Carmelite

Crazy mean people and how not to be one

Yellow laughing emoji with tears streaming from eyes

Why, oh WHY do so many people on social media put “laughing” reactions on posts that show terrible human suffering? Even crying children in war zones, a picture of that baby that was shot in the Walmart parking lot, a child being separated from her family. Why do some cheer on the Ebola that’s spreading in the Congo? Why do so many react defensively about injustice or the suffering of others? For example: “Well they broke the law.” Or, “he should have complied” or saying they want to buy a beer for the ICE agent who killed Renee Goode?

Here are some possibilities:

Group identity becomes stronger than compassion. People often show less empathy for those they perceive as outsiders.
Moral justification. “They broke the law” or “He should have complied” can reassure oneself that the world is fair. This is called, “just-world hypothesis.”
Distance. Seeing suffering through a phone screen is different from standing next to a crying child. Some who would comfort an injured person in real life may react callously online.
Performing for an audience. A “😂” reaction is not always actual amusement. Sometimes it’s a tribal signal: The reaction is less about the victim than showing loyalty to one’s “team.”
Dehumanization. History shows that when people are repeatedly described by leaders in media and politics as criminals, invaders, parasites, terrorists, or enemies, others begin to see them as less than fully human. That makes cruelty easier. This has been documented in many contexts, from wars to genocides.
Psychological defense. Some people cope with disturbing news by denying it, minimizing it, or mocking it.
Online disinhibition. People are often meaner behind a screen than they would be face to face. The relative anonymity and lack of immediate consequences reduce normal social restraints.
Echo chambers. If someone’s online community rewards cruel comments with likes and approval, those comments become normalized. What once would have seemed shocking gradually comes to feel ordinary.

Social media can distort our perception. I should remember that in the real world, disasters are still met with strangers donating blood, neighbors bringing meals, volunteers searching through floodwaters, and people quietly caring for one another. In spite of everything, compassion remains beautifully common.

And what is the best way to react to apparently heartless people? How do I have compassion for them?

I should remember that people who have stopped feeling compassion are not necessarily happy people. They may be afraid, angry, overwhelmed, lonely, immersed in media that constantly tells them to fear certain groups, or rewarded by their social circle for cruelty. None of that excuses their horrible comments. But it does mean that the person behind the comment is likely carrying wounds, distortions, or habits that have narrowed their ability to see another person’s humanity.

A prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous about encountering mean people is,

“This person is sick. How can I be of help? God save me from being angry.”

I do think anger is an important emotion. However, anger at random mean people is not good for me and doesn’t help them either.

I am Catholic. I don’t believe in bad people. God intended us to be good, and he made us good in spite of original sin and concupiscence, (the tendency to sin) God loves us all.

God sees everything: the suffering and injustice, as well as those committing it, and those of us who witness with empathy or mockery.

I don’t have the commission to straighten people out. They’re not my kids; they’re God’s kids.

Maybe next time I can imagine two wounded people instead of one: the victim in the story, and the commenter whose heart has become so constricted that they can laugh at suffering. The first deserves justice and mercy, and prayer. The second also needs healing, and prayer though they don’t seem to know it.

I think St. Teresa of Avila would tell me that my task is not to carry every burden in the world by sheer emotional force. As a Carmelite, my part is to stay close to Jesus, and from his sacred heart, receive the love I need to give away. If I try to absorb every tragedy and every cruel comment, it does nothing but damage my heart, which is such a mood sponge, and ruin my day. Prayer is one way of gently wringing it out.

I could, if I bump into mean posts or comments, pray a quick prayer.

“Lord, have mercy on these people who are so deeply harmed,

have mercy on the hard of heart,

and have mercy on me too.”

The best response can also be to close the app, water my persimmon trees, tend my chickens, stock my Little Free Library, pray for immigrants in detention, write a reflection, or encourage my daughter before a gig. Those are not escapes, just a better contribution to the world than freaking out.

Catholic author Leticia Ochoa Admas writes that (in paraphrase,) every act of mercy, every refusal to mock another person, every prayer for someone whose heart has hardened, is a rose laid at the feet of the Virgin Mary. Well I love her so I will let that motivate me.

