Review: DIFFICULT
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 23, 2014
My brother was very excited when I got my driver's license: he wouldn't have to beg his friends for rides anymore. This was most important on Christmas Eve.In our teeny-tiny hometown, only one church had midnight services-St. Julian's. We got there early.Don told me I had to kneel before I went into the row we had chosen, then kneel before I took my seat because Saint Mary ruled this church. I told him Saint Mary would know I was Baptist, but I whispered it because I didn't want anyone else to hear.By midnight the small church was packed, filled with Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians. The room was stifling from body heat. Father Hogan read to us and we read to him.When services were over I thought ,'Is that all there is to being Catholic?'It was a big disappointment.Then I read this book.I'll bet some Catholics do just give their religion lip service, as do some people in every religion. Teresa speaks of FEELING each word as you pray it.If you've read the story of this young woman's life, you know she stirred things up in her convent: she complained that some of her sisters had brought lavish things with them and did not suffer as Christ did. She founded the Carmelite order of nuns because she expected to suffer.Many sisters flocked to be at her side.Teresa believed in prayer and fasting. She believed in solitude. And, after denying herself food and companionship, she insisted upon having a priest to whom she could confess her sins daily.When did she have time to sin?Ah, Teresa said if she was not in constant prayer, then, as a Bride of Christ, she had sinned.As Teresa aged she considered it her most important job to teach her daughters in the church how to pray the WORD, how to concentrate upon each word of God and pray upon each word before going onto the next one.So if I'm so emphatic about Teresa's work, and believe it to be the WORD of God and the work of God, why only four stars?Reading this book has been like a Decathalon. The language is difficult. If I hadn't read The Life and Prayers of Saint Teresa of Avila first, understanding this book would have been next to impossible.I still think think book is an important piece of literature. If you can only handle four pages at a time then ask God's blessing on those four pages and go for it! Maybe next time you'll be able to read five.Just know Teresa was a remarkably blessed woman, a woman who patterned her life after the life of Christ. After you set down HER book, pick up GOD'S book and read it just as Teresa said to, prayerfully.And start with the Lord's Prayer: that's Matthew 6 : 9.