3-17-24 Adult Ed: Christian Mystics #6, Southminster Presbyterian Church, Beaverton OR

Court of the there we go well we got it now I'm gonna be tasked with finding it as you said so that it can be shared but that's good I'm glad I remembered all righty uh let me just jump in then um any former Catholics no former Catholics okay I'm talking about somebody who um is reputed to be as Blaster a saint as the Catholic Church probably ever spawned however um those who know better or claim to know better say that that's not um um Fair assessment at all um Thomas smon who we'll be looking at next week um was a devote of this one this is St teres of uh whose dates are of 1873 to 1897 1873 1897 anybody do the math 23 four 24 right uh very young uh to sainthood um she's known uh to the Catholic Church as the Little Flower um I'm not sure she'd be happy with that um she would say if I'm a Little Flower it's not a rose it's not a lily it' be a common Daisy and there's reason for that and we will we will tease that out um she's also considered the author of The Way of spiritual childhood and yet once again that is not her um it's not a title she gave herself it's something her older sister gave her she had several sisters we'll talk about them the oldest one the first to a Convent uh considered herself uh in charge of her sister's Legacy um and came up with that title um she did speak of something called my little way and that's uh why we're looking at her amongst these others um um now what other way was there to follow and we're talking about following Jesus we're talking about trying to get to heaven we're talking about having a spiritual life of some depth um let me say that she comes hard on or hard into a time um of jansenism um um a considered a a Catholic heresy um and also in France uh I uh influenced by Jonah AR uh who was um tas's favorite Saint growing up um jansenism um is a way of believing uh that is so exacting that if you want to be holy uh you had to not only you know do your D duty but perform a host of Good Works to earn enough spiritual Merit so that you could avoid Purgatory um this saint uh fits with Julian of norch in that she didn't have one good word to say about purgatory um it's not that she didn't believe in it but uh her attitude toward it made her who she was to a degree and we'll get into that as well um Julian of norch uh as if you were with us at that time um never said there was no Purgatory all she said remember was that in her Visions uh Jesus never showed her anything having to do with Purgatory or hell and uh nine out of 10 or 99 out of a hundred people who claim to have visions uh in the medieval times when Julian lived claimed to have seen the horrors of purgatory um these are two women who uh were concerned with the love of God as opposed to the wrath of God which of course is why we're taking the time to learn about her um and again she terase comes at a time when uh the wrath of God was a huge thing uh and it lasted up until Vatican 2 anybody want to give me a date for Vatican 2 those of you who pay attention to such things I'm quizzing you a little we're looking we're thinking about 19 60 6162 is probably a better date uh coming from Pope John the 23rd who was the pope who was elected as a um a space holder because people didn't think that uh Pope uh P's uh first secretary who was John who was Paul the who eventually became Paul I 6 was ready to be Pope yet so they figured you know John wouldn't live very long he probably wouldn't do anything he had some notoriety because of World War II and doing some lovely things having to do with protecting Jews uh and he blew them all out of the water by saying I have come to open the windows of a church that's been shut up for far too long let the breeze blow uh Paul v 6 however uh comes after John the 23rd and speaks highly of uh terasa and says that she recovered the heart of the Gospel that's a quote and the Heart of the Gospel being the love of God um back to Julian for a minute Julian was not a Julian of Norwich was not a saint uh of the Catholic Church she was sainted by the Anglican Church in England she's from norch England there you go but the reason this the the Catholic Church didn't Saint her was that she was a bit too disturbing because they felt that she expressed something too close to doubt about the existence of purgatory and hell um that's that's my opinion it may not be the ultimate opinion of the church they certainly probably wouldn't say it terase was put forward remember her dates again are 1873 to 1897 she was put forward for uh uh sainthood by Pope Benedict I 15 in uh hi Julie come on in uh terase was put forward by Pope Benedict the 15th in 1921 um uh and Benedict said that she was like an iceberg in that she looks small on top but deep down she was tremendous spiritually and I like that I know nothing else about Pope Benedict I 15 from the 1920s but um uh so I I'm trying to give you some of the uh um Legacy the um reputation of this saint uh early on uh so that you don't dismiss her out of hand when you hear uh some of the things that um she was about as a child uh she was in fact declared a doctor of the church by John Paul II in 1997 so uh got incredible credentials uh there are only four other women or or four women I mean who have been so designated and a doctor of the church is is based on uh a person's a Saints well I think they're all Saints uh writings uh and the incredible thing about Trace is she has just one little book called The Story of a soul which is her spiritual autobiography um and that story is about trying to communicate a way to God for common people which is why she fits so well with uh Vatican 2 what happened in Vatican 2 when H as I said