The good shepherd feeds us with the words of God

[Weedy]

The good shepherd feeds us with the words of God

"The pastures that this good shepherd has prepared for you, in which
he has settled you for you to take your fill, are not various kinds of
grasses and green things, among which some are sweet to the taste,
some extremely bitter, which as the seasons succeed one another are
sometimes there and sometimes not. Your pastures are the words of God
and his commandments, and they have all been sown as sweet grasses.
These pastures had been tasted by that man who said to God, 'How sweet
are your words to my palate, more so than honey and the honeycomb in
my mouth!'
--St. Augustine--(Psalm 119:103)." (excerpt from Sermon 366.3)

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12 April – Saint Teresa de Jesús “de los Andes” OCD

(1900-1920) aged 19
– Virgin, Carmelite Nun, Mystic, apostle of prayer. Born on 13 July
1900 at Santiago, Chile and died on 12 April 1920 at the Carmelite
convent at Los Andes, Chile of typhus.

Patronages – Against disease, against illness, Ill people, Young
people, Santiago, Los Andes.
The young woman who is today glorified by the Church with the title of
Saint, is a prophet of God for the men and women of today . By the
example of her life, TERESA OF JESUS OF LOS ANDES shows us Christ’s
Gospel lived down to the last detail.
She is irrefutable proof that Christ’s call to be Saints is indeed
real, it happens in our time and can be answered. She is presented to
us to demonstrate that the total dedication that following Christ
involves, is the one and only thing that is worth this effort and that
gives us true happiness. Teresa of Los Andes with the language of her
ardent life, confirms for us, that God exists, that God is love and
happiness and that He is our fulfilment.

She was born in Santiago de Chile on 13 July 1900. At the font she was
christened Juana Enriqueta Josefina of the Sacred Hearts Fernandez
Solar. Those who knew her closely called her Juanita, the name by
which she is widely known today.

She had a normal upbringing surrounded by her family, her parents
Miguel Fernandez and Lucia Solar, three brothers and two sisters, her
maternal grandfather, uncles, aunts and cousins. Her family were
well-off and were faithful to their Christian faith, living it with
faith and constancy.

Juana was educated in the college of the French nuns of the Sacred
Heart. Her brief but intense life unfolded within her family and at
college. When she was fourteen, under God’s inspiration, she decided
to consecrate herself to him as a religious in the Discalced Carmelite
Nuns. This desire of hers was realised on 7 May 1919, when she entered
the tiny monastery of the Holy Spirit in the township of Los Andes,
some 90 kilometers from Santiago. She was clothed with the Carmelite
habit on 14 October the same year and began her novitiate with the
name of Teresa of Jesus. She knew a long time before, that she would
die young. Moreover the Lord revealed this to her. A month before she
was to depart this life, she related this to her confessor. She
accepted all this with happiness, serenity and confidence. She was
certain that her mission to make God known and loved would continue in
eternity.

After many interior trials and indescribable physical suffering caused
by a violent attack of typhus that cut short her life, she passed from
this world to her heavenly Father on the evening of 12 April 1920. She
received the last sacraments with the utmost fervour and on 7 April,
because of danger of death, she made her religious profession. She was
three months short of her 20th birthday and had yet 6 months to
complete her canonical novitiate and to be legally able to make her
religious profession. She died as a Discalced Carmelite novice .

Externally this is all there is to this young girl from Santiago de
Chile. It is all rather disconcerting and a great question arises in
us, “What was accomplished?” The answer to such a question is equally
disconcerting: living, believing, loving.

When the disciples asked Jesus what they must do to carry out God’s
work, he replied, “This is carrying out God’s work – you must believe
in the one he has sent.” (Jn 6, 28-29). For this reason, in order to
recognise the value of Juanita’s life, it is necessary to examine the
substance within, where the Kingdom of God is to be found.

She wakened to the life of grace while still quite young. She affirms
that God drew her at the age of six to begin to spare no effort in
directing her capacity to love totally towards Him. “It was shortly
after the 1906 earthquake that Jesus began to claim my heart for
himself.” (Diary n. 3, p. 26).

Juanita possessed an enormous capacity to love and to be loved joined
with an extraordinary intelligence. God allowed her to experience His
presence. With this knowledge He purified her and made her His own,
through what it entails to take up the cross. Knowing Him, she loved
Him and loving Him, she bound herself totally to Him.

Once this child understood, that love demonstrates itself in deeds
rather than words, the result was that she expressed her love through
every action of her life. She examined herself sincerely and wisely
and understood that in order to belong to God it was necessary to die
to herself, in al,l that did not belong to Him. Her natural
inclinations were completely contrary to the demands of the Gospel.
She was proud, self-centred, stubborn, with all the defects that these
things suppose, as is the common lot. But where she differed from the
general run, was to carry out continual warfare on every impulse that
did not arise from love.

