St. Therese of Lisieux and Vatican II

A few weeks ago I finished The Story of a Soul, the autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux.

It was not as good as I had hoped. There was a lot of stuff about Therese growing up. She would have been a handful to deal with. The littlest things set her off. She also does not take no for an answer. She knew she wanted to join the Carmel cloister when she was young. When she made her intention known at the age of 14, the priest-superior of the order said she was too young. Then she went to the bishop to ask his permission. When he said the same thing, she traveled to Rome and appealed to Pope Leo XIII. He told her to do what her superiors instructed, which was wait until she was older.

What I do like about St. Therese (which I knew about before reading this), was her idea on small acts of kindness. When we cannot do great things, we can do small things with great love. She is often called Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (the names she took as a religious) or the Little Flower of Jesus. She died in 1897 at the age of 24. However, she is a Doctor of the Church, which means she is really important (only 35 in 2,000 years). She is not to be confused with St. Teresa of Avila, another Doctor of the Church who reformed the Carmelite Order and wrote The Interior Castle in the 1500s.

Seeing posts online, some of my friends like St. Therese of Lisieux and her writings a lot. Mother Teresa of Calcutta took her name after Therese of Lisieux.

One remarkable thing is the piety of Therese's family. Both of her parents have been declared to be blessed. All four of her sisters that survived to adulthood became nuns.

Reading this was a continuation of the reading club/discussion group/salvation Skypes/Catholic conversations (we do not have a good name) I started with Amanda last year to read the Bible.

Vatican II
The other thing we read earlier this year was all of the documents from the Second Vatican Council. All the Vatican II documents are available online in a variety of languages, including Byelorussian and Swahili.

There were no great revelations in the documents for me. A lot of it was stuff I had heard before. I was disappointed in a few of the documents. They had a lot of general comments. Often they said a particular issue needed to be addressed and said bishops should appoint a group to study a problem and recommend changes. This was boring, because I wanted to read about the changes themselves. However, people say it was a really important council and a lot of stuff came out of it, like the mass being in local languages instead of Latin.

If you are interested in reading a few of the documents, I would recommend you read the constitutions. They were the best and most important.

Vatican II took place from 1962-1965, so last year was the 50th anniversary of when it started. To celebrate this, the Pope declared a celebration called the Year of Faith. People are encouraged to read the Vatican II documents as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church and gain a deeper understanding of their faith.