earlier Pope John Paul excuse me Pope John the 23d said he wanted to open the windows of a church too long uh closed up in stale um she uh what we're talking about is the democratization of sainthood in fact greater than that the democratization of the Catholic Church um and uh this is very familiar Protestants in fact what we've been talking about when we've been looking at all these um all these Saints um all these Mystics I should say is that and I'm looking at it through Presbyterian eyes here but they all have uh you know some marks of protestantism uh skepticism about purgatory for progressives skeptic skepticism about hell itself uh a sense of God's love being more important than anything else God's grace being a vigorous thing not a weak thing uh and a sense that um sainthood is uh for everyone that's exactly what St teras of lissu our Saint tonight uh was talking about uh and we have in our hym book a famous hymn called for all the saints and those Saints are all the choir invisible as we might call them right um those who have passed so let me jump in now after that uh kind of uh grandiose introduction and give you uh This Woman's uh biography as I understand it uh her father Louis Martin marttin I'm not sure how you pronounce it was born into a stripped military family in France wanted a military career but didn't make it then decided he wanted to be a priest but he couldn't manage the Latin so became instead a successful watch maker and settled down for a quiet life in a small uh French Town um and made a success of being a watch maker uh Teresa's mother zeli was also from a military family which is why of course they were probably allowed to marry uh zel's family was known to be very cold very formal uh she herself wanted a religious life but for one reason or another was dissuaded by the church uh and I have no idea what that was about but in her marriage to Martin she bore nine children in 15 years seven girls and two boys the last of which was teras who Mar who Bears all the marks of the spoiled a smallest child who was never uh told to do any chores and who was probably carried by her sisters from one place to another and didn't even have to walk at least that's something I get from uh what I've read about her uh however um I mentioned nine children Seven Girls two boys in a period of three years uh the two boys and two of the girls died so three years four deaths uh of these children out of nine uh people told zeli the mother that it would have been better had they not been born suffering was too great but she uh blanched at that believed that they went on to Heaven ahead of them uh she held to that she had to find something people in those days you you lose half your children how do you live that's just hard to imagine uh and that last child terase was born uh as I said in 1873 very weak very frail um at three months of age her mother wrote quote I have no hope of saving her she suffers terribly uh and she had an intestinal problem of some sort uh which could easily have been uh you know milk allergy weed allergy Crohn's colitis I don't know I don't know who knows um but it was something that she carried with her her whole life um other thing notable besides those deaths that came early was that all five surviving girls entered the convent or a Convent there were two different convents they chose um as a child she and her sisters had a favorite game which was playing desert hermit which of course you all did too right I didn't even know about desert Hermits till I was nearly 40 I think but she knew about them she knew all about um uh the tradition of the desert fathers of probably I hope they would have an understanding of some Desert Mothers if they chose among the girls to play that game uh they would make little Huts they would eat vegetables or pretend to eat vegetables and they um would make ostentation signs of the cross over just everything so these are these are Catholic uh children to an Nth Degree um at her first communion at the age of 11 um she felt that it had come to her as a Lover's kiss from Jesus um I understand a lot of Catholics have uh first communion around the age of eight uh hers came later um and um this business of it being a Lover's kiss from Jesus obviously offers some I I don't want to use the word erotic but it has some romantic uh weight to it um she felt as she said uh that she had disappeared like a drop into the ocean which um I don't find that to be particularly healthy to Lose Yourself like that into another being even if it's God but anyway um she was probably rewarded for it or at least esteemed for it um she did one thing of interest at that time at the age of 11 she made among others a resolution to never give into the temptation to discouragement um which I find interesting um she was considered to be extremely strong willed so she had in her whatever was needed not to give up uh and in fact her mother died when she was four years old uh so uh she knew about loss uh early on in an extreme way uh and when we're talking about discouragement um the first thing I ever learned about teras I think before I learned her story was that line that um quote I've used once in a sermon that if you she says if you can serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter now when I've shared that quote uh some people write it down immediately put it on the refrigerator some people just throw up their hands and say what in the world let me say it again if you can serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter I think the way to unpack that is to go forward and turn it upside down and say you know if you can't bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself Jesus uh cannot take shelter in