Did you know that as a Catholic Mom or Dad, you are engaged in building a "foundation?" Your family is domestic church for God. Some of my readers were blessed to grow up in a loving Catholic family and feel well-equipt to enter into the vocation of marriage. However, I suspect that many readers feel totally 'unequipt" and are "learning on the fly."
Home-schooling. Raising teenagers. Running your first marathon. Starting a new Food Pantry in your parish--God has something for you to accomplish in His Will that you feel totally inept at doing.
Enter my bff St Teresa of Avila.
She teaches us that God can do great things with His followers who clueless, flaky, ill-equipt, impatient, sick, and poor. The Foundations of her "innovative" reform convents were not a result of some together Saint with a clear master plan--but a result of someone kept her eyes constantly on Christ and did many foolish things in his name.
St Teresa's "Book of Foundations" is underappreciated. Yet this is a gem of a book. I felt like I really got to connect with the "lady behind the myth." I was stunned at how much I could relate to her struggles and challenges. Before going into "The Interior Castle", try to connect with the frail, human who is Teresa.
Here's is an excerpt from Friar Mark Foley, OCDS (so crazy that I know him now)
" The Book of Her Foundations is the least read, the least quoted, the least known of St. Teresa's works. Why this is so is probably because people do not think it is a spiritual book. But as you read on, you find that St. Teresa grew in holiness, not in spite of obstacles such as being entangled in lawsuits, mired down in disputes over dowries, tied up in interminable bureaucratic red-tape, and having to deal with unscrupulous businessmen, but because of these difficulties. None of these challenges impeded her spiritual growth. This study guide will help us to see how Teresa grew in holiness in the marketplace as much as in the cloister, perhaps even more so. None of us has been called to found convents, but like Teresa all of us are called to practice virtue and grow in holiness within the fray of daily life."
Can't recommend this book strongly enough. You can buy it on the Nook and Kindle Fire.
