Just for Today, December 1

The saints and friends of Christ served the Lord in hunger and thirst; in cold and nakedness; in labor and weariness; in watchings and fastings; in prayers and holy meditations; in persecutions and many reproaches. Alas! what is our life if compared to theirs!
- Bk. I, ch. xviii.
______________________

Her greatest hardship at Carmel was doing without a fire in winter. It is easy to imagine what this delicate child must have endured during the long Norman winters, in the damp climate of Lisieux. When the cold was more intense, after having spent the whole day shivering, the Saint would go and warm herself for a few minutes in the Community room after Matins. But to reach her cell afterwards, she had to walk about forty yards along an open cloister, and the rest of the way up the stairs and down the icy corridor robbed her of the little warmth she had acquired. When she finally lay down on her straw mattress, covered by two thin blankets, she could only get snatches of sleep. Sometimes she spent the whole night awake, shivering with the cold.

If at the beginning of her religious life she had spoken of this to the novice-mistress, she would have been given some relief, but she preferred to endure this severe hardship without complaint. It was only her death­bed that the truth became known, when she admitted: "The greatest physical suffering of my religious life has been from the cold; I suffered from it to such an extent that I nearly died of it."
- H.
__________________
For a List of Abbreviations, see this post.
Adapted from Just For Today(©1943 Burns & Oates)
Nihil Obstat: Reginaldus Phillips, S.T.L.,Censor deputatus
Imprimatur: Edwardus Myers, Vic. Cap.