you at all um the Jesus of grace of love you know uh needs us to be self-forgiving to some degree uh and that makes plenty of sense to me um like so many uh people uh affected by what I call jansenism um you know the idea that harder is better that that God wants us to suffer um terase had early on an attraction to suffering again she'd lost brothers sisters a mother um and then her oldest sister joined the convent when she was nine um so and the older sister was her second mother um one piece of literature that was well known at the time was Thomas campus's book The imitation of Christ has anyone read that I I had to read it as part of a class in college and it's it's it's interesting um in in that book uh imitation of Christ um Aus says Jesus he he prays this prayer Jesus Sweet to The Taste beyond all our telling turn all Earthly consolations into B bitterness for me um there's jansenism all together Jesus Sweet to The Taste beyond all our telling turn all our Earthly consolations into bitterness okay um now uh again this is a time when people were concerned to a great degree with uh purgatory and Catholics would rate themselves in terms of spirituality based on the number of merits that they felt they'd stored up that might uh help them have as brief a time in purgatory as possible to to think you could pass on Purgatory would be kind of uh to assume a lot um when she was very small her sister Marie uh brought home from boarding school a string of sacrifice beads uh and she was to use those beads to count the day merits whatever she did you know helping somebody across the street um feeding a bird I don't know what the merits amounted to uh she gave them to her sister as well and terase uh demanded one um she was very sensitive she was uh always worrying about whether she could ever AC accumulate enough Merit uh herself um but then at some point very early she decided that it that was too hard uh a task for not just for her but for anyone uh and she felt that God through the scriptures and I don't know the scripture she had in mind uh pointed out to her uh in her meditations a quick way to Holiness uh an easy way to go is she said straight to heaven that is to abandon yourself totally to God as a child entrusts him herself to his parent and her little way uh was born in that again not trying to find your own way through merits but instead or or to depend on um people to pray you to Purgatory out of purgatory which of course had been going on since the Middle Ages but instead to just trust God completely that God would do the work um and I maybe she's like Martin Luther and others who looked into the New Testament and saw that there uh amongst Paul's words about race anyway she stopped storing up merits stopped counting merits um and one day toward the end of her life uh her sister um lenting that she had really no Works to offer God on Judgment Day day that's how she said it terase uh considering herself pretty much the same uh said she wasn't at all perturbed by that that since uh she could give God nothing God would Supply everything that's how it was put since she could give God nothing uh God would Supply everything um I think that's where um Pope Paul v 6 uh considered her uh well well B Benedict I 15th considered her uh an iceberg um she talking about a small way is known for her small way and yet it has a a a profundity that um you wonder where she got this U her mother claimed that she was alarmingly precocious her mother said of her she remembers absolutely everything um you all know that person maybe you were that person growing up um I think my my oldest granddaughter is that way um she she never forgets anything I read her that's for sure uh terase was also known for an incredible uh temper um just she could throw huge tantrums and obviously got away with it um I said her mother died when she was four she had breast cancer uh the father moved the family away from that town where they lived I don't know why I can't even remember the name of it but they moved to L Liu uh where he um where he transferred his business as a watch maker or went to work for someone else I don't know enough um 2 years later as I said the oldest uh daughter Pauline um who was a second mother to terase uh joined the convent there which terase said was the saddest moment of her life she lost so many things and that was huge um um and trce said shortly after that that she too at age of nine wanted to join the carites that was the the convent uh and the bishop uh of the town or the area said he was way too young um but teras said I came to the conclusion that the convent must be the desert that God means me to take refuge in so again she's thinking about the the desert tradition she was very sick for a number of years was bed written uh again with some intestinal thing uh and said that U the thing that kept her alive was her desire to be a nun herself she also had migraines um then um sister Marie her third mother entered the carite con uh Convent uh and terce just felt like abandonment was her her uh her her life and kind of out of that um the sense of repeated loss uh she came up with a mission for herself uh that is that um after death she she didn't expect a long life after her death she said she wished to do good deeds to people on Earth uh afterward that somehow God would enable her to uh breach the bounds of Heaven uh Between Heaven and Earth and and do good deeds for people the way Catholics I think count on Saints to do that um and I find this interesting in that um there is in Buddhism you know this sense of uh being a bodh SATA it's in Mahayana Buddhism uh and a bodhisatwa is a person who's who's able to able to reach nirvana who has been enlightened but delays