Sunday Special: The Little Flower: St Therese of Lisieux.

My first closer encounter with St Therese took place after my grandmother died. In her collection of religious items was an old medal with the image of St Therese. It was rusty and the face of Therese was lacking its former beauty. I carried the medal with me everywhere, to the point that it has disappeared just after my interview at Oxford. I remember dad jokingly saying "She has done her job, so now she's gone", but I was devastated at the loss of one of very few keepsakes. It took year before Mr Magic finally found a worthy replacement. 

Therese lived in France and joined the Carmelites in Lisieux when she was 15, after petitioning the Pope himself to let her join the convent being so young. St Therese had a short life, she died at only 24. Her life was not glamorous, but she grew to appreciate the smallest of things and it was her great charism to show love on every step of the way.

I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies.

I've become really fond of Little Therese and she has been present in my life on a regular basis. What I like about her is her focus on the simplicity of the way to sainthood. She doesn't call for grand deeds. She's all about everyday little sacrifices. Doing the dishes. Going out of your way to get something for an ill friend. Always having a smile for a passer-by. Being there in the middle of the night for your loved one. Letting another driver in front of your car. Giving a seat up for somebody on a train. No heroic acts of virtue!

What is amazing is that St Therese was designated as the Doctor of the Church. There are only two other female saints with this title: St Catherine of Siena and St Theresa of Avila. What these women have in common is the desire to become close to God and to draw others closer to Him through their unceasing commitment to do His will in their daily circumstances. They submitted themselves completely to the will of God and really stuck with it through any difficulties.

Therese was so extraordinary in her total ordinariness. I sometimes want to do something fabulous for the glory of God. Become a missionary, run a parish prayer group, organise wonderful worship. Instead, I struggle to pray, I am short-tempered and often bored in church. Therese brings me a message of hope: the ordinary can be as holy as the experiences of mystics:

Jesus deigned to teach me this mystery. He set before me the book of nature. I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wildflowers. 

And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus’ garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to lilies and roses, but He has created smaller ones and these must be content to be daises or violets destined to give joy to God’s glances when He looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His Will, in being what He wills us to be.

 The message of St Therese of Lisieux is the message of Love. Our lives will be transformed if take seriously the call to serve one another with a smile. The glory of God shines on us in the ordinary. 

Land of culinary disappointments.

I love this country, but England is not on the top of my list for good food. When we travel, an Italian place is usually a safe culinary choice. Pizza and pasta are delicious. "Traditional English food" is not something I would be naturally attracted to. And this is because I have experienced so many culinary disappointments here! More so than in any other place where I spent an extended period of time. Here they are, in no particular order.

Tea

British people drink 165 million cups of tea each day. Before moving to the UK, I thought it was a land of delicious tea. I couldn't be more wrong. Most tea drunk at homes around the country is nothing more than a bag of powdered leaves with no taste whatsoever. It's only when I started buying more upscale tea that I could truly enjoy a cuppa. 

Fish and chips

This was another great disappointment, regardless where I eat, be it a chippy a pub or a restaurant, there is always too much batter on the fish and the chips are no good. I'm not sure why people religiously visit fish and chips shops on Friday nights rather than opt for something more tasty and more nutritious.

Bread

Most of bread in Poland is delicious and there is so much variety that is readily available in every bakery. Here, sliced toast bread is everywhere and I hate it. It has no taste, it doesn't hold any shape and there is no nutritional value in this bread. Thankfully, many places now sell sourdough and different types of bread which are actually nice. Even packed Polish bread sold in some supermarkets is better, with plenty of seeds and dense texture. And you can learn to make bread. I made a few attempts at making buttermilk soda bread. Delicious!

Sausages

I don't eat meat anymore, but when I did. sausages were a big disappointment. I couldn't really taste any meat at all in them. Just a blended mass of something gray. Even sausages from the butcher's are not amazing most of the time. I was generally not that keen on processed meats of any kind here.