The world scatters thorns wildly and seemingly without plan or reason. Maybe my job, our job is to keep growing roses anyway.

Base of garden statue with red, pink, and peach roses arranged around feet — A colorful rose arrangement decorates the base of a garden statue’s feet

July 9, 2026 1

8 Minute Guided Prayer of Recollection

Photo by Gilmer Diaz Estela on Pexels.com

St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite reformer, and great teacher of Prayer, said that what she called the “Prayer of Recollection” was a method of mental prayer the Lord Himself taught her. Here is a video I have made of my brief, guided version of the Prayer of Recollection that you can use to learn it, or for a prayer break during the day. For more on the Prayer of Recollection, try reading my book, Meeting the One who Loves you, the way of prayer of St. Teresa of Avila from Our Sunday Visitor.

Meeting the One Who Loves You; St. Teresa of Avila’s Way of Prayer

Meeting the One Who Loves You; St. Teresa of Avila’s way of prayer

March 20, 2026 0

Where there is hatred, let me sow love

Meditating on the prayer of St. Francis, I thought that from a Teresian perspective, when we pray that where there is hatred we may sow love – we are already doing it. Our prayer, as we pray it, is sowing love in place of hatred. In a mysteries way God shares his grace with us and through us in our prayer. We become instruments of peace in a mystical way.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

Right now, in this time of global violence, cruelty and chaos that is in almost every way out of our control, it is a relief to open the heart to God and let his love and grace flow through us to the world, to know that he is doing something and that we can be part of his loving transformation of the people and situations most in need of his kindness. We never know what God will do and where he will send his Spirit, or how he will act on the hearts of the people we pray for. However, we can have total faith that he will respond to our prayers.

I invite you to memorize the Prayer of St. Francis if you haven’t already. Try dedicating your time of silent prayer to sitting with it, going over it as slowly as you can without losing focus. You don’t have to think about it or examine it so much as concentrating on the words, letting each one drop into your heart like a pearl dropped into still water where it drifts slowly to the bottom to rest. Know that God is within you and working with you for your good, and for every creature. You will be sowing love in the world, pardon, light, hope, joy, as an instrument of his peace.

In today’s Gospel, John 4:5-42, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the water he will give her will become a fountain welling up within her, giving eternal life. To me that fountain is love, his transforming love. It wells up within us helping us to live out this prayer. It not only transforms us but everyone we splash with it, both in our prayer and in our interactions with people and the things we do during the day. Every day we are given opportunities to seek to understand rather than be understood, to seek to love rather than be loved, to give rather than receive. It becomes a habit, easier and easier the more we submerge ourselves in the water of his love that never runs out.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.”

We pray like a fountain gushing out and watering the whole world, flowing out and touching everyone. We live our lives in response to this grace given to us. We are transformed in it and so is the whole world.

St. Francis, pray for us.

March 8, 2026 1

I will be LOVE

St. Teresa of Avila compared a contemplative to a standard bearer for an army in battle. His job is to hold the banner of the Cross high so those in combat can see it above the chaos. Even if the standard bearer is cut to pieces, he has to make sure he never drops the guidon. As people of faith you may feel like that standard bearer sometimes. And you are. There is a lot of chaos and cruelty going on right now. As Catholics we believe in the dignity of the human person, in the sanctity of life. Anyone paying attention right now probably does feel cut to pieces. Anyone who believes in treating even the most guilty among us as children of God is bound to feel horrified on a daily basis as violence and hate gain ascendency in our collective conscience and experience.

One of my favorite bands in the 90’s was called Live. They had this great line from their song Run to the Water on their album The Distance to Here.

“Brother let your heart be wounded/and give no mercy to your fear.” I’ve thought of it often as faith leaders begin to tell us to get our affairs in order in case we are called to martyrdom. Do I sound crazy? Do they?

… Adam and Eve live down the street from me

Babylon is every town

It’s as crazy as it’s ever been

Love’s a stranger all around.”

St. Therese wrote about being a victim of love for Christ. She offered herself even should her commitment cause her great suffering, for his love and purpose.

“ In a moment we lost our minds here

And lay our spirit down

Today we lived a thousand years

All we have is now.”

The Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne lived at a time that perhaps started with good aims but ended up being a terrible persecution and even a blood bath. They were executed one at a time. The nuns sang a Psalm the whole time as their voices grew thinner with each execution. They had known this day could come. They had been preparing for it in prayer, offering themselves up to God as a sacrifice for the Church, for an end to the killing during the French Revolution.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote that in some ways physical martyrs have it easier than we who live. “One chop and it’s all over.” Life, though, she said, was “a long martyrdom.” She said this because living in Christly love is not easy. It’s hard and not always accepted.

These days we most likely won’t be martyred because of our faith but for living it. Somebody said to me, “We aren’t supposed to be the Church of Nice.” No, I said, “We are called to be the Church of radical LOVE.” And that’s the” long martyrdom” for me right now, and maybe for you too.

The Prophet Elijah said, “The Lord lives. I am standing in his presence.”( 1Kings17:1) We may not be able to physically do much about the hatred and violence we see. However, like Elijah, we are witnesses to the presence of God. And we have to be brave. A lot of people don’t care about love right now. So we have to intensify our witness. How do we do that?

We have to remember that God loves the ICE agents every bit as much as he loves us. We have to remember that God loves the undocumented every bit as much as he loves us. We have to pray for our enemies and do good to them. If we don’t know how to do good to our enemy we can ask God to show us, to give us an opportunity if he wants us to do that. He will.

We do what we can nonviolently and legally do to stand up for the vulnerable, to protect our neighbors.

We have to root ourselves deep in the Lord so that all we do reflects him. Who is God? God is love. We have to reflect that love.

As St. Therese said, “My vocation! At last I have found it! My vocation is love!” She wrote, “In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be love.”

We are not alone in love. God is with us, never to leave us; any of us.

“Run to the water
And find me there
Burnt to the core, but not broken
We’ll cut through the madness
Of these streets below the moon
With a nuclear fire of love in our hearts

Yeah, I can see it now Lord
Out beyond all the breakin’ of waves
And the tribulation
It’s a place and the home of ascended souls
Who swam out there in love”

Run to the Water by LIVE

January 22, 2026 3

An Advent Habit; a gift to the One who loves you

When she was 15, my eldest daughter, Maire, getting ready for Confirmation, volunteered for the Children’s Liturgy at our parish. Small children would file out of mass with cute music just before the readings. They would be led into a little side room where volunteers read the Gospel to them in a way they could understand. My daughter, Maire loved little kids. She was perfect for this ministry. She loved little kids she met or played with so much she would write their names on her notebooks with hearts and other designs equally sweet.

She came in to teach the kids when it was her turn. It was nearing the end of Advent. The adults looked nervous when this little goth girl came in to work with the kids. The first thing she did is ask them what they wanted for Christmas and let them talk about that. Then she asked them, “What does Jesus want for Christmas? It’s his birthday! What do you think he would like best?” Visible relief on adult faces around the room.

But this is a really good question. What does he want? I think one thing leads to another and covers everything and that’s “making time to be alone with the One who [you] know loves [you.”] (St. Teresa of Avila). I think this because making that time, being with him, leads us to all of the other things he likes, such as transformation in him, generosity, love that leads to service. He wants YOU for Christmas.

As Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote:

The fruit of Silence is Prayer.
The fruit of Prayer is Faith.
The fruit of Faith is Love.
The fruit of Love is Service.
The fruit of Service is Peace.

When we make time to be alone and quiet with the One Who we know loves us, our faith is deepened as we come to know Jesus more intimately. Love expands in us as we cultivate a deeper relationship with him, and this love pours out naturally in service.

So what does Jesus want for Christmas? You, of course. Your time, your love, your attentiveness, your quiet heart (yes you can have a quiet heart), your receptivity to him.

Do we have to pray at Church to carve out this time for Jesus? In the presence of the Blessed Sacrament is always a great place to pray. However, no. Anywhere you can be alone for a while is good.

As someone who was a single parent for many years, I know how hard it can be to find any alone time. You can, though. You just have to be creative and flexible that’s all. He can work withy whatever time you have. You can pray in the car if you arrive early somewhere. I love it when I am ten minutes early. Since I have social anxiety it helps a lot to get someplace early and take that time to sit with Jesus for a while before dealing with people.