doing so out of compassion in order to uh to minister and uh help other suffering human beings uh find their way to u to Nirvana themselves um it's very different of course uh but um there is I think the same Spirit there um Christmas of 1880 6 when she's 13 she comes home for Midnight Mass Christmas Eve and she feels that she has all at once gotten spiritual release that is that she's beginning a new chapter in which she feels freed from her ego uh and really I think that's when this whole business of uh this Mission she hoped to have after death came uh really CLE to her another sister entered a different Convent about that time then at age 15 teras tried one more time to enter the convent Her Sister Pauline had gone to the carites um and uh at that point um when the bishop said no she decided she would go to the pope himself and appeal so she went to Rome with her father uh and Pope Leo the 13th was celebrating his golden jubilee at the time um 50 years I guess as Pope so she goes right up to the pope and asks her favor uh she says in honor of your Jubilee please permit me to enter the convent and Pope Leo hears something from someone about this little girl from France and says well my child do what the what your superiors tell you um and not wanting to to take that for an answer she she was prepared uh with uh that for that uh no and said Holy Father if you say yes everyone will agree uh and let me go and he consulted a little more with someone else who knew her and said go go you will enter uh Convent if God wills it um and finally a few months later she was allowed and so she spent her last nine years uh at the carite convent um Behind Bars pretty much um where you're cut off from the rest of the world um and this is one of my favorite details from her life um she's in the convent she's been there a little bit she's having a bit of a hard time adjusting as anyone would uh I don't know what part of it uh was was disagreeable to her but the oldest uh nun in the convent comes up to her to comfort her and says wait for it she says to terase the first 30 years are the hardest oh just love that oh especially of course when you think of this woman who would live N9 years and die uh but um I I just can't imagine a world where one one could say that to oneself and get along just fine thinking well it's only the first 30 years that are difficult uh terase had a very normal kind of time in the convent um she wrote she was very playful she wrote skits and poems skits for the nuns she cleaned the dining room she helped in the kitchen and the laundry she did everything there was to do there was absolutely nothing that was remarkable about her but she was developing her own little inner way uh as I said that uh is is a way that she considered very straight to God she said how could God expect me to you know climb up to uh the Dome of St Peter's on those Stone steps on my knees um Catholics are always climbing upep steps on their knees you know gaining Merit this happens today as it's happened since um the Middle Ages um she said no God uh would would clearly provide someone like me and others as well an elevator to get and she knew all about elevators they had them uh at the end of the 19th century um she was dealing with her impulses no better place than being in a Convent probably to figure that out and uh when she first went in uh she still had some of the uh the jansenism in her that I said was so uh prevalent in the late 1900 or 1800s here's how she said it this is her prayer to Jesus at the time she said a single form of martyrdom would not be enough for me I should want to experience them all I should want to be scourged and crucified as you were to be to be Flay alive like St Bartholomew to be dipped in boiling oil like St John offering my neck to the Executioner like St Agnes or St Cecile c c i don't know to say that name and like my favorite Jon ofar Whispering your name as I was tied to the steak to be burned um um but and this is the important thing uh early on in the convent she was reading St Paul as she was instructed to do and she discovers 1 Corinthians 13 and this is when she com comes to decide that love not heroics is the purpose of life of the spiritual life now that's something we talked about the very first evening we talked about the desert fathers they had that struggle many of them were tempted by uh spiritual heroics Flay flaying their flesh uh going without food for days if not weeks on and um and and there is in the literature of the desert of you know the the strong words from the wise Elders abbots uh that said that's that's a spiritual dead end uh and she realized this herself by reading um St Paul and perhaps she was instructed in this as well but there's the line in 1 Corinthians 13 that's almost hidden there but uh it's significant for her where it says if I give away all I have and if I deliver my body to be burned but have not love I gain nothing so I think that's where she felt uh that uh this business of Love above self-abnegation and suffering uh found its foundation in fact she said it made sense to her because and here's a quote from her uh spiritual biography Auto ography love is all the skill I have um again that's another moment when I find uh the here is that person who has a profound spirit and a profound sense of of proportion when it comes to spiritual matters um looking back on that uh childhood quote uh wanting all the martyrdoms that you could get um at the very end of her life when she was a month or two away from dying of tuberculosis again at the age of 24 she said to an someone when death was becoming pretty clear to her is it possible that I who long for martyrdom will die in bed uh so that I think gives us a