, thanks be to God and again to your prayers, I am having very few side effects from the chemo (in particular, no nausea and no fatigue). But to be completely honest, there is one fun side effect that came to fruition on the feast of St. Francis Xavier yesterday. . .and here's where our miracles come in.

Starting on Thanksgiving, my hair began to decide it wouldn't like to live with me anymore. So little by little, it began, or rather they, these hairs that grow on my head, began to depart. I was ready!

I realized that I could pretend I minded, and then demand from Jesus a just compensation for this great sacrifice.

If you know me in person, then you know that my radiant beauty comes from my smile. This is a huge relief because in my experience a smile is much more reliable than pretty hair. You can have bad hair days nearly constantly, and sure, the bad smile day might occasionally be a problem, but for the most part, a big smile can be teased out by any of a million things (a slice of chocolate cake or a scotchmallow can bring a smile to my face instantly), whereas big hair won't necessarily cooperate even in the presence of a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie.

In other words, I'm not that sad about losing my hair, because I know my inner beauty can still shine out, but don't tell Jesus I'm not upset, because I'm trying to play the cancer card with Him.

My plan is to demand a miracle for every lost hair, and since I'm handing the hairs to Jesus through Mary, they actually (according to no less an expert than St. Louis Marie de Montfort) become tripled in value. Hence each lost hair is worth three miracles, and since I have (or had) a LOT of hair, with the excellent exchange rate, we're talking a TON of miracles. 

The bottom line is there are more miracles coming my way than I can possibly use, even counting every intention (and I am!) that I have ever prayed for or which has ever been commended to my prayers.

Our take-way?

Please ask for miracles! Our Lady was entirely clear about this in her apparition to St. Catherine Laboure when she gave us the Miraculous Medal. She said the non-shining jewels on her fingers represented the graces that people didn't ask for. If only we would ask, those gems would begin to shine brilliantly - shedding graces upon graces upon us! So please ask for lots of miracles, and say that Miss Marcel sent you. If you forget and say Suzie sent you, that works too!

Meanwhile, I thought there was a line I loved about a single hair in the Song of Songs, and I couldn't wait to find it, but then I simply couldn't find it. It wasn't there.

Next I thought it must be in St. John of the Cross, but I didn't find exactly what I wanted there either, though I got closer.

Still, I didn't quit because I love that line! I thought, finally, I could find it in St. Therese, and thanks to the search feature on my kindle, I did - and the line in one of Therese's letters then had a footnote back to the Song of Songs. What do you know? The first good Catholic translation of Song of Songs I used lamely left out the part about the single hair!

And so, thank you Douay Rheims! There it was in Song of Songs 4:9 -

"Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse: thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes, and with the hair of thy neck."

St. John of the Cross explains that our eye which has wounded Christ is Faith. And that single hair? It is love. The neck on which the hair (love) rests, or actually upon which it flutters (restless to act) is fortitude.

Translation:

Let's take Therese's bold and persevering confidence and finally gain those miracles we've been asking for these ages upon ages. Let's point out that I have lost almost all (soon to be all) of my single hairs, and they were truly uncountable, at least by a mere mortal. My angel, though, has the exact number so Jesus can't hold back a single miracle of those we demand in exchange for my hairs.

If you feel shy, I'll demand them for you, but on Friday (St. Nicholas Day! Hooray!) I go in for my second round of chemo. That means I might be distracted with keeping the side effects at bay for the next few days after that, and so again I appeal to you to be forthright and insistent with Our Lord and Our Lady about what you need and, really, about what you want!

This might be a good place to add that I don't consider what I'm going through "suffering." 
For me suffering means something that causes unhappiness, and this has been a joy, largely because I live among the saints, and they are all treating me like a princess, or even a queen.. It's tremendously comforting, and then, too (it can't be said often enough), I'm experiencing no nausea. Thank You, Jesus!

To top it off, I got to lose the majority of my hair on the feast of St. Francis Xavier, which Therese and I co-opted for his co-patron of the missions, namely Therese herself, so I felt like finally I was able to offer something for those missionaries out in the field and their incipient flocks. Come, Lord Jesus, bring Your love and Your sacraments to all those who don't yet know You, and please bring them through missionaries after Your own Heart!

OH!
I almost forgot!
Speaking of Hearts, and His in particular, yesterday a wonderful priest friend told me that recently Pope Francis issued an encyclical letter "Dilexit Nos" (He loved us) on the Sacred Heart! Praise God!

Thanks to this terrific priest and thanks to Marcel's urging me to write our blog, I'm finally looking at this encyclical approximately 40 days after its release. And HOLY MACKEREL! I must have been living under a rock because Guess What? Who do you think is the heroine of this encyclical?

Yes, in all justice it ought to be St. Margaret Mary, but just like I discovered almost a year ago in Sacre Coeur, right where you'd think St. MM would get her due, there pops us St. Therese to steal the show. In Paris, it was the remarkably large and beautiful statue of Therese sculpted by her Trappist, Pere Marie-Bernard and flanked by massive amounts of votive candles which sat opposite the statue of Margaret Mary which, by contrast, looked small and boasted only one stand of votive candles. At least that's how I remember it.

