Customer Reviews

I Believe in Love: Retreat Conferences on the Interior Life

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This book helped me to take my spiritual life to a whole new level. It allowed me to leave behind all feelings of guilt or inadequacy, and enter into a relationship with God that helped me to attain true joy.

I can now add a third book to my list of all time favorites for their profound influence on my life. "I Believe in Love" ranks right up there with The Bible and Fulton Sheen's "Life of Christ". What I have been taught for nearly 5 decades of my life has finally become real in my heart and soul. In this Jubilee Year with its emphasis on the Eucharist, the chapter on that topic can stand alone and is worth the price of the book in itself. And I may add that for the anxious or depressed- this book is a sure remedy.

One of the previous Amazon reviewers of this book wrote the following:

"And I may add that for the anxious or depressed- this book is a sure remedy."

That is absolutely correct, for the following reason: Anxiety and depression are actually maladies of the heart with SPIRITUAL origins, not "diseases" of the emotions, or "chemical imbalances," as secular psychology and psychiatry would falsely have one believe. These impoverished worldy outlooks cannot diagnose the origins of these maladies accurately, nor can they offer a cure. Quite the contrary, they pose serious obstacles to realizing the only true cure, which consists in the complete abandonment of oneself to the love of Christ, as revealed on the Cross.

Since the cause of these maladies is ultimately spiritual in nature, so too must be the cure, and I BELIEVE IN LOVE is a very good articulation of what this cure involves. The cure essentially consists in the unreserved abandonment of oneself, and of all one's earthly hopes, to God. It is important here to be clear as to what this means: It is NOT the case that one is called to suppress these eartly hopes unnaturally, or to live under the false pretense that these eartly hopes do not really exist. Rather, the book insists that one make them all conditional - EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM, including both the deepest longings of the heart for earthly goods, as well as the most basic physical needs of earthly life. One must be fully willing to make the realization of ALL of them entirey subject to the Loving Providence of God.

This attitude goes hand in hand with a view of suffering and death that is bereft of fear, and that regards both merely as the passageway to eternal happiness in the presence of God. This notion, while profoundly true, is something very radical and alien in today's cultural milieu, which is fundamentally oriented towards avoiding the subject of death entirely, and towards encouraging people to distract themselves from their suffering through the indulgence in and consumption of needless and empty material frivolities.

In view of these considerations, those who aspire to embrace the outlook articulated in this book must be aware that it takes a great deal of courage to do so. There are many elements of what the book counsels that would be met with antagonism and hostility by the false paradigms of secular psychology and psychiatry, and would be seen by them as "masochistic," "psycho-pathological," and the like. Since this type of erroneous thinking pervades our culture to the point of being almost as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, even in many ostensibly Christian settings, these types of false accusations against the true Christian Way that is articulated in this book must be aggressively resisted. As I say, carrying this out takes a considerable amount of courage, especially when one is in a weakened condition due to the very types of anxiety and depression that secular psychology and psychiatry falsely claim to diagnose accurately.

I Beleive in Love is a wonderful find for the soul aspiring to reach heaven. It explains things about certain struggles in the spiritual life that is seldom found except in good spiritual direction. Abandonment, Detachment and complete Trust are the essence of union with His will. Very uplifting and challenging, yet extremely simple and so full love! It is more than worth the price and trouble to find it.

"I Believe In Love" . . . reading the writings and words and thoughts of Saint Therese herself is one of the most spiritually transforming experiences anyone can have . . . after reading her and letting her speak to our hearts and souls, a book like this one offered as a "life retreat and guide" by Pere Jean du Coeur de Jeses D'Elbee helps us to allow her "little way" to find spiritual resonance in our lives. No one will actually "say it better" than did Saint Therese herself, but meditation on her understanding of God and herself . . . of God and "us" . . . and how that relationship might be lived, can open our minds to see OUR OWN LIVES from her perspective and vantage point.

Saint Therese discovered after a longing search her "vocation" - "to be love in the heart of the Church". So she believed in Love . . . God is love . . . and Therese would become also "love in the heart of the Church" . . . so she learned to believe in both God and herself -- or more appropriately to believe in herself abandoned to God . . . abandoned to love . . . abandoned to TRUST in that love. . . and so to become changed and transformed herself by that love into that love. (She made the leap of faith to abandon her doubts and entrust them to the confidence that is trust in "love" -- trust in love.

This small volume presents to us Saint Therese's spiritual learned lessons so that we can ourselves benefit from them in the present contect of our lives, wherever we happen to find ourselves, whatever our situation, whatever our condition.

"Love in the heart of the Church" is what The Little Flower wanted to become . . . and this author places her "Little Way" right there: in the heart of the Church . . . in the heart of the Gospel . . . and allows her to have her place in our own hearts as well.

arrived on time looking great. I look forward to reading it. Nothing else to write. I heard that it's a great book.