sense of uh what what she was about she no longer dreamed of dreadful martyrdoms uh in fact she said she realized that her life was already a burnt offering for a purpose that she could only dimly understand uh but felt that she'd been chosen for um she became uh at the end somewhere in the end in the last years uh assistant to the novice master um again she's in charge of the new the new nuns who came in uh and she felt at once uh when she was given that uh assistantship uh the spur to uh have to grow up she'd always you know she's the youngest child so there's always that theme in her life that she's the baby uh but she felt that she had to jettison some uh of her childhood impulses uh and it struck her that her and this is how she understands herself it struck her that her very Poverty of gifts and skills um and opportunities in life might make her a representative of all who were poor and inadequate in the world but who would strive to love God all the same so let me say that again U it's her sense of yourself as very small not gifted particularly in any way um put behind bars in a Convent um the perfect representative of all who are poor and inadequate who feel the same way about themselves but who still uh strive to love God as best they can and in fact uh she dies of the most common fatal illness that we can imagine in the 19th century to brosis um this is kind of interesting too I'd said before that she uh there was nothing remarkable about her um again this is something that was perceived by her sisters and all those who were in the convent as well um they would pray six and a half hours a day I mean that was their job you know to pray for uh their community and for all who came in touch with them uh six and a half hours a day and she fell asleep during common prayer every day um and and uh the way she made sense of this was to say uh just as parents love their children children as much when they're asleep as awake so God seems to love me even when I sleep during prayer time um I mean that could be an excuse but in some sense I think the little Theologian inside her U size that up for herself um again it's someone who's realized that being simple um is is not necessarily a bad thing she understood who she was in a very significant way and in a very healthy way I think as well and taught Simplicity and said out loud she did not trust long prayers um or wrote prayers she didn't like anything written down or memorized um um and so she got along in the uh Convent as best she could doing her work uh with people who were more than uh I mean who were just normal people uh who would explode uh out of anger who had trouble with the communal life uh as anyone would um I remember Alec Guinness uh visited uh a a monastery in England and uh was his first time at a particular Monastery he he liked to do that and a monk stopped him on the way to his room and said what do you think the hardest part of being a monk would be and againa said other monks and he said yeah that was it um you know they have to get along it's not easy uh in any place like that um there was one particular nun she knew who was a sister St uh who was uh we'd call her a piece of work today and uh you know just was complaining constantly and uh terce uh saw it as um her work uh on her own Spirit to be the the nicest sweetest person she could to this woman uh when uh before she entered the convent she would never have give give a person like that uh uh you know the time of day um okay so again she's called the Little Flower uh probably as much by people who don't quite understand the profundity of her uh of her understanding of herself and her calling um but again uh if if she was told that she would have said that she was a simple Wildflower not a not anything fancy um um she would she she said that she has bloomed where she was planted and had tried her best to use her her short life uh to the fullest um again she was canonized in 1925 not too many years after um it there's a process of beautification uh that has steps uh and she got there pretty quickly because of her book uh and because so many people thought yes there is a saint I can identify with uh someone who doesn't clame uh any particular uh uh talent for sainthood she was also like the other Mystics we've looked at very comfortable with mystery uh she said life is but a moment between two eternities and good be she picked that up from somebody else I don't know but it's attributed to her now uh she's a model for suffering uh for facing suffering and death with Grace um and shortly before she died she said I feel my mission is about to begin to help people uh love God uh in as she said her simple way and that she would spend eternity doing Good Deeds for people on Earth um I don't know what to make of that uh spiritually particularly you know as a Protestant I'm totally out of ideas um but there it is um as I said you know all these remarkable people uh U found her profound uh when they read her book and heard stories of her life from her sisters and others um one thing that's very interesting to me is that while she there was nothing remarkable about her that people could point to the by the time she died of TB in in the convent the sisters all thought she was already a saint they were even telling her that when she died her body would not would not decompose and she said oh that's ridiculous I'll rot so so she didn't have any um ideas that were inflated about that uh and of course you know we all know uh that there are stories all the time about these people who are found to have some sort of Merit whose bodies don't decompose for whatever reason that only forensic Specialists could understand and explain to us um Mother Teresa of