Free Ebook Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love

Free Ebook Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love

When one is faced to the troubles, numerous choose to seek the inspirations and also enjoyment by analysis. Are you among them? Nonetheless, from these lots of, it will certainly be various on just how they select guides to read. Some could favor to get the literary works or fiction, some might had much better to obtain the social or scientific research publications, or religions book catalogues. However, all books could offer you all finest if you're truly sincere to review it.

Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love

Free Ebook Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love

When someone assumes that reading is an essential task to do for the human life, a few other may consider exactly how analysis will be so uninteresting. It's usual. When many individuals like to pick going somewhere as well as talking with their friends, some people favor to g to guide shops as well as hunt for the new book released. How if you don't have sufficient time to go guide shop?

In spending the free time, many individuals have different ways. However, to earn the same one, reading the Maurice And Therese: The Story Of A Love can be done completely. Also it remains in various time, you all could get the functions and also benefits of the book to check out. It is type of publication with the specific subject to conquer the daily problems. When you require type of entertainment, this book is likewise suitable enough.

The here and now book Maurice And Therese: The Story Of A Love our company offer below is not sort of common book. You understand, reading currently does not suggest to deal with the published book Maurice And Therese: The Story Of A Love in your hand. You could obtain the soft file of Maurice And Therese: The Story Of A Love in your device. Well, we indicate that guide that we proffer is the soft file of guide Maurice And Therese: The Story Of A Love The material and all points are very same. The difference is just the types of the book Maurice And Therese: The Story Of A Love, whereas, this condition will precisely be profitable.

ah, also you do not obtain the most effective perfections from reading this publication; a minimum of you have enhanced your life and efficiency. It is really should make your life better. This is why, why do not you try to get this publication and also read it to satisfy your spare time? Are you curious? Juts pick now this Maurice And Therese: The Story Of A Love in the download web link that we offer. Don't wait for even more minute, the chance now and reserved your time to pick this. You could actually utilize the soft data of this book appropriately.

Review

"In his balanced, insightful narrative, Bishop Ahern avoids the pitfalls of hagiography: He gives us no plaster saint, but a full-bodied portrait, full of shadows and light. The reader is left with a sense of the sheer divine mystery of the love and suffering?in every sense the passion?of these two young people touched by God. It is a most timely book for a secular age; it is also a gift."--Charles Scribner III"A beautiful and inspiring story; truly a book about a saint for sinners."--Mary Higgins Clark"A marvelous book. Perhaps I knew Therese as a saint before I read her letters to Maurice and his to her; I did not know her as a woman. Now she fascinates me more than ever."--John Cardinal O'Connor

Read more

From the Inside Flap

As Saint Therese lay dying in the Carmel of Lisieux, she overheard a conversation that amused her. Outside her window, two nuns were discussing what they could write in her obituary that could possibly be of any interest, since the twenty-four-year-old nun had never done anything worth noting. Therese was pleased, for she had always kept a low profile. With the posthumous publication of her spiritual autobiography in 1898, however, that low profile would vanish instantly. She became one of the most beloved saints of all time, and her influence will expand dramatically because of Pope John Paul II's declaration that she is a Doctor of the Church. Amid growing interest in her writings comes the collected correspondence between her and a humble young seminarian, Maurice Belliere. Though they never met in person, they exchanged twenty-one letters that opened a window on the heart of Saint Therese that would have remained forever closed had Maurice not written to the Mother Superior at the convent asking for a nun to pray for him. The Mother Superior chose Therese, and in these conversational letters the Little Flower reveals herself in a way that we would never have known from her autobiography. In his accompanying text, Bishop Patrick Ahern expertly leads the reader into the worlds of Maurice and Therese and reveals the full beauty of this saint's spirituality.

