St Teresa Margaret

The 1st September!  Autumn has come, the schools are open, the countdown to Hallowe'en and Christmas has started for the shops.  I hear the Christmas shops have already started opening.  Brown Thomas, one of Dublin's most exclusive department stores, opened its Christmas shop yesterday.  God help us all.

But today in Discalced Carmel, we celebrate the feast of one of our canonised saints, a great devotee of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: St Teresa Margart Redi, or in religion, St Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

St Teresa Margaret is one of lesser known Saints, and yet she has progressed to canonisation where other more popular ones like Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity still await the honours - although word in the Order is we may have a miracle for her, so expect a canonisation soon, we pray.

Teresa Margaret was born Anna Maria Redi in Arezzo in Italy in 1747 and died at the young age of 23 in 1770.  Yet, despite her youth, like St Therese, she achieved great sanctity and became an important teacher in the Carmelite tradition, bringing a Carmelite dimension to the devotion to the Sacred Heart.    Here is a short biography.

Teresa Margaret is of great interest to me because we share the same birthday - 15th July, and the same baptismal day - 16th July, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.  She came to Carmel as a result of a locution in which she heard the voice of our Holy Mother, St Teresa who said to her: "I am Teresa of Jesus, and I want you among my daughters."  Can't be any clearer than that.  So off Anna Maria went, entered Carmel in Florence at the age of seventeen.  As one would expect she did not have it easy, but suffered a great deal, but for all of it she never lost her serenity or her joy, but rather entrusted herself more and more to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

To celebrate her feast day, a few quotes to munch on:

“Lord, I shall be yours, whatever the cost, despite all repugnance.”

“Always receive with equal contentment from God’s hand either consolations or sufferings, peace or distress, health or illness. Ask nothing, refuse nothing, but always be ready to do and to suffer anything that comes from His Providence.”

“I propose to have no other purpose in all my activities, either interior or ex­terior, than the motive of love alone, by constantly asking myself: ‘Now what am I doing in this action? Do I love God?’ If I should notice any obstacle to pure love, I shall take myself in hand and recall that I must seek to return my love for His love.”

Her body is incorrupt, and lies in the Carmel in Florence.

 

Sweet Heart of Jesus

There is a wonderful article by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith in the Catholic Herald Online about today's great Solemnity, well worth a read.    He reminds us that today's feast is truly rich: a celebration of the Incarnation - a "feast of flesh" he calls it, but also a deeply intimate feast, one in which we are called to enter into the Heart of Jesus Christ - the Heart that was opened on the cross for us - opened to release grace out upon us, but opened also to be a door for us to enter into the life of God. 

St Veronica Giuliani

I think of the great Italian mystic, St Veronica Giuliani: when her mother was dying she confided each of her little children to a wound of the Lord - little Ursula, as she was then, was entrusted to the wound in the Lord's side.  It would prove providential - she entered into that wound and into the Heart of Christ to discover and, at the Lord's command, to reveal its secrets for all who seek to come to know and love Christ.

Badge of the Catholic rebellion in the Vendee (1793-1796)

Fr Lucie-Smith also reminds us of the place devotion to the Heart of Jesus has in history.  The martyrs of the French Revolution found strength in the devotion to face their deaths.  The uprising in Vendee (or counterrevolution I suppose) took the devotion as the rallying cry against the strident atheism of the revolutionaries.  The Sacred Heart was depicted on the flags of the Catholic insurgents - in fact the flag and arms of the region still depict the crowned Hearts of Jesus and Mary. 

In these troubled times the Heart of Christ must also be an inspiration, a strength and indeed a rallying call for us - a call to faith, hope and love - to heroic living.  There is a need for a new counterrevolution - a new order to undo the regime imposed by secularism and the promiscuity of the sexual revolution.  Of course that new order is very ancient - it is the way of the Gospel, but it is ever new since it has a relevance for all people in all ages.  The Heart of Jesus puts flesh on the Gospel and reminds us that ultimately the Gospel is Christ's - his word, his teaching, the path which can lead us to his life: the way to his Heart: the way of love.

Profession Day

I'm off to Stamullen, Co. Meath this morning for the Solemn Profession of my friend, Sr Cora Marie as a sister of the Visitation Order.   It promises to be a great day.  Our bishop will preside over the ceremony - he's flying back from the US where he was on a mission for the national seminary to be present.  Can I please ask you to remember her in your prayers?  Today was specially chosen because it is the feast of St Margaret Mary Alocoque, the most famous member of the order.   St Margaret Mary is, as you know, the visionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the one chosen by the Lord to promote devotion to the symbol of his love and mercy in a time afflicted with Jansenism.  Providence decreed that this apostle should be a member of an order renowned for its gentleness and devotion to the love of God, as exemplified most profoundly in its founder, St Francis de Sales.  

Today is most appropriate for Sr Cora's profession because she is named after the Sacred Heart of Jesus himself: Cora means heart.  She did not choose this name when she entered, she was baptised Cora, Marie was added when she was received into the order.  God has great panache!   The one he would call to the order of the Sacred Heart was prepared when she was named.  Every Visitation sister is called to reveal through her life the virtues of that Heart which has consumed Itself with love for mankind.  This is an apostolate which is badly needed in these times when so many people are looking for God.  That will be Sr Cora Marie's task, and I hope other women will join her.  If you are interested in the Visitation Order, see their website: http://www.visitation.ie/