Day Fourteen
Happy and Blessed St. Joseph’s Day! It awoke a bit early this morning, as if “an angel appeared to me in a dream,” so I and went down to the chapel for an hour with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. There, at 5am, I found three people already at prayer, and I gave thanks to God. Truly our parish is a “school of prayer” (in the words of John Paul II) and a sanctuary of peace.
Today Fr. Gaitley makes an obvious point about St. Therese of Lisieux: She considers herself to be “little,” but even the popes have called her the “greatest saint of modern times.” John Paul II named her an eminent Doctor of the Church. We have the sneaking suspicious that the “Little Way” is not so little after all, quite beyond the reach for most of us.
Fr. Gaitley gives us Therese’s Letter 197. Therese’s sister Marie, also a Carmelite, was quite discouraged, and Therese wrote to her: “Dear Sister, how can you ask me if it possible for you to love God as I love Him?... My spiritual gifts are nothing … they [actually] render one unjust. What pleases Him is that he sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy. … We must consent to remain always poor and without strength, and this is the difficulty.” I encourage you to read the whole, closely, and several times. This little saint’s confidence is entirely in God, not in her own abilities. How wonderfully freeing it is to have put all our hope in God!
Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit, fire of mercy. Help me to embrace the Little Way with all my heart.
Novena Prayer to St. Joseph
O God, who in your ineffable providence, have chosen Blessed Joseph to be the spouse of your most holy Mother and father to your Only Begotten Son. We beg that under his patronage our parish and school may flourish, teaching us to pray and leading us to heaven. To the glory of God the Father, through the grace of Christ our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.