Kolkata uh I forgot her real name grew up in Romania but she took she wanted to take the name terase after this particular little saint uh but it was already taken by someone in her uh Convent and so she took Teresa instead after trace of AA but the saint that she was devoted to was Teresa blissa um let's see if there's anything else of of note Oh Thomas Merton who we'll talk about next week was totally devoted to her as well someone else who is quite devoted to her is Richard Roar uh and of course if Richard Roar thinks she's something she's got to be something um okay um let me see I thought I'd share a little bit of what Roar says about her um but before I do let me just throw this open uh to your any Reflections you might have uh on this it reminds you of anything or um you want to know something more about her I may or may not know anything yeah so to yeah um what year did she die 1897 at the age of 24 oh yeah you said 24 so when was she born then 1873 1873 right right 1897 right thank you yeah so she's kind of modern again she can use uh an elevator as an image for going to God however we think of that as quite a long time ago let let me add this one thing that I find interesting and this is about her attitude toward Purgatory when she was a nov when she was in charge of novices uh she taught them uh that um they could avoid purgatory and this just was unheard of uh besides none of the novices was particularly holy they were all average with natural weaknesses um um and very very few of them had uh an accumulation of meritorious acts to balance the weight of their sins according to uh people who wrote about them um but she taught them that they could go straight to heaven when they died because they all they had to do was trust God for everything um again that's um that's a Protestant idea I doubt she got it from any Protestant um however um that's part of her understanding and it fits with the a lot of people that we've uh certainly been U influenced by in the Protestant Church anything else I was thinking about you you mentioned the the bodh SATA aspect and when you talked about jansenism I thought boy that sounds Buddhist and then you know and went to the BH SAA so yeah and you said jansenism was popular in that period right and and popular too into the 20th century right up until uh Pope John the 23d and his decision to uh try to have a reform um that did its best to throw out um the sense of harshness the the heart the harsh image of God um you know I'm not a I'm not a theologian I'm certainly not a a student of Catholic history particularly but um this is this is going on today too you know we've got we've got Pope Francis who's uh quite liberal and very in tune with Vatican 2 whereas his predecessor Benedict was wanting to go back to prev Vatican 2 cath Catholicism with not just the Latin Mass but um with the idea of a God who uh loomed quite large uh as a judge however um I think those who put him forward uh for sainthood now um I'm talking about Benedict U may not understand him his writings are actually full of grace and he in fact kind of liked Francis a lot from what I could tell so you know there's there's people uh and there are parties in any religion I guess and they're at odds all the time the other the other thing that hit me very strongly as somebody who lived in the Detroit area where you said the Little Flower and I went the Shrine of the Little Flower there you are father kin's church and so I just looked it up and I said that was founded um in 1925 the same year that she was right Sanctified or whatever and and wasn't he kind of uh yeah the first first and longest um Pastor there um was was a fascist he was a Nazi right and he was he was a radio Nazi he was reaching out to the whole country wow yeah well that's fascinating I doubt that she would have liked that 1925 uh interesting well that's when the Italian when musolini was gaining power he he was before Hitler when it came so I I wonder what was in the Zeitgeist at that point that you know that brought those two things together absolutely no idea that would be worth trying to figure out though that's SC jump in uh it was part of this sense that you had to perform all these things does that Trace back to the idea of original sin that we're evil when we are born and we have it go goes right back to St Augustine yeah we're born in [Music] Sin sex is awful um all of that hey maybe just um I did post in the chat um the uh archive.com resources if anybody wants to read any of her stuff she did some poems and as well as her autobiography yeah yeah just how did you reach that Doug just copy copy the um the sites and then just click on them and it'll take you to the archive.com or you can go to archive.com and put in her name and they'll pull up all the books that are related to to her life I could email you the link uh Sue so what was as simple as you can do it that would be nice I'm not a okay I'll do that yeah somebody else was speaking who was it what was the Catholic Church's reason for finding her particularly as a saint at that time like what did they find in her I'm trying to go back to this what does this this all mean in the early 20th century but right I think her young death had a lot to do with it um you know they're always looking for Saints among those who who who like who who lived the shortest lives um there's a there's some connection for them to that maybe that goes all the way back to people who were martyred um in the Roman times I'm not sure but there is an originality to her uh I mean she claimed that you know Jesus showed her this way uh she didn't say that she came up with it like a scholar um so I think there is that fact that people took her at her word about that