Bread and butter pudding
This last one is a disappointment, because it such a hit and miss.I had some really tasty bread and butter puddings and some extremely stodgy and excessively sweet blocks of stale bread. Not impressive. Maybe I should try making it myself.

I feel like I need to follow this post up next week with all the delicious food that I only discovered when I moved to England. And there are many dishes that I enjoy. So stay tuned for next week.

Sunday Special: Restless heart: St Augustine of Hippo.

In my struggle with sin, bad habits and vices continues each day, but the story of St Augustine inspires me on my way of holiness. He was a thief, had an affair, fathered a child outside of wedlock, abandoned the faith to Gnosticism. He has famously recorded his prayer “Grant me chastity and continence . . . but not yet.” and I can 100% identify with this attitude of wanting to do something about my spiritual growth. But just not at this moment, not today.

This is probably why St Augustine speaks to me so much. His history resembles so much of my life. Augustine was brought up in a respectable family, he was a learned man with a truly devout mother, St Monica. And yet he got lost. He got engrossed in the life of drink and sex, completely lot the sense of what was right or wrong. His heart was restless, always looking for being filled up with something, but never being satisfied. 

“Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” (Augustine, Confessions (Book 1)

 

It has taken Augustine many many years to realise that nothing can fulfill him but God Himself. Coming to the knowledge of God may take time and not be straightforward at all. I like Augustine because he is not one of the polished saints who wanted to reach heaven from a very young age. I could never fully identify fully with such saints. But Augustine had his struggles just the way I did. He resisted the call to conversion just as I did. He eventually finally realised that God should be at the centre of his life, just as I did.

Augustine was instrumental in the development of the doctrine of the original sin. Human heart is weak and prone to falling away from its Creator. The only way to stand up to sin is to totally depend on the grace of God for the gift of salvation. As St Paul writes in the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus made a one and final sacrifice for our sanctification. We will struggle with our will every day, but the consolation is that we have the reinforcements coming down from Heaven, helping us to make better choices today than we made yesterday, helping us to be more charitable, more patient, more willing to serve others.

If ever you struggle with a particular sin, think of St Augustine who turned his life around and became one of the most important theologians and philosophers of his age. Nothing is impossible to God.

Sunday Special: The Apostle of Mercy: St Faustina Kowalska

God has a strange way of choosing those seemingly least suited for the task of giving others the message of His glory and goodness. Like this Polish nun.

Faustina was born into a poor family of twelve. She completed only three classes of primary school before starting to work various jobs as a housekeeper and a childminder. She strongly desired to enter a convent, but faced rejection after rejection. Her parents did not support the idea and multiple religious congregations that Faustina approached refused to accept her because of her insufficient material resources.

Once she saved up enough money, Faustina joined The Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. She had many mystic visions of Christ, all of which she has written down in her Diary, on the advice of her confessor. It wasn't an easy experience for her. Initially, there have been doubts about how genuine Faustina was, she was examined by a psychiatrist and also suffered greatly from tuberculosis.

What I find amazing about Faustina is that we have received such a wealth of spirituality from a simple woman. The theology of Divine Mercy has been a source of hope, inspiration for many people in the last few decades. The Divine Mercy Image is one of my favourite. Jesus is dressed in a white garment and two rays of light come out of His Heart: signifying the Blood and the Water flowing out of Jesus' side after His death on the cross. Mercy is the greatest attribute of God. At the feet of Jesus, there is an inscription "Jesus, I trust in You." This attitude of trust is the very centre of the devotion to Divine Mercy. Trust can be demonstrated in a variety of ways: not despairing in difficult times, following the Commandments, living out the Beatitudes, living a life of prayer and showing mercy towards others. Faustina lived all of these out, without complaining about all the obstacles that she faced, always trusting in God's plan and unceasingly glorifying Him through spreading the good news of God's infinite mercy.

Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood,
Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ,
in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

"Apart from the mercy of God there is no other source of hope for mankind" John Paul II