Well let's just say for the record: Thank you, dear humble Margaret Mary. Where would we be without you? Oh so much further away from His love than we are now. Thank you!

And like any introvert worth her salt, I don't think St. Margaret Mary minds being upstaged, I don't think she minds a single bit, especially when her extroverted sister in Christ makes everyone draw even further into our Spouse's wounded side.

Here is what Pope Francis says in the last paragraph (before the conclusion) of this amazing encyclical, mentioning our sister St. Therese for the 24th time:

"In your own way, you too must be a missionary, like the apostles and the first disciples of Jesus, who went forth to proclaim the love of God, to tell others that Christ is alive and worth knowing. Saint Therese experienced this as an essential part of her oblation to merciful Love: “I wanted to give my Beloved to drink and I felt myself consumed with a thirst for souls”. That is your mission as well. Each of us must carry it out in his or her own way; you will come to see how you can be a missionary. Jesus deserves no less. If you accept the challenge, He will enlighten you, accompany you and strengthen you, and you will have an enriching experience that will bring you much happiness. It is not important whether you see immediate results; leave that to the Lord who works in the secret of our hearts. Keep experiencing the joy born of our efforts to share the love of Christ with others."

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Pope Pius XI named St. Therese co-patron of the missions on a par with St. Francis Xavier, the Church's missionary par excellence, on December 14, 1927. She is still working to make us all missionaries with her, and her latest exploit is suffusing Dilexit Nos with the fragrance of her heavenly roses. As a culmination of the encyclical, our Holy Father recalls St. Therese's Act of Oblation and what it teaches us about God's merciful Heart and how to approach Him. With a cameo by St. Margaret Mary, here is the passage:

194. Saint Margaret Mary recounted that, in one of Christ’s appearances, He spoke of His heart’s passionate love for us, telling her that, “unable to contain the flames of His burning charity, He must spread them abroad”. [208] Since the Lord, who can do all things, desired in His divine freedom to require our cooperation, reparation can be understood as our removal of the obstacles we place before the expansion of Christ’s love in the world by our lack of trust, gratitude and self-sacrifice.


An Oblation to Love


195. To help us reflect more deeply on this mystery, we can turn once more to the luminous spirituality of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus. Therese was aware that in certain quarters an extreme form of reparation had developed, based on a willingness to offer oneself in sacrifice for others, and to become in some sense a “lightning rod” for the chastisements of divine justice. In her words, “I thought about the souls who offer themselves as victims of God’s justice in order to turn away the punishments reserved to sinners, drawing them upon themselves”. [209] However, as great and generous as such an offering might appear, she did not find it overly appealing: “I was far from feeling attracted to making it”. [210] So great an emphasis on God’s justice might eventually lead to the notion that Christ’s sacrifice was somehow incomplete or only partly efficacious, or that His mercy was not sufficiently powerful.


196. With her great spiritual insight, Saint Therese discovered that we can offer ourselves in another way, without the need to satisfy divine justice but by allowing the Lord’s infinite love to spread freely: “O my God! Is Your disdained love going to remain closed up within Your heart? It seems to me that if You were to find souls offering themselves as victims of holocaust to Your love, You would consume them rapidly; it seems to me, too, that You would be happy not to hold back the waves of infinite tenderness within You”. [211]


197. While nothing need be added to the one redemptive sacrifice of Christ, it remains true that our free refusal can prevent the heart of Christ from spreading the “waves of His infinite tenderness” in this world. Again, this is because the Lord wishes to respect our freedom. More than divine justice, it was the fact that Christ’s love might be refused that troubled the heart of Saint Therese, because for her, God’s justice is understood only in the light of His love. As we have seen, she contemplated all God’s perfections through His mercy, and thus saw them transfigured and resplendent with love. In her words, “even His justice (and perhaps this even more so than the others) seems to me clothed in love”. [212]


198. This was the origin of her Act of Oblation, not to God’s justice but to His merciful 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”. [213] It is important to realize that, for Therese, this was not only about allowing the heart of Christ to fill her heart, through her complete trust, with the beauty of His love, but also about letting that love, through her life, spread to others and thus transform the world. Again, in her words, “In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be love… and thus my dream will be realized”. [214] The two aspects were inseparably united.


199. The Lord accepted her oblation. We see that shortly thereafter she stated that she felt an intense love for others and maintained that it came from the heart of Christ, prolonged through her. So she told her sister Léonie: “I love you a thousand times more tenderly than ordinary sisters love each other, for I can love you with the heart of our celestial Spouse”. [215] Later, to Maurice Bellière she wrote, “How I would like to make you understand the tenderness of the heart of Jesus, what He expects from you!” [216]

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Thank you for your love and prayers, not only for me but for the whole Church and world. Thank you for your love of Jesus and your missionary efforts on His behalf, whether those are prayers, alms, or audible evangelizing. We are called, above all, to understand the tenderness of the heart of Jesus, and your love has helped me see His so much more clearly. May Therese shower you with roses!

Draw me; we will run!