I confess I also hid in the tree house sometimes once the kids were older. Just for a while. I could still hear them.

I did all this getting up early so I had time to pray, or staying up late to do so, or praying in silence on my break at work because once you get in the habit of silent prayer, it’s something you want very much to do. I cherished that time with Jesus, even if out of necessity it had to be short.

After a while I came to love prayer because I knew he wanted me there. He really was the One who I knew loved me and it made him happy for me to stop what I was doing and set aside time for him.

St. Teresa of Avila said that if we can get into the habit of the Prayer of recollection we will “attain what we desire in six months.” What do we desire from prayer? What do we long for most from God?

I love this quote from the poet Hafiz

Ask the Friend for love.

Ask him again.

For I have learned that every heart will get

What it prays for

Most.

I think we are made for love and we know God is love. Any trouble we could take to give the Lord our time is infinitely worth it. As St. Teresa says, “life is like a night at a bad inn.” But Jesus is forever.

So go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret. The Son and the Holy Spirit will come and live with you.

*I am including a guide to the Prayer of Recollection I wrote some years ago. My new little book about the Prayer of Recollection is out right now, Meeting the One Who loves you; the way of prayer of St. Teresa of Avila, and available from Our Sunday Visitor Bookstore as well as Amazon and Barnes and Noble or whatever you buy books.

One of the best tools I have ever found to form new habits is the book Atomic Habits by James Clear

I am quite neuron-divergent in several ways and forming a new habit is sooooooo difficult for me. My favorite idea from that book was to commit to two minutes daily to this new thing you want to start doing. You won’t be overwhelmed by two minutes at all for anything. It won’t see like such a big deal to you to sit down with Jesus for only two minutes at the same time each day. Stay with the two minutes until you are into the swing of it and then you’re off! Start adding to it little by little.

How long should you pray? My personal goal has always been thirty minutes at a time daily. After years of the practice of interior prayer, it’s not a big deal to pray that long. In fact I add in little snippets of it where I can through the day. I think of them like flowers tucked into a rock wall here and there with a little moss. You have the nice strong wall at the cornerstone of your 30 minutes of interior prayer, and then these pretty little flowers modestly adorning it; your few minutes here and there in the car in a parking lot, between jobs, a few minutes before bed, or after evening prayer or after mass.

The rewards of this little habit are like water to the soul. All your other practices of faith are immeasurably deepened. Your faith will mean more to you than ever and not in a weird way that makes you annoying to other people, but in a way that flows out with honest love to everything and everyone in your life. Most of all it makes the Lord so happy and you will grow so much closer to him.

As St. John of the Cross wrote, “In the evening of your life you will be judged on love; so love, the way God wants, and leave off your own way of acting.” This makes me chuckle a little. We all have our own little ideas about what is the most holy thing to do and sometimes it’s not what we thought. He seems to like the simple things. “Sit down with me, and let yourself be loved.” Or as our St. Teresa said, “I am only asking you to look at him.”

Come, and you will see. Advent is the perfect time for this; to cherish Jesus within you as Mary did, to ponder the Lord in our hearts, to reflect him as she did, love him as she did. Right here. It’s the perfect gift.

December 3, 2025 1

Visiting the major relics of St. Therese the Little Flower (and a bonus story)

I’m still processing the experience I think. But it was a lovely day. We had lunch with a friend, walked along the river, hung out in a coffee shop a bit and went over to the basilica. We joined the silent line of people going around the left side of the Church to pray in front of St. Terese’s relics. People knelt and touched the glass around her reliquary. They touched their rosaries, their crucifixes from home, or laid a hand on the glass. I didn’t know how I would feel. But when I knelt there beside her what I felt was all my love for her. I felt clear and present. I prayed for everyone who asked and everyone I offered to pray for and everyone and everything I could think of. I cried a little bit which surprised me. I almost never cry. My daughter prayed there and touched a rose petal to the reliquary. She has been having a hard time. The day before we left though, a friend who doesn’t know who St. Therese is left her a bouquet of roses on our front porch. I told my girl they had to be from St. Therese. ♥️

We stayed for mass. It was in Spanish but we could understand a little and the mass is the mass. It’s easy to know what’s going on in any language. I thought how beautiful the mass sounds in Spanish.