Read more

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Paperback: 300 pages

Publisher: Image; 1rst edition (February 20, 2001)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780385497404

ISBN-13: 978-0385497404

ASIN: 0385497407

Product Dimensions:

5.5 x 0.6 x 8.6 inches

Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.7 out of 5 stars

36 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#241,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

This is the story of a love. I tend to dislike most love stories, but I enjoyed this one.I can't help but wonder that the word “virgin” has evolved a rather derisive connotation in our age. Many films have been made over the last few decades which make fun of virginity. The storytellers of our age tell tales of awkward young men ready to throw off their virginity like so much heavy baggage. It's as if sexual consummation were the last sacrament of an age which has dismissed religious ideas from the public square.This book is a tale of a man and a woman, both twenty-somethings, who had dedicated themselves to lives of celibacy and consecration to God. They entered into a correspondence which somehow avoided scandal and actually ended up strengthening their vocations. In short, they kept falling in love...with God.In reading this exchange of letters, I can't help but thinking that virginity (actually, I would prefer the term celibacy) is not a privation, a lack of something. Rather, it is a thing as real and substantial as a mountain lion (and perhaps as fearsome as one, to most of us). Living as we do in a post-Freudian age, it might be harder for us to believe that any relationship between a young man and a young woman could be non-sexual. If such a thing does happen, it is assumed by necessity that one or the other of them is homosexual.Perhaps it strains credulity to believe that a relationship between a man and a woman could hold very much meaning without a physical consummation. Our society sends us many messages, both implicit and explicit, that if you've never had sex, then you haven't lived.The protagonists of our story lived in a different time, with different values. In their Catholic circles in late 19th century France, the assumption was that sexuality was reserved for the sacrament of marriage, so they didn't set out with a lot of analysis to discover their unique sexuality, as our modern theorists would invite them to do. They had other things on their minds—bigger fish to fry, if you will.Therese Martin had scarcely entered into her teenage years when it became apparent that she was smitten with love. The one whom she loved so dearly was Jesus Christ, but this was no passing infatuation. In fact, she went all the way to the Pope to request to enter a convent at the age of 15 and devote herself to a life of praying for the souls of all, both saints and sinners. Her request was ultimately granted, and the testimony of those closest to her was that her love for Christ never waned, despite 9 years of austere living in a convent, including a long, painful battle against tuberculosis that ultimately took her life at age 24.Maurice Belliere was a young seminarian who aspired to the Catholic priesthood but who was consumed by guilt and self-doubt. Though he never revealed the exact nature of his sins and faults, we may well assume that they were the same sins that men have always struggled with in every age.Their exchange of letters took place under the watchful eye of Therese's superiors at her convent, who monitored incoming and outgoing mail in order to avoid scandal. Though Therese felt she had a calling to uplift priests through prayer and penance, her ideals only allowed her to correspond with a priest out of a sense of obedience. Therefore, she did not take it upon herself to ask to do so.However, in October 1895, Maurice Belliere wrote to the Carmel convent in Lisieux, France. He was a desperate man, and he begged the Prioress to assign a nun to pray for his own vocation and salvation. He was already struggling in seminary and doubted that he had what it took to become a priest. His most pressing concern, however, was that an upcoming year of mandatory military service would prove detrimental to his faith. The Prioress of the convent assigned Therese the task of regularly praying for this young seminarian in October 1895. He quickly wrote back to thank the prioress for for devoting a nun to pray for him, and after this there is a long break in the correspondence. Then, in July 1896, he wrote back again: “I have just committed the worst blunder of all, but it is so outrageous that it will be my last because it teaches me a lesson. I have gotten into a deplorable predicament. My sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus must at all costs get me out of it.”By October, Maurice wrote his fourth letter addressed to the Prioress of the convent in Lisieux, telling her that “the storm has passed” and that he is once again secure in his vocation. He thanked her again for Therese's prayers on his behalf, and at that time the Prioress tasked Therese with answering Maurice's letters.In her first letter of October 1896, Therese addressed the young seminarian as “Monsieur l’Abbé,” and despite the formality of her salutation, it is evident that her heart was moved with genuine concern for him: “Your letter in July distressed me very much, because I blamed my lack of fervor for the struggles you went through. I haven’t stopped begging the maternal help of the beloved Queen of Apostles for you. Also, I have been much consoled to receive as a feast day present the assurance that my poor prayers had been answered.”In Maurice's reply he addressed her as “My good little Sister.” By the time she wrote her 4th letter to him in April 1897, she changed to a more familiar salutation, styling him “My dear little Brother.” In their exchange of letters, Therese did most of the encouraging as Maurice struggled to find confidence in Christ's calling for him. Although he had his ups and downs, he was somewhat reminiscent of the victim in the parable of the Good Samaritan—beaten up and left on the side of the road, not able to help others much because of his weakness. Therese figuratively bandaged his wounds and carried him along during the next 10 months that they correspondence, though she was also undergoing sufferings which she (mostly) concealed from him. In fact, although she only wrote four letters to him between October 1896 and April 1897, she wrote the same number of letters from July to August 1897, though by July she was confined to the sick bed which would later claim her life on September 30th of that year. What is striking about her final letters, though, is they do not read like the correspondence of somebody who is about to die. They are much more like the