The Winner of the Apron Giveaway & Book Review ~ My Beloved ~ The Story of a Carmelite Nun

Thank you all for your kind and encouraging comments on the Apron Giveaway Post! They mean a lot! ❤️❤️❤️

AND NOW, THE WINNER IS….

CONGRATULATIONS, STEPHANIE! I have sent you an email!

I have read this book more than once. It is delightful. And it is now reprinted! (I paid $50 back in the day for my copy…there are some books that are just worth it!)

It is not just for those aspiring to become a nun. It has so many lovely spiritual lessons within the book! Available here.

This book is an autobiography written by Mother Catherine Thomas and published in 1957. It tells of her journey as a normal, happy young lady who enjoyed life in its wholesomeness.

She chooses Carmel and eventually becomes the Mother Superior. It tells of her spiritual journey and is charmingly candid and human.

It is good reading for young and old.

These reviews sum it up well:

“My Beloved: the Story of a Carmelite Nun is an American Carmelite classic about a young woman, Cecilia Walsh, who answers the call of God and so enters a Carmelite Monastery in New York (later moving to a new foundation in Oklahoma).

This is her autobiography. She reveals many things about the hidden life of Carmel… the simplest things often wondered about. She speaks of the work, recreation, prayers, meal times, silence, ceremonies, vows, the Rules and Constitutions and much more of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns.

She is very detailed in writing. She does all of this while recounting her own struggles and successes physically, mentally, and spiritually as a postulant, novice, and finally professed sister.  It is an absolute delight to read because she is so intimate, simple, and even comical in her writing. It is interesting and captivating… I couldn’t put it down. I read practically straight through it in one setting. It has wonderful wisdom for lay as well as religious, and I would recommend it to both as well as those not of the Catholic faith.”

“Great personal account of one ordinary girl’s journey into the Carmelite order, a very readable and interesting blend of autobiography and theology. Inspiring reading for the vocationally discerning, but a fascinating story for anyone else interested in Catholicism.“

“It has excellent spiritual advice for those who are considering consecrated life and also for the laity. I loved it very much and it helped me a lot to grow spiritually as a lay woman. :)”

A few pictures from the older version of the book (click on first picture to view gallery):

“The love of parents is made manifest only through sacrifice, respect for the human nature of their children, companionship and a deep interest in the studies, the work, the play and the progress of their children. It does not injure the children by coddling them; it does not stunt them by unreasonable severity in its demands and punishments.” -Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1950’s

A little encouragement in your search for modest blouses for the hot weather along with a little tutorial on shortening and hemming your blouse sleeves...

In With God in Russia, Ciszek reflects on his daily life as a prisoner, the labor he endured while working in the mines and on construction gangs, his unwavering faith in God, and his firm devotion to his vows and vocation. Enduring brutal conditions, Ciszek risked his life to offer spiritual guidance to fellow prisoners who could easily have exposed him for their own gains. He chronicles these experiences with grace, humility, and candor, from his secret work leading mass and hearing confessions within the prison grounds, to his participation in a major gulag uprising, to his own “resurrection”—his eventual release in a prisoner exchange in October 1963 which astonished all who had feared he was dead.

Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him…..

Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer–a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experience, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.

He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God–even in their darkest hour. As the author asks, “What can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will?”
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