12th Sunday Ordinary Time Year B

The Carmelite nun, St Thérèse of Lisieux (1873 – 1897), lived a life that was externally unremarkable, but she knew more inner storms than most.

She wrote

“I was alone in a desert waste, or rather, my soul was like a fragile skiff tossing without a pilot in a stormy sea. I knew that Jesus was there, asleep in my little boat, but the night was too black for me to see him.

“All was darkness.

“Not even a flash of lightning pierced the clouds. There’s nothing reassuring about lightning, but, at least if the storm had burst, I should have been able to glimpse Jesus. But it was night, the dark night of the soul.”

(Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux).

People passing her monastery would probably have said, “What a peaceful life they have there!”

But as St Thérèse said, Jesus was there, though apparently asleep.

He slept a lot in her company, she noticed!

But she made excuses for him: other people rarely let him sleep, and so he would come to her for a break.

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