Review: The Four Teresas: Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisiuex, Teresa Benedicta and Mother Teresa

I love to read books and give my personal, unedited and not always charitable opinion on said literary work.  Some of these books come to me free with the promise of posting a review (good, bad or indifferent, these publishers or store owners just want to get a review out there) ... while others I bought or borrowed and feel called upon to review.

This particular book by FUS alumna, Gina Loehr, is one of those that was sent free for a review.  Well, did I hit the jackpot on this one!  Titled The Four Teresas, this book is part biography, poor spiritual reflection, and part catechesis all rolled into one.  The book's theme links the four Teresas with Jesus's two greatest commandments (as noted in Matthew 22: 37-39): 

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Loehr takes this scripture passage, explaining just how to live this command from the Lord, by detailing the lives of four Catholic holy women:

1. Therese of Lisieux as a prime example of loving God with all your heart
2. Teresa of Avila as a prime example of loving God with all your soul
3. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein) as a prime example of loving God with all your mind
4. Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a prime example of loving your neighbor as yourself

Loehr gives a wonderfully complete biography of each of these wonderful role models.  Than she links their spirituality, life and works to the part of Jesus's commandment.  And finishes the section with a reflection on how we, today, in whatever walk of life can emulate these ladies.  She shows where the saints had failings ... just like we do ... but how they took those failings and fulfilled, joyfully and completely, God's will for each.

An interesting side-note is that all four Teresas are linked not only in name, but also in spiritual chrism (three were Carmelites and the fourth, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, credited St. Teresa of Avila for her vocation and how she carried it out), and in fighting for what they believed to be God's will.  They were strong women ... willing to buck society and family to do what they knew was right.

This is a book that I'll turn to again and again for inspiration when I'm feeling the need for some spiritual sustenance.  Loehr's writing is accessible and makes the lives of these amazing women seem accessible to one and all.  I highly recommend this one!

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This book was sent as part of The Catholic Company's review program.  I was required to write a review, but all comments above are my own honest opinions of the work reviewed.  For further information about The Four Teresas or to puchase a copy, please see The Catholic Company's website.

Choose Life .... National March for Life, Friday, January 22, 2010

Last year, living so close to the Nation's capitol we all went to the Life March.  Kotch and the three littles and I went up on a parish-sponsored bus from Woodbridge to DC.  We arrived around noon and left around 5:00p.m.  It was a long day ... filled with life and hope and faith that someday our country would turn this all around and stop killing the babies (and the lives of the women who abort their children). 

This year, unfortunately, only some of us are going. 

Kotch is on her way with other kids from Ave Maria University.  She got on a bus yesterday in Ave Maria, Florida at 5:00 pm and as of 1:30 pm, they'd gotten as far as Fredericksburg!  She'll spend the night at the National Shrine, bunked in with other college kids from across the nation (she's got two cousins that will be at the March -- one representing Franciscan and one from DeSales).  After a full day of praying and marching and praying and singing and praying some more .... they'll head back south on the bus, buoyed up knowing they've done a good thing.

Dh is heading up to the March tomorrow morning: he'll leave the house at 4:00 am, picking up students on the way to school, and then getting on chartered buses to head into D.C. for the Youth Rally/Mass at the Verizon Center.  He'll get back home sometime around 6:00 pm, tired but buoyed up knowing he's done a good thing.

The littles and I are participating vicariously. We will be up watching EWTN's coverage starting on Friday morning (7:30 EST) to try and spot our various family members. We'll then head to Mass at 9:00 am, staying for Benediction and wishing the bus riders from our parish God-speed.

In the words of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta when writing to the US Supreme Court, February 14, 1994 about a pending case:

It was a sad infidelity to America’s highest ideals when this Court said that it did not matter, or could not be determined, when the inalienable right to life began for a child in its mother’s womb.

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.

It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society.
It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered domination over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.

And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.

The Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany recently ruled that “the unborn child is entitled to its rights to life independently of acceptance by its mother; this is an elementary and inalienable right that emanates from the dignity of the human being.” Americans may feel justly proud that Germany in 1993 was able to recognize the sanctity of human life.

You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.

I have no new teaching for America. I seek only to recall you to faithfulness to what you once taught the world.

Your nation was founded on the proposition—very old as a moral precept, but startling and innovative as a political insight—that human life is a gift of immeasurable worth, and that it deserves, always and everywhere, to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect.

Unfortunately, some 16 years later, we in America still have Roe v Wade and the deaths of millions of babies on our collective consciences.  Please join us at the National March -- either physically or spiritually -- as we all pray to overturn this heinous blot on the American escutcheon!