At the age of ten she became a new person. What lay immediately behind
this was the fact that she was going to make her first Communion.
Understanding that nobody less that God was going to dwell within her,
she set about acquiring all the virtues that would make her less
unworthy of this grace. In the shortest possible time she managed to
transform her character completely. In making her first Communion she
received from God the mystical grace of interior locutions, which from
then on supported her throughout her fife. God took over her natural
inclinations, transforming them from that day into friendship and a
life of prayer.

Four years later she received an interior revelation that shaped the
direction of her life. Jesus told her that she would be a Carmelite
and that holiness must be her goal.

With God’s abundant grace and the generosity of a young girl in love,
she gave herself over to prayer, to the acquiring of virtue and the
practice of a life in accord with the Gospel. Such were her efforts
that in a few short years she reached a high degree of union with God.

Christ was the one and only ideal she had. She was in love with Him
and ready each moment to crucify herself for Him. A bridal love
pervaded her with the result that she desired to unite herself fully
to Him who had captivated her. As a result, at the age of fifteen she
made a vow of virginity for 9 days, continually renewing it from then
on.

The holiness of her life shone out in the everyday occurrences,
wherever she found herself – at home, in college, with friends, the
people she stayed with on holidays. To all, with apostolic zeal, she
spoke of God and gave assistance. She was young like her friends but
they knew she was different. They took her as a model, seeking her
support and advice. All the pains that are part of living, Juanita
felt keenly and the happiness she enjoyed deeply, all in God. She was
cheerful, happy, sympathetic, attractive, communicative and involved
in sport. During her adolescence she reached perfect psychic and
spiritual equilibrium. These were the fruit of her asceticism and
prayer. The serenity of her face was a reflection of the divine guest
within. Her life as a nun, from 7 May 1919, was the last rung on the
ladder to holiness. Only eleven months were necessary to bring to an
end the process of making her life totally Christ-like.

Her community was quick to discover the hand of God in her past life.
The young novice found in the Carmelite way of life the full and
efficient channel for spreading the torrent of life that she wanted to
give to the Church of Christ. It was a way of life that, in her own
way, she had lived amongst her own and for which she was born. The
Order of the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel fulfilled the desires of
Juanita. It was proof to her, that God’s mother, whom she had loved
from infancy, had drawn her to be part of it.

She was beatified by St Pope John Paul II in Santiago de Chile on 3
April 1987. Her remains are venerated in the Sanctuary of
Auco-Rinconada of Los Andes by the thousands of pilgrims who seek in
her and find guidance, light and a direct way to God.

SAINT TERESA OF JESUS OF LOS ANDES is the first Chilean to be declared
a Saint. She is the first Discalced Carmelite Nun to become a Saint
outside the boundaries of Europe and the fourth Saint Teresa in Carmel
together with Saints Teresa of Avila, of Florence and of
Lisieux….Vatican.va She was Canonised on 21 March 1993, Saint Peter’s
Square, Vatican City by St Pope John Paul II.

Known as the “Flower of the Andes,” Teresa remains popular with the
estimated 100,000 pilgrims who visit her shrine in Los Andes each
year. Canonised in 1993 by St Pope John Paul II, she is Chile’s first
saint.

The special graces given Saint Teresa reflect the mysterious wisdom of
God at work in individuals whether young or old. It appears, God has
His own logic when it comes to who gets what in the realm of grace.
All we can say is, “Praised be the Lord.”
St Teresa de Jesús “de los Andes” Pray for Us!

https://anastpaul.com/2019/04/12/

Saint Quote:
"Man's value before God is estimated by the dispositions of his heart,
its uprightness, its good-will, its charity, and not by keenness of
intellect or extent of knowledge."
--Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich

Bible Quote:
For neither did his brethren believe in him. 6 Then Jesus said to
them: My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready. 7 The
world cannot hate you; but me it hateth: because I give testimony of
it, that the works thereof are evil. (John 7:5-7) DRV


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Sancti venite,

Come all ye holy,
take the Body of your Lord,
Drink of His chalice,
take the Blood for you outpoured.

Saved by His Body,
by His sacred Blood, we raise
grateful our voices
unto God hymns of praise.

Giver of life, He
Christ our Savior, Son of God,
saved the world
by His Cross and precious Blood.

Dying for all men,
he the Lord prepared this feast,
offered as a victim,
offering Himself as priest.

God to our fathers
ordered sacrifice of old;
so He in symbols
Christ the victim true unfold.

Giver of light, the
one Redeemer of our race,
He to His hold
servants gives abundant grace.

Come, who with pure hearts
in the Savior's word believe;
come and partaking
saving grace from Him receive.

God our defender,
guardian sure in this our strife,
gives to His faithful
after death eternal life.

He to the hungry
gives as food this heavenly bread,
fountain of life, He
gives to drink the blood He shed.

Christ, the source of all things,
who here feeds us sinful men,
when this great day dawns,
judge of all, will come again.