We went outside to see my friend Fr. Gregory. He was in a great mood. It was so good to see him. I gave him a copy of my new book. They have my other one at their book store and they will get this one too. I also might go do another talk down there in January or maybe during Advent.

They had a booth where people were telling stories about the impact of St. Therese in their lives. So I told our family story about her. * (I will put that at the end as notes. )

Then we found out they had relics of St. Therese’s parents Zellie and Louis Martin so we went down to see them and pray with them a while. They had a special table for prayer requests about child loss and about marriage. They had large prints of some of their letters and pictures of them with their family.

We prayed there with the relics a while then filed upstairs with others to visit Therese again. I remember the lady I saw on our second visit who was holding up her dog to St. Therese, even pressing him against the glass and bowing her head, praying fervently. She was praying for him it looked like. That’s good because I prayed for my dog Joey too and a sick dog (Lucy) of a friend along with everything else. I prayed that all the people there would be touched by St. Therese, that she would hear them all and comfort them, that she would help them. ♥️

My daughter and granddaughter fell asleep on the drive home. I smiled a lot in the dark, continuing to pray, feeling grateful and happy.

*Our best St. Therese story:

My first husband, and the father of my children lost his life in a car accident when my eldest, Maire, was almost five. My youngest, Roise, was a newborn. Maire wanted her first Communion early. I explained that she would do that with her class in second grade. She was upset. She used to cry at mass and after mass. She would say, “But I NEED the Body and Blood of Jesus!” We talked to our priest, Father Dean, about this. He agreed that if I would teach her what she needed at home that summer, he would allow it. We set the date for July 16, the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. She had wanted Immaculate Heart of Mary but we had to be in a wedding that day.

We started our lessons and as the day drew nearer she started worrying that maybe she shouldn’t do it, but go with her class. Maybe God didn’t want her to do this early. After all it was a very big deal. So we started a novena to St. Therese. Every night we prayed at bed time and Maire asked her to send a yellow rose if she should take this step now, and an orange one if the answer was to wait.

Then we went on a trip to visit her dad’s family in Wisconsin. It was a good visit. When we got home she got in the shower while I unpacked. There was a bouquet of yellow roses in our suitcase. I couldn’t believe it. I called them and asked if any of them had done that. Nobody had. So I took the roses and poked them through to the other side of the shower curtain. The sight was received with much rejoicing.

Little Maire received First Holy Communion that July. She had not even known you get a dress and a party. My mom hand made her dress from scraps of my wedding dress. It was a great day. We still talk about the roses St. Therese sent to reassure Maire that even at her young age she was welcome at God’s table.

*St. Therese has been on U. S. tour. She was in San Antonio from October 31-November , 2025

November 3, 2025 2

The war against ourselves

St. Teresa of Avila talked about the role of the contemplative as a standard bearer. She described the holder of the guidon of Jesus, of love, as having the one goal to hold the banner high no matter what chaos whirls around him, no matter if he is cut to pieces. If the standard bearer should fall, he must struggle to his feet again to hold high the symbol that urges on those in battle, gives them hope, lets them know their comrades are nearby when their courage flags.

I have thought a lot in the past couple of days about what was wrong with me in the midst of the chaos; meaning the violence of thought word and deed since the public murder of Charlie Kirk. I couldn’t hold the banner so much. It wobbled, as Winnie the Pooh would say of his spelling. It wobbled, shook, slipped as I took in entirely too much of what was going on. I have CPTSD and it’s important for me to guard how much craziness I absorb. Also I am an empath type person. I feel what people are feeling deeply. I don’t know about you but the last couple of days have triggered me badly. I have felt like a microcosm of the macrocosm of horror and rage, of compassion and sympathy, of fear and dread. My fight or flight has been FIGHT as usual. I too want to fill my mouth with argument along with everyone else.

St. Teresa would be the first person to say our real war is against ourselves. she advised us to return again and again to “the room of self knowledge.” Well today I am trying that.