God could I say something about early sainthood sure a person um becoming a saint has some really strict rules you need to have a certain number of a minimum number of um authenticated Miracles that are attributed to that particular Saint and um if a person has lived such an exemplary life and has been such a selfless person it's like this ground swell that builds that um the Vatican doesn't ignore so if there's a popular um attraction I'm sorry that's my dog if there's a popular idea that this person should be a saint then that will happen and so like Mother Teresa and John Paul II were right like that they were made Saints whereas someone like theia Bowman who is um this wonderful um servant of God she's a servant of God which is one of the um uh one of the um steps to becoming a saint she's taken a lot longer and part of that is because she was the gadfly to the archbishops but Teresa didn't do that right and and again there's something very easy and attractive about her um um excellent articulation of what she understood as her way uh she said that in contrast to uh the big way of heroic perfectionism which you know some saints claimed and were um sainted for uh she says um that she said I'm just a little one um and because of my smallness I draw God's love toward me God has to love me and help me because I can't do anything by myself so I bring to God every day not my perfection but my imperfection um and she said quote I know God comes rushing toward me as a result um she who who can't identify with that U if that's what you want if you you know that she makes more sense than any saint that came before her for that very reason clearly the youngest in the family right there is that to it as well isn't it everybody was always coming rushing toward her that's right right to pick her up in case she walked in front of a horse and carriage probably oh I let me show you a picture I can give you a picture of this think she's uh she's quite Winsome and adorable H interesting and smart as hell obviously too um she said she had no gifts but she obviously had a gift for you know articulating um profound things in simple terms straightforward terms that was absolutely necessary for her to be who she was all right curious yeah go ahead um so being in the convent all these years What miracles did she perform or was she associate right well th those as as eileene was saying the Miracles that one would attribute to her would be people praying for healings most likely and receiving them after praying directly to her repeatedly and saying well you know I had incurable cancer but I prayed to St Terese over a period of 6 months and uh look uh I'm cancer free and uh that's the kind of thing that um someone you know a priest who's in charge of that kind of Investigation would uh interrogate the person about and attribute to terase if it was um deemed uh genuine that's the kind of thing yeah and I mean how can you it's a funny business right I mean how do you it it's hard toh say what's uh genuine and what's not when it comes to the mysteries of healings all right uh next week Thomas Merton um you're gonna tell us what Richard said about her oh I was wasn't I yeah well that part of what I yeah let me give you that terase came in into the 19th century Catholic Church that was controlled by jansenism the belief in an angry punitive God perfectionism and validation by personal good behavior which is very unstable and auser in the midst of this rigid environment TR says quote I'm convinced that my message is really new Jesus himself taught me this this had been forgotten by most Christians Richard says by the 19th century so much so that tce had to call it new Terese called this simple childlike path her little way it is a spirituality of imperfection she says quote Jesus dained to show me the road that leads to this Divine furnace of God's love and this road is the surrender of the of the little child who sleeps without fear in its father's arms in a letter to priest Adolf ruong teres writes quote Perfection seems simple to me I see it is sufficient to recognize one's nothingness and to abandon oneself as a child into God's arms unquote any Christian Perfection is in fact our ability to include forgive and accept our own imperfection and Richard said in another place I think imperfection is the organizing principle of the entire human historical and spiritual Enterprise imperfection in the great spiritual Traditions is not just to be tolerated excused and even forgiven it is the very framework inside of which God makes the god self known and calls us into gracious Union it's what allows us and sometimes forces us to fall into the arms of the Living God thank you for asking for that that was um very helpful love Richard yeah I'm willing to give him all Kudos from whom all blessings flow right okay I've kept you over uh but this has been fun uh I I'm enthusiastic about this um I think I I love it because it's so uh not what it what's the word int anti counterintuitive that's what it is um in every sense of the word uh kind of love things that break the mold so again next week uh Thomas Merton who's uh a real character um in every sense of the word a real a brilliant Marvel um in many ways so I'll bring some actually some personal things to that um as well so blessings on all as Terese as a child would have giving you lots of crosses okay much love sleep well and thanks again Doug for giving us some uh uh really nice background there appreciate it thank you yeah bye bye everybody bye bye

Channel: Southminster Presbyterian Church

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Id: lFAFJPJm_z0

Length: 64min 49sec (3889 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024