Advent Days of Recollection at St. Thomas More Church

Father began the first recollection with an overview of the life of St. Therese, with a special connection to our Lady’s promises at Fatima about making the five first Saturday devotions. He described the loving and pious home of the Martin family in which Therese was raised as well as how the family faced severe trials. After Therese entered Carmel, she learned from our Lord of what she described as “a little way a very straight and short a little way entirely new that would lead men to perfection.” What was needed, Therese said, was not complex and rigorous ascetic habits and great learning, but “that we acknowledge our nothingness our littleness and approach god with love and confidence, adding that “sanctity is an interior disposition that makes us humble and little in God's arms, conscious of our weakness and trusting even to audacity in the goodness of our father.”

In subsequent conferences, Father related the story of what Therese called her “Christmas miracle” when she was about to turn 14 years old. Therese related these events in the following words.

Now I will tell you, dear Mother, how I received this inestimable grace of complete conversion. I knew that when we reached home after Midnight Mass I should find my shoes in the chimney-corner, filled with presents, just as when I was a little child, which proves that my sisters still treated me as a baby. Papa, too, liked to watch my enjoyment and hear my cries of delight at each fresh surprise that came from the magic shoes, and his pleasure added to mine. But the time had come when Our Lord wished to free me from childhood’s failings, and even withdraw me from its innocent pleasures. On this occasion, instead of indulging me as he generally did, Papa seemed vexed, and on my way upstairs I heard him say: ‘Really all this is too babyish for a big girl like Thérèse, and I hope it is the last year it will happen.’

 

His words cut me to the quick. Céline, knowing how sensitive I was, whispered: ‘Don’t go downstairs just yet—wait a little, you would cry too much if you looked at your presents before Papa.’

 

But Thérèse was no longer the same—Jesus had changed her heart.

The miracle was that our Lord changed her heart in an instant, and she recovered the strength of soul that she had lost at the age of four when her mother died.

Father related the story of the first miracle Therese won through her prayers: the conversion on the scaffold of the notorious criminal Henri Pranzini, who had shown no remorse for his crimes but who relented at the final moment and kissed a crucifix while his head rested on the guillotine.

“Humility is truth,” Father said. “Therese was moved by her very depths by the compassionate love that God had for her, and I would propose that this is the starting point we all need to have we need to realize that God is love.”

It seemed to me as though my future were shattered forever; the nearer I drew to the goal, the greater my difficulties became. But all the time I felt deep down in my heart a wondrous peace because I knew that I was only seeking the Will of my Lord.

- from the autobiography of St. Therese.

Links to the conferences

The four conferences combined are a little over 84 minutes long. You can listen to all of them at these links.

First Recollection of Advent >

From 9:20 to 24:10

Conference of Advent 1 >

From 5:05 to 36:33

Conference of Advent 2 >

From 2:02 to 20:42

Conference of Advent 3 >

From 0:15 to 19:43