Simeon the Prophet told Mother Mary that a sword would pierce her heart “so that the secret thoughts of many [would] be laid bare (Lk. 2:35). I have thought about that at times of tragedy and reckoning over the last several years. It does seem that the secret thoughts of many are laid bare in the midst of tragedy, of horrific events. Mary’s heart was pierced through by her love and compassion for her Son, and really, for us too. Murder surely pierces her heart. Injustice, people doing harm to one another, these must hurt her terribly. Jesus Crucified by hate. Again and again.

I have had my PTSD triggered by the event itself; a horrible murder. A father and husband with little kids suddenly dead. I lost my first husband in a car accident when my youngest was three months old and my eldest three weeks shy of her fifth birthday. I can hardly stand to think of what Kirk’s widow is going through today and what she will go through in the days, weeks, months, years ahead of her. She will have to watch her children grieve. She will have to be there for them as her world is ending. I can’t imagine people watching video all over the world of my husband dying a gruesome death. I was surprised when the sun still rose the day after my husband died. I watched in shock as the news came on and people went to work and school and drove around as if the sky hadn’t fallen. I feel for her very much.

The secret thoughts of many have been laid bare haven’t they? I’ve been triggered by some of their reactions as well as the original event. Some people have been sanitizing the murdered man as if he had been a saint when he was a rank racist who said things every day that could get people harassed, threatened and endangered and did. His public life was all about hate. Then people I thought were sane are saying his work should be “continued,” (Gavin Newsom) or that he “did politics the right way.” (Ezra Klein).

Some have been fawning over him. Their hero is dead. Incomprehensible to me. He was horrible. Look up the things he said for yourself if you don’t believe me.

I think of St. Edith Stein’s saying that truth without love or love without truth is a destructive lie. And look. It is. Historically Black campuses have had bomb threats. The DNC had a bomb threat. Why? I guess because Kirk hated black people? Or because they assumed a black person did it? Because he hated Democrats? They assume the culprit is a Democrat? Brawls have broken out. The president wants to give the man a statue in DC and award him the presidential medal of freedom. Of course he does. He hasn’t helped with his incendiary blaming of “radical left Democrats.”

The outpouring of grief and praise for the man must be a gut punch to the people he harmed with his bullying, with his hate and his stirring up more and more hate. I know it’s a gut punch for me. My heart is the most with the vulnerable and persecuted. That’s where I think it should be. However that solidarity of mine has caused me a lot of rage over the last couple of days. A friend said, to my prayer online for peace and an end to political violence, “You’re a good person.” I replied, “Not really.” I noticed one of my kids put a laughing emoji on that. Thanks a lot Roise.

Also triggering to me is the response of people who want to skip the ugly process of truth and reckoning to get to the peace they think would come if we all decided to just get along and lay aside our differences. To me that’s fake peace. After the things I have been through I have seen enough of that. How can we love our enemies if we whitewash and sanitize what they have done? That’s fake love. It’s useless, wrong even.

I see how I have been freaking out about all this; angry, horrified, scared for our country, taking in too much of what everyone is saying and what the news is when I know that makes me so upset.

Maybe I can offer up all the wild inner agony I have had about all this to God to help someone somewhere. Mary’s piercing of the heart was co-redemptive. I can entrust my little offering of a struggling heart to her.

I pray that I’ll be able to love Kirk- who by all accounts would be an enemy of mine at least as a public figure- in the way God wants me to. Right now that seems to me to be to pray for his salvation, for a beautiful forever life with God for him. Whatever he is doing, Charlie Kirk understands more than any of us do now. He has a completely different perspective. He has encountered eternal love and life. May he embrace them, embrace him who is love and life himself with all of his heart and possess them forever. God says he will give us all new hearts instead of our stony hearts. Amen amen.

I need to ask for that for myself, too. For all of us.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
Ezekiel 36:26

September 12, 2025 1

My new book soon to be released: Meeting the One Who Loves You; St. Teresa of Avila’s Way of Prayer

Last summer I finished the manuscript for a little book about the Prayer of Recollection of St. Teresa of Avila. This summer it will be released. My goal was to teach the prayer in an engaging and accessible way. Lots of people know Lectio Divina as a contemplative Christian method of prayer and rightly so, but few people know the Prayer of Recollection from the Doctor of Prayer, St. Teresa of Jesus. The only book I could find exclusively about the prayer was just a series of Teresa’s quotes about it. So I wrote one myself.