correspondence of someone who has become fully alive. Therese was totally honest to Maurice about her approaching death. When he learned that she was about to die, his heart was broken: “Oh my poor little Sister, what a blow for my poor heart! It was so unprepared.”Therese used the duration of her letters to encourage Maurice, though she was suffering both from great physical pain and from doubts about the veracity of her own faith. If one read only read the text of Therese's last four letters, it would be easy to forget that she was totally bedridden and suffering greatly from nearly constant physical pain (which included hemoptysis, shortness of breath, uncontrollable shortness of breath, and even intestinal blockages toward the end). Her aim was to be like Christ—not to suffer in order to make herself an object of pity, but to suffer in order to help others. In her weakened state, it must have added to her physical exhaustion to compose such long letters to Maurice, but she did it anyway. It was truly a labor of love.Though Maurice slowly came to terms with her impending death, he was still a man loaded down with guilt, a man who simply could not believe that God had forgiven his sins. Therese appealed to the Christian doctrine of eternal life as a way to remind Maurice that she would still be in a position to help him, even after her death. Maurice balked—if Therese were soon going to Heaven, into God's very presence, how could she not then look upon the sinful Maurice with repugnance? Though he had become somewhat more secure in his vocation and had decided to become a missionary priest in Africa, he still doubted that he was fully in God's grace. Here is how he addressed his concerns to her:“My dear and very dear little sister, I know you well enough to realize that my wretchedness would never get in the way of your tenderness here below. But in heaven, where you will share in the Divinity, you will take on its prerogatives of justice and holiness, and everything that is sullied will become an object of horror for you.”Therese would have none of it:“You think that, once I share in the justice and holiness of God, I won’t be able to excuse your faults as I did when I was on earth. Are you then forgetting that I shall also share in the infinite mercy of the Lord? I believe that the Blessed in Heaven have great compassion for our miseries. They remember that when they were weak and mortal like us, they committed the same faults themselves and went through the same struggles, and their fraternal tenderness time becomes still greater than it ever was on earth. It’s on account of this that they never stop watching over us and praying for us.”Therese was centered on the person of Christ. When the scriptures and the Church taught that God became man in order to share in human existence and to suffer for our sins, Therese took it seriously. If Christ really died for all people, then God's mercy must be great (or “infinite” as Therese called it). She did not understand people who could not rest themselves like children in His loving arms.Therese died on September 30, 1897, virtually unknown at the time except to a few family, friends, and acquaintances. It took a week or two for Maurice to learn of her death. In fact, he wrote his last letter to her on October 2, just having arrived in Africa to finish his seminary studies there.This story of love flips the script for us in many ways. It is a story of a love that transcends sexuality and natural affection. Maurice and Therese are not rebels against the religious establishment, but neither are they cardboard cutouts of masculinity and femininity. Maurice Belliere was no John Wayne, hyper-masculine type. He doubted his vocation, and seemed to consider himself an incorrigible sinner. A less charitable person would dismiss him a wimp, but Therese never questioned his manhood or his calling as a priest. She saw beyond the help that he needed in the moment, and knew that God could still work work in him and through him to bring many people to Him.As for Therese, she was far from being a feminine stereotype. Though she did write in the sentimental style that was typical of her era, she expressed herself with a gravitas and maturity that Maurice did not have. Though it is obvious that Therese is spiritually stronger than Maurice, she did not wield her strength like a weapon. Rather, she recognized that her own strength was simply borrowed from Christ. One never gets the impression that she is talking down to Maurice—she always addresses him as her brother, her equal.In addition to giving us the text of the letters in their original chronological order, the book also inserts after each letter a commentary from the late bishop Patrick Ahern. He is quite knowledgeable about the lives of both of the correspondents and helps to fill in the blanks about the circumstances of their lives that are not clear from the contents of the letters. He also includes a few letters that Maurice wrote to a friend several years after the death of Therese. The book ends with a brief narrative of the rest of Maurice's life. I will not spoil the details, except to say that he, also, met an untimely death from illness at age 32.I would highly recommend this book to everyone. Catholics will find it an engaging read for obvious reasons, but even non-Catholic Christians can appreciate how these two young people built each other up in their mutual love for Christ. Even if you are a non-believer, I think you will appreciate the honesty and courage of these two young people who struggled to live up to their ideals in spite of external adversity and internal angst.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this book as I wondered what more could be said about St. Therese whose life is the most documented of any saint ever and probably the most documented of any person who ever lived. But I was happily surprised to find a lot of information here which either wasn't in other sources or at least I hadn't noticed in other sources. It's written in an engaging manner with detailed explanations of the letters between Maurice and Therese. I think we feel great saints should generate great results and yet it doesn't always work out that way. Neither of the priests Therese wrote to did particularly well and several of the nuns she lived with actually ended their lives in poverty after having left Carmel. In fact the nuns of her own monastery living there today have forsaken the traditional Carmelite habit and live much differently than she did 120 years ago. There has been much written about her sentimentality that is off-putting to our culture today but this was a woman with an iron will who grew up very quickly despite being the baby in her large family. This book concentrates on one part of her short life and it's well worth reading.

