SALT LAKE CITY — In four presentations over the course of two days, Carmelite Fr. Thomas Reeves of the California-Arizona Province offered lessons on God’s love, drawn from the life of St. Therese of Lisieux.
The presentations were given Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 at the Carmelite monastery in Salt Lake City. The nuns there had had a private retreat earlier in the year, so the mother superior was inspired in prayer to open Fr. Thomas’ presentations to the wider community, Mother Therese Bui said.
Members of the public took advantage of the invitation, with more than a dozen attending the first three sessions, and several dozen attending the final presentation. That presentation, on St. Therese’s feast day, was followed by Mass and a blessing with a relic of the saint.
The title of the conferences was “My God, I Love You,” which were St. Therese’s last words. While Fr. Thomas drew on several examples from the saint’s life to illustrate his points, such as that for a time the Little Flower suffered from scrupulosity, his talks focused more on theology than hagiography.
As he opened his first presentation, he said, “We hope that these days will be for us a special time of graces for you all, and perhaps a special time of healing that’s needed, maybe, in our lives, and certainly for all of us, a tie of deepening our own awareness of how loved we are by Almighty God and to deepen our own love of neighbor, as well.”
Every person is a son or daughter of God, he said, but what is different for Christians is that through baptism they are in Christ. “In Baptism God sends the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba, Father!’” he said. Transformed into temples of the Holy Spirit, Christians are able to relate to God as a father, and “This knowledge of God as our loving Father, as our ‘Abba,’ has the power to change our perception of ourselves and the world around us, which is created by our loving Father.”
The hope for the two days of reflection “is that we ourselves can come to a deeper awareness of how loved we are, how precious we are in God’s eyes, and also to be able to see how precious and loved others are in God’s eyes,” he said.
St. Therese is a good guide for coming to this awareness, he said, because she lived a life continuously aware of God as her loving father, “and certainly she’s still active in helping us to see life through the lens of God’s merciful love.”
The retreat was held in the Carmel chapel. While he addressed much of his presentation to the secular audience, Fr. Thomas occasionally spoke directly to the nuns, who were seated behind the grill. In his opening presentation, he said, “Even though it’s not always easy for the world to understand the particular vocation of a Carmelite nun, the vocation of a Carmelite nun is precious and necessary for the life of the Church.” Speaking to the nuns, he said, “The world needs your lives of prayer and self-sacrifice. This monastery here evangelizes. [We] give hope and speak loudly that God lives. These monasteries are cities set on a hill that give light, a ray of hope to the world that is so often surrounded in darkness. And behind these cloister walls our sisters may not always be aware of the positive influence that you have on others, but you do.”
When St. Therese was growing up, the heresy of Jansenism was prevalent, he said; this heresy taught that God was looking more to punish people than to show love and mercy. However, “God loved us even before the price was paid,” he said. “The Father does not love us because Christ died for us. Christ came because the Father always loved us, even when we were dead in sin. Redemption happened because we are loved. Do we, as Christians, as Catholics, do we realize how loved we are? We certainly can say that, but do we believe it?”
The sin of pride makes people think that their performance can earn God’s love,while if they sin then they lose God’s love, he said. “What changes when we sin is our ability to believe and accept his love. Sin erects a wall … that makes it hard to see how good and how loving God is.”
St. Therese and her Little Way can help people learn “that we do not have to earn God’s love by good behavior,” he said. “We don’t have to grow up and become strong, become perfect, become excellent. No. We have to remain little and weak in the arms of the Father of Mercies and let his grace, his mercy raise us up. Let God be the savior of our lives and entrust our lives completely to him.”
At the end of each presentation, Fr. Thomas gave five questions that he suggested those present ponder in prayer. For example, at the end of the first presentation, he posed the following questions:
How is God calling me to receive his merciful love?
How can I share that mercy with others? What role does mercy have in my prayer?
How does deepening my understanding of this God of mercy help me in my vocation?
How does prayer help to clarify my vision of who God is?
He suggested that those present bring these questions to the Father in prayer, along with their struggles.
“Realize that God is continually pouring out his love upon us,” he said. “… And remember also that St. Therese is by our side interceding for us, she is still active, and of course we have a Blessed Mother, a mother of mercy who is always with us, accompanying us with her prayers, her loving intercession. And to her we entrust our hearts and we live safely under her mantle of love. She is the queen beauty of Carmel who watches over us all, and keeps us safe in God’s mercy.”
Each of the presentations was videotaped. Links to the conferences follow.
Conference #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9I1J1E0640
Conference #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smejH4GRvNs
Conference #3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxuTHA4i9UY
Conference #4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU9gfTcEs3E
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