| Welcome to the Therese 2002 website | Today is: | |
|
ARCHBISHOP'S HOUSE LENTEN PASTORAL LETTER 10 February 2002 Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Ash Wednesday and Lent are already on our doorstep. With the cross marked in ash on our foreheads we, like Jesus, set our face towards Jerusalem. With prayer and reflection, penance and compassion towards others, we walk with him on the painful road to Calvary in the joyous hope of the resurrection revisited. As an Archdiocesan Church in preparation for the Synod we will walk more consciously One in Christ Jesus. This Lent we will have a very famous person to walk the journey with us. She has much to share with us on the really important issues and questions in our lives. She has a secret to share that will make sense of our daily lives and show us a little way that will lead directly to God. In her little way we will rediscover the simplicity and freshness of the Gospel. I refer of course to St Therese of the Child Jesus, known to many as the Little Flower. Her visit is in the form of an ornate reliquary containing some of her bodily remains. After her death at the age of 24, in the obscurity of the Carmelite Monastery of Lisieux, thousands of people began to come to the tomb where she is buried, to pray and be blessed. Now she comes to us so we too can pray and share in the "shower of roses" she promised to send from heaven. Her relics are not magical. They are symbolic of her living presence as a great Saint of God. Just as photographs of loved ones and memorabilia of famous people make them in a sense present to us, the reliquary provides a focus for prayer and calls us to reflect on her life and listen again to her message. This message of her little way of spiritual childhood, is a wonderfully freeing and life?changing one for the people of today. Pope John Paul II, who declared St Therese to be the youngest ever Doctor of the Church, believes that her spirituality speaks particularly to young people. He says "Therese is precisely a young Saint. Her message brims with the joy and enthusiasm of youth and it is very simple - God is love and every person is loved by God who wants to be welcomed and loved in return. This is a message - the Good News - that young people are called upon today to share with each other". What is this little way of Therese? It is the little way of absolute trust in God's infinite love. The little way of throwing oneself confidently into the ocean of love and mercy, not bringing to God arms full of achievements, but hearts full of humble trust. The little way of saying a wholehearted Yes to all that God asks and of seeking to fill even the most insignificant events of every day life with love for God and neighbour. In this little way, the young Therese challenged much of the Jansenistic rigorism of her time. It can equally challenge the heresy of good works and the pride of self sufficient individualism that result in modern fives being too busy to pray and too proud to surrender to God in trust and love. St Therese can teach us to pray. Her definition of prayer is "An aspiration of the heart. It is a simple glance directed to heaven. It is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy. It expands my soul and unites me to Jesus". In our celebration of Lent and our journey towards our Archdiocesan Synod, prayer is fundamental and irreplaceable. Both would be enriched were our prayer to fit the definition given by St Therese. The overall theme of our Synod is One in Christ Jesus. St Therese would delight in that and would encourage us to live it in the diversity and unity of the Church. She saw the Church as "God's Garden" in which there is an extraordinary array of flowers. Each person is one of those flowers, large and small, striking and unnoticed, but each one is unique and has its place in the garden and contributes in a special way to the garden's overall life and beauty. In this garden, everyone is to be accepted and encouraged to contribute his or her particular gift and colour to the beauty and symmetry of the one united Church. St Therese loved St Paul's description of the Church as the Body of Christ. Each member is indispensable "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, l have no need of you." Each person has a gift to offer and a vocation to follow within the living Body. Therese had great desires and longings. "I feel the vocation of the warrior, the priest, the apostle, the doctor, the martyr". She was distressed in not knowing what her true vocation was. She knew peace and fulfilment only when she realized that "love comprised all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and places ... in a word that it was eternal." Here she found her vocation and the secret of all callings in the Church. "My vocation is love. In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be love". I hope that many will read, or read again, "The Story of a Soul", the autobiography of St Therese and learn more of her simple and profound way to holiness; that we will make the visit of her reliquary a real pilgrimage of prayer and personal renewal; that we will invoke her prayer as we seek to be truly One in Christ Jesus united as a people of prayer; that we will be challenged by her understanding of the Church so as to be one in our love for God and each other. "The Church must have a heart, a heart burning with love; it is love that gives life to everything". If that were the reality of our life in the Church and for the world, we would indeed be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. May it be so. Yours sincerely in Christ, +Francis P Carroll |
||
|
Design © OCD carmelite.com 2002| 13-Feb-2002 |
Official website of the Australian visit |
|
