Pinprick Martyrdom

I must admit I am rather fascinated by notable people who had spiritual lives - often ignored by their biographers. One of the most famous women in the Forties and Fifties of the last century was the American Clare Boothe Luce, a Congresswoman, a journalist, an ambassador, the wife of a media mogul - and a convert to the Church. She edited a book called Saints for Now with contributions from many contemporary celebrities (ncluding Thomas Merton) and wrote an introduction to it. Clare compared St Therese with St Helen, who found the cross on which Christ died.  While St Helen found the true cross, she says that Therese advocated ‘the little way of the cross’, she showed how the ‘annoyances, bothers, anxieties, frustrations, harassments’ of the day could be made ‘to add up to sainthood’.  “Stooping a dozen times a day quietly – indeed furtively – she picked up and carried the splinters of the Cross that strewed her path as they strew ours.  And when she had gathered them all up, she had the material of a cross of no inconsiderable weight.  She espoused ‘pinprick martyrdom’. I must say I love that phrase!

Intercessions:

Brian Davis - cancer

Marie, Bernard (and wife Angela) - cancer

Agnes – in a hospice

Siena, Elara – sick children

Rosemarie – seriously ill

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

David - housebound

Sophia – blind infant