I read another book that talked about the Doctor that tended her during her last days of TB. She had TB even of the skin. The sores had to be cauterized and he wanted to give her morphine. The Mother Superior said that Carmelites don’t take morphine. That upset me and I wondered if the Superior got that rule changed when she was on her death bed. St. Therese bore all of her suffering which was so severe that I can’t imagine it. She never complained. She apologized to the other sisters for being such a “bother.” She held a Crucifix in her hands all the time and always said, “All for our Sweet Jesus.” My attitude toward suffering changed so much. She thought it to be a gift. She was so right but it is still very difficult. Now the ZINGER….after she died, one of the Sisters said, “What can we ever say in her obituary. She never did anything.” May we all do nothing as well as she did. She did everything for Jesus. Her nothings made her one of the most popular Saints in our Church. May St. Therese send a rose to everyone or a sign of roses. St. Therese, pray for us, and especially for Father Gordon.

By the way, I always read your posts from my IPhone!

I love the story of how you ministered to Michelle in her final moments. How blessed you both were. She, as you prayed for her and annointed her, and you, as you witnessed another miracle sent by God via St. Therese.

God bless you Father. I am filled with hope.

One of the most significant gifts of my life has been a consistent return to focusing on Christ’s message to ‘be like the little children’ in our faith.

The years since the mid ’60s, with the emergence of all these intellectuals who are certain that it is now time to declare organized religion passe, has been especially tough on the three generations that have been born within this period. I certainly lapsed after my ‘religious studies’ course in college. I now discover after a little research that college religious and philosophy courses have decimated the faith of many college students. As time showed me the evidence and I encountered scoffing at every pass I have largely distanced myself now from those brilliant souls who determine that coincidence that serves them is good science and coincidence that speaks against their dogma is not .

It was a simple desperate cry to God, to help a very sick pet whose treatment I could not afford that started me back on the path to faith. Broke and heartbroken I started to say the Rosary during Lent of 2010, not very clear how long I’d do it, but not really thinking past Lent.

Within a couple of days my extremely sick cat had improved so much that the desperation and heartbreak receded.

Like Father, I now look back at that wonder if it was any sort of miracle or just a turn of fate. Tsk on me.

The true miracle though has been what emerged from that choice to pray to the Queen of Roses with her favorite prayer. I was warned that once Mary has you she doesn’t let go and I have been praying the rosary every day since Lent of 2010 and cannot imagine not praying it every day. Along with this new devotion I have noticed that my child like faith, my discernment and my hunger to really delver deeper and deeper into my relationship with God has gone beyond my wildest imagination. I have a passionate and impatient nature and couldn’t figure out how God could work an ‘incremental’ or ‘baby step’ process in the growth of my faith. I still have that nature and yet looking back since 2010 the growth of my faith is nothing short of amazing to me.

Note how I still will not use the ‘miracle’ word, my stubborn pride balking at allying myself with those less schooled simple souls. Odd, since my faith has allowed me to be taught and humbled over and over by these simple souls, whose child like faith has given them a peace that I only attain sporadically, because daily I face the renewed challenge to put my ego and my pride aside.

What faith has given me though is the discernment of grace and of conscience. I can now tell when I have even a second of peace so sweet that I know I did nothing to merit and yet fills me so full of hunger to experience that more often and for more extended periods. I would never have imagined, in a world so rushed and so distracting, that I’d be able to tell when even the most fleeting moment of peace and unspeakable joy was a gift that I’d never merited. I would never have imagined that my conscience would become so finely honed that at the very moment of even minor sins I’d be irrefutably pricked by its jab. I would never have imagined being hungry for confession at the least once a month, even knowing that my understanding of this sacrament and the mystery of the Eucharist was still so incomplete.

Saint Therese was my favorite since I read about her as a very very little girl. Soon after a movie about St. Bernadette grew in me a love for her as well. My confirmation name had to contain both.

As my faith has returned to me, through God’s providence not through my own merit, my love for these saints has grown so powerfully and I’ve been able to see in them and now also in my lifetime Benedict XVI, John Paul II and Mother Teresa the astonishing blend of absolutely brilliant intellect with a complete absence of worldliness. The humility and child like joy exists side by side with their constant exposure to worldly issues that crush faith out of so much of the global population.

I am only in the infancy of really praying to the saints with any expectation of response, but even in the last few days I’ve been quietly joyful as I’ve found a child like faith that allows me to trust God in asking for things that are the every day issues of my life.

These saints say to make every breath a prayer to God of gratitude, to ask Him to follow us on our every day path and to entrust to Him our simplest needs. Pride and distrust insisted that God ought not to be bothered with these simple things, but it is the simple things that ARE Christ.

There is no more humble beginning than Christ’s. There are no lessons less complicated than those of simple love and gratitude that He taught.

The mystery of this Divine Love and humble willingness to live within a fragile human body is beyond my understanding and always will be, but as my faith grows what WOULD have become commonplace after familiarity has become more humbling and more miraculous.

A child sees miracles with wonder and they never become old. A child’s faith provides a willingness to be humbled by something greater. This humility is what allows the simplest souls to be open to the greatest mystery of all because simple souls have access to love and love recognizes truth and goodness and RUNS after it.