Define "Good"

Image from www.christian-miracles.com

The title comes from a movie we watched as a family this weekend, “Beautiful Creatures.” (Think Twilight but with more mature protagonists. And yes, what’s up with all the Romeo & Juliet + Twilight supernatural lover plots nowadays? The phenomenon deserves a blog entry unto itself, but that’s for another time.)

Wholesome boy-next-door takes an interest in the female newcomer-to-the-small-town and notices that she’s reading a book. Striking up a conversation with her, he asks about the author: “Is he any good?”

The girl meets his interested gaze in a challenging way and says, “Define good.”

(Now if only that happened in real life… haha!)

The Manila International Book Fair was held this week, and we got to go on Saturday! Sadly, we couldn’t spend as much time as we wanted because a) of our busy schedule and b) our limited teacher’s salaries could only accommodate a limited amount of splurging. (I justify my book expenditures this way: “I’m building my future children’s library!”)

The book I was MOST excited about purchasing was a copy of St. Therese of Lisieux’s autobiography, “The Story of A Soul.” My ninang has highly recommended it to me, and I keep reading about this book as well in the writings of other writers. I’ve been looking for a copy for AGES, and I finally found one yesterday!! Finished reading it this morning, and oh MY! It’s definitely “good,” oh so sooooo goooood!!

When I was a lot younger, I used to think that “good” books were either downright fluffy and juicy, like addicting cotton candy (as in Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series) or esoteric, high-brow and intellectual (yes, I WAS rather a snob back then).

St. Therese’s book falls in neither of these two categories, but unto a third category (and, I think, a more authentic definition of what is “good”). I have come to discover that there are some books that make one a better person by reading them. By letting your soul come into contact with another’s, one so holy and perfect, that the fragrance of their divine saintliness is dusted onto yours, leaving it cleaner, purer, and simpler than before.

In St. Therese’s words: “Sometimes Jesus chooses to link together two souls for His glory and then He lets them exchange their thoughts to stir each other to a greater love of God.” Of course, merely reading the book makes for just a one-way flow of thoughts, but when one believes in the Communion of Saints, well then, reading St. Therese’s book and praying to her for intercession is a very beautiful two-way highway!

I cannot put all of my reflections in this public blog, as St. Therese said: “Some things lose their fragrance when opened to the air, and there are stirrings of the soul which cannot be put into words without destroying their delicacy.” But suffice it for me to say that those stirrings were great indeed, and I will definitely keep rereading this treasure of a book for the rest of my life!

It is a very simple book, and cannot lay claim to great literary value nor intellectual depth. But it strikes the heart as if with a samurai’s sword, laying it bare, and flooding it with light, joy and peace the way good, true and beautiful things do.

St. Therese is truly an inspiration! Despite her unremarkable background, despite living in an obscure province, despite dying of tuberculosis at the young age of 24, and despite being “imprisoned” in a monastery all her life from the time she was 15 years old, she bloomed where she was planted and has been a blessing to countless millions all over the world. Her life is the ultimate proof of perhaps her most famous saying: “Perfection consists in doing His will, in being that which He wants us to be.”

I'd like to end this entry with the excerpt I especially fell in love with: “I’ll surely sing my hymn of love. Yes, my Beloved, this is how I’ll spend my life… I shall sing, sing without ceasing even if I have to gather my roses from the midst of thorns. And the longer and sharper the thorns, the sweeter my song will be.”