Saint Teresa said she never knew what it was to pray with satisfaction until the Lord himself taught her what she named “The Prayer of Recollection.” Meeting the One Who Loves You teaches this method of prayer step by step, along with its underpinning concepts, in a friendly, personal way.

Saint Teresa of Ávila taught that the sacred humanity of Jesus is our way to him. She believed in the power of prayer, even the simple inner silence of contemplative prayer — spending time with Jesus and loving him.

Wherever you are in life and in your walk with God, fear not. Only good can come of learning this prayer and making it an important part of your daily life. Saint Teresa knew the transforming love of God in prayer, and consequently, she lived a life of extraordinary richness. If you have a desire to pray more deeply, to grow exponentially in love, and to be connected to God more profoundly, then this prayer is perfect for you.

The release date is Monday, August 25. You can find it at osvcatholicbookstore.com, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles , and other places you find books! Go get one and if you buy it on Amazon be sure and leave a review!

August 23, 2025 0

Transform Your News Consumption Into Prayer

If I don’t watch out I can become a bit of a news junky; especially these days when scary, cruel and chaotic things happen daily. I feel like I have to keep up with all the news and analysis. This is so I can be a better activist and verbal defender of all that is good, and better able to speak up when there is injustice. I also say I keep up with world and national events because I want to hear about things I should pray about. I do pray about these things. However it occurs to me sometimes when I have read the same story or heard the basically the same discussion about the same story over and over in a week’s time, or even in one day, that my time could certainly be better spent praying.

I am thinking about this a lot today especially because it is the feast day of the beautiful Carmelite Saint, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Eidth Stein). My Secular Discalced Carmelite Community is named for her.

I have a strong belief that prayer takes us in Spirit along with Jesus and Mary to comfort those who suffer. St. Teresa Benedicta wrote about this beautifully.

The world is in flames: do you wish to put them out? Contemplate the Cross: from the open Heart the blood of the Redeemer pours, blood which can put out even the flames of hell. Through the faithful observance of the vows, you make your heart free and open; and then the floods of that divine love will be able to flow into it, making it overflow and bear fruit to the furthest reaches of the earth.

Through the power of the Cross you can be present wherever there is pain, carried there by your compassionate love, by that very love which you draw from the Divine Heart. That love enables you to spread everywhere the Most Precious Blood in order to ease pain, save, and redeem.

She would have known, from her formation in the Teresian Carmel, that prayer is a true work of the Church. Her spiritual Mother, St. Teresa of Avila taught this and Teresa Benedicta saw how relevant it was for the times she lived in, there in Nazi Germany when she was a woman of a Jewish family and at the end of her life, a Discalced Carmelite nun. She was taken, along with her sister, Rosa, to be put to death in a concentration camp. She was writing in urgent times. She offered her life for her Jewish people.

Some Carmelite nuns used to have a blog called, “Praying the News.’ Each week a different Sister took a news story that stood out to her and write a reflection and prayer, seemingly following the basic pattern of St. Teresa of Avila’s Prayer of Recollection. These particular nuns retired years ago and their blog is now defunct.

However, maybe I should take up their idea. I think I will do something like this. Some Chrsitian publications are doing a prayerful “nonpartisan” reflection and a little prayer about the news. It may not surprise you that I think the time for not taking a side is long over. As St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross put it, “The world is in flames.”

The world is in flames. The struggle between Christ and Antichrist rages openly, and so if you decide for Christ you can even be asked to sacrifice your life.

To me this is self-evident if you aren’t entangled in Trump-ism. The man is an anti-Christ personality and has even led many good people astray though I will never understand how that could have happened.

There are some things I can do about it such as stand up for vulnerable people in the ways I can, and offer them my love, presence and support.

Otherwise I can pray. This kind of prayer is not of the “Oh thoughts and prayers” variety. It’s the kind that trusts God to act, not even knowing what God will do but knowing he hears and that he will.

So I’m going to start thinking about how I can pray the news, more than use up so much time reading and listening to it. (Once is enough, right?)

I’ll see what I can work on. I will try posting a “Praying the news” here each week. How about Sundays?

See you then. 🙂