My 911 Saint - Therese of Lisieux

As we enter Springtime,
I'd like to bring you to Therese.
Although we love all the saints for different reasons, when in great difficulty I always call on her as my 911 Saint . No one else answers so quickly. No one else makes you feel like she knows you and your problems so completely, as if she were your best friend, as Therese.
Several years ago I was living in Arroyo Secco, Northern New Mexico and it was a very harsh winter. Before a Mass on Sunday evening I was praying to her and as I entered the church of the Most Holy Trinity, the music director gave me a book she found that day at an out door sale, it was Kathryn Harrison's Penguin Biography of Therese. It's the most unusual book on Therese , and the one I think she wanted me to read . I've read it several times , I'm reading it right now. What makes it unusual is that Kathryn does her best to try to make Therese real and free from hagiographical touch ups. So that she has been criticized for not understanding the spirituality of the Saint. For me it was just what I needed, in that, it brought me closer to Therese than ever before, and I had first read about her as a child in the Vision Book Series called St Therese and the Roses by Helen Walker Homan. My icon is based on her two names as a Carmelite:
Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.
Let me end with the most beautiful poem on St Therese by my deceased friend and mentor Fr Jim Janda:

Therese de l'Enfant Jesus

Clip the bird's
wing
the desire to
fly
remains like
seeking
the Christ when
the
only meaning is
memory-of a
promise
made while
holding
an opening rose
white
as the wafer
received
believing senses
are
deceived

and that coughing
blood
means only that
the
soul will be
separated
from the body
and the only
position
possible is of
childhood
looking up

by Fr James Janda +

Fr Bill McNichols
April 2016