When I read this book, it was impossible not to imagine that St. Thérèse was writing to me. Revealed in her letters is a heart tenderly loving and so extraordinarily confident in God's mercy. It was reaffirming to read again by her hand another iteration of her "Little Way," this time in the voice of a sister sharing a treasure with a cherished brother.As I progressed through the book, I found myself empathising greatly with Maurice, the 'struggling young priest'. Many of his anxieties, doubts and concerns are familiar, and his sincerity and desire to become a saint in spite of all his faults is endearing. St. Thérèse's tender, sensitive, and wise counsel to him is a great encouragement to read.Fr Patrick Ahern's commentary deftly threads these letters together and fills the reader in with dates and contexts about the lives of both letter writers and is a very helpful addition to appreciating the correspondence. This book was a wonderful find!

I adore this book. Got to know St. Therese in a whole different way. It's like a peak into the most holy, supportive relationship between a brother and sister in Christ who are sacrificing their lives to serve our Lord through serving others. This book holds a special place in my heart and to all those I have given it to. It's like a little window into behind the scenes of St. Therese's humanity. If you love the little flower, it's a must read!

A very moving story that opens one up to new dimensions about the life of St. Therese, of the priesthood, religious life, missionary work and spiritual friendship. Bishop Ahern does a great job in providing context to help understand the lessons and apply them to our lives.

This book is so touching & inspiring.

This is such a good (quick) read. Very comforting and inspiring. I think it might be a nice gift for someone who has recently (or is near to) losing a loved one, as Therese talks a lot about how she will be closer to her loved ones from heaven than she is on earth.

I love, love, love this book. It brings to the reader a personal look at a private relationship between St. Therese and a future priest. You really get to see the gentleness and charity of these beautiful souls. It helps the reader know St. Therese on a more personal level.

Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love PDF
Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love EPub
Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love Doc
Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love iBooks
Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love rtf
Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love Mobipocket
Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love Kindle

Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love PDF

Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love PDF

Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love PDF

Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love PDF