Pilgrim progress- a disciple on a journey!

You don't have to wait until Valentine's Day to give a young lady roses! The 1st of October is the feast day of The Little Flower, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Many of us pray to our little saint with the phrase: "Little flower, show your power." There is a wonderful initiative called the 'One Rose Invitation'. Yes, we are a little obsessed with roses on this blog!  So what's the One Rose Invitation about? It is an annual initiative to invite young women to consider the call to consecrated life as a religious sister. It was inspired by St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the patron saint of Imagine Sisters, who said, “After my death I will let fall a shower of roses.” The Imagine Sisters website extends this invitation: "Do you know a young woman you think would make a great sister? Let her know by giving her a single red rose on October 1st. The rose is a symbol of the invitation to consider religious life, and an affirmation of the beauty of that young woman’s ...

“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord's living garden.” ― St. Thérèse de Lisieux Today is one of my favourite feastdays, feast of St. Thérèse, also known as the Little Flower! I know it is predictable but one of my favourite spiritual books is the ‘Story of a Soul’ which I came across as a teenager.Generations of Catholics have admired this young saint and found in her short life more inspiration for own lives than in volumes by theologians. Yet Therese died when she was 24, after having lived as cloistered Carmelite for less than ten years. She never went on missions, never founded a religious order, never performed great works. The only book of hers, publis...

God works in mysterious ways! On the feast of St. Clare whose memorial we hold today albeit somewhat silent because of the Sunday precedence, I had the opportunity to attend a monologue based on the life of St. Therese. I confess I didn’t really know what to expect. An hour of just one person talking! For a self-confessed multi-tasker, this seemed intense just to have to focus on one thing and one person though essentially that is what we do when we come to prayer. The performance was originally written in French and later translated to English. It has been performed about 500 times and seen by 100,000 people around the world written and directed by Michel Pascal. Check out his impressive bio here . The performance is based on St Therese’s writings, which recount her life from her childhood days to her life in the Carmelite monastery. According to Pascal, the play portrays the saint’s life of simplicity and openness, and aims to touch audiences, inviting them to discover inner peac...