Today's Saint of the Day proves one needn’t live a long life to leave a deep imprint. ❣️
April 12, 2024
Hello John,
Today’s meditation from God’s Love Song by Murray Bodo and Susan Saint Sing invites us to contemplate our own commitment to Lady Poverty. Francis took very seriously Jesus’s words to his followers in Luke 9:3, “Take nothing for your journey.” Francis did not want his brothers to own books, perhaps an awkward admission to include in an email from a book publisher. But Francis’s reasoning was that he didn’t want knowledge to “puff up” his brothers when in fact it was charity that builds up. When we possess or own things, we tend to turn them into gods and forget about our mission to love and serve.
Poverty’s invitation is to enter into the paradox of Christian living. As Jesus shares in Matthew 16:25, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Don’t buy this book if you’re looking for ideas to puff you up, but our hope is that this book will invite you further into the liberating way of Francis and Clare, which paradoxically leads us to gain everything by having nothing.
Saint of the Day for April 12: Teresa of Los Andes
(July 13, 1900 – April 12, 1920)
Saint Teresa of Los Andes’ Story
One needn’t live a long life to leave a deep imprint. Teresa of Los Andes is proof of that.
As a young girl growing up in the early 1900’s in Santiago, Chile, Juana Fernandez read an autobiography of a French-born saint—Thérèse, popularly known as the Little Flower. The experience deepened her desire to serve God and clarified the path she would follow. At age 19 Juana became a Carmelite nun, taking the name of Teresa.
The convent offered the simple lifestyle Teresa desired and the joy of living in a community of women completely devoted to God. She focused her days on prayer and sacrifice. “I am God’s,” she wrote in her diary. “He created me and is my beginning and my end.”
Toward the end of her short life, Teresa began an apostolate of letter-writing, sharing her thoughts on the spiritual life with many people. At age 20 she contracted typhus and quickly took her final vows. She died a short time later, during Holy Week.
Known as the “Flower of the Andes,” Teresa remains popular with the estimated 100,000 pilgrims who visit her shrine in Los Andes each year. Canonized in 1993 by Pope John Paul II, she is Chile’s first saint.
Reflection
The special graces given Saint Teresa reflect the mysterious wisdom of God at work in individuals whether young or old. It appears God has his own logic when it comes to who gets what in the realm of grace. All we can say is; “Praised be the Lord.”
"For Christians, the person who inspires us to action and to prayer is Christ, the Son of God, and our listening prayer begins with the simple realization that Christ dwells within us and that we are united with him in a deep union that only prayer can reveal to us."
—from God's Love Song: The Vision of Francis and Clare
The true religion of Francis’s heart means gospel poverty, the poverty of the poor Christ, and the concrete image of that true religion is Lady Poverty, whom he takes as his bride. Lady Poverty is the Bride of Christ, the only one to ascend the cross with Christ on Calvary. And Francis’s marriage to Lady Poverty assures him the great treasure, which is the kingdom of heaven, but at the cost of the cross, which Francis embraces as eagerly as he embraced his spouse. In this rendering, Francis becomes the epic hero of the gospel who has the courage to find and hold on to the hidden treasure, Holy Poverty, which in a grand paradox means having nothing, which will bring him everything, and at times feeling abandoned by God, only to discover that God is closest when God feels farthest away.
This mystery of gospel poverty is the great desire of Francis’s heart and soul because it is the mystery of Christ, who is being born within Francis as Francis dies to himself to become like Christ.
The Gospel calls us to consider the good of our neighbor as equally important to our own good. May we express our love for God by prioritizing the needs of those around us, particularly the most vulnerable and marginalized.
Pray
Good Shepherd, I pray for my political and religious leaders, that they will make all decisions and take all actions with the most vulnerable among us in mind. And yet I know that I, too, have a responsibility to the common good. You have called me to love my neighbor as myself and yet I would so often rather preserve my own good fortune and look out only for my own interests. Remind me in those times that the world will never change through individualism, but only through concern for the interests of others. Give me strength and courage to choose justice, even when it requires sacrifice from me. In the spirit of Jesus, I pray. Amen.
Act
Spend some time examining your beliefs and lifestyle today. Journal about your thoughts.
Today's Pause+Pray was written by Shannon K. Evans. Learn more here!
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