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(More customer reviews)Everything is Grace is a remarkable, yet readily accessible, book in which Brother Joseph Schmidt shares the fruit of his deep and intimate knowledge, of the life and person of St Thérèse of Lisieux. The author not only knows Thérèse, he understands and obviously loves her. However, he never lets his admiration for this young woman get in the way. His focus is clearly on this most recently created Doctor of the Church with her disarming honesty, courage and insight.
Thérèse came to know God, not through the prevailing spirituality of late nineteenth century France, a spirituality imbued with a harsh, ultimately ego-centered Jansenism, perfectionism and Pelagianism. Her spirituality matured as she reflected on her everyday life experience - the mundane and the sublime, the brickbats and the bouquets - in the light of the Gospel.
Like any life, Thérèse' life was unique. It could readily be stereotyped as narrow, sheltered, obscure and a-typical. Schmidt succeeds in presenting the profound wisdom of Thérèse' "Way", the fruit of her reflection on her life. This way is ultimately a way of understanding the gospel call of love. The Good News of this book is that this way is accessible to all.
I value this book because of its profound teaching on love. Thérèse teaches that love is never, ever violent; love never accommodates others by compromising one's own integrity and inner freedom; love does not cultivate one's own preferences; love refuses to harbor self-centered thoughts and negative feelings; and love never calculates. Indeed, says Thérèse, arithmetic is the one science God doesn't know! The whole call of Christian love, she teaches, is that we love others in their weakness, we love ourselves in our inadequacy, all made possible through our willingness to receive God's love in us.
Joseph Schmidt believes that Thérèse and her teaching are great gifts to the modern church and to modern people. Those reading this book will endorse his view.
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