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Made Clean by Christ

  • FR. BERNARD BRO

Christ came into my life very early. 


marthaTo whichever side one turns, how can one advance without him?  My first real eye-opening was when I discovered a sense of my personal sin.  I thought that I knew what evil was….

I had perceived the odor of sin so very forcibly in certain places.  But the evil had remained outside of me, whereas here, beneath the divine light, I discovered it in me, and that was quite a different matter!  The sins of the world, they are in my heart; I am an accomplice to them.  Oh, the burning shame of feeling so utterly soiled before the face of God.  There is nothing one can do but grovel in the dust….

Then Christ our justice comes…and one would not forego for anything the need of the joy of his pardon!  Later on, for many years, I suffered that disgust with the injustice of the world…my own incurable mediocrity, and so on…it was hard.  And then, one Christmas, the light came to me and I saw that the lower one descends, the more surely one finds Christ, for he has taken all on himself, all our miseries, in order to save us with and by them.  And with this realization comes peace, and an immense gratitude for the Incarnation of the Son of God.

A Carmelite nun in religion fifteen years

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Acknowledgement

Fr. Bernard Bro. "Made Clean by Christ." excerpt from Contemplative Nuns Speak (Continuum International Publishing Group, 1963).

Reproduced by permission of Continuum International Publishing Group, A Bloomsbury Company.

The Author

bro2bro1Dominican and doctor of philosophy, Fr. Bernard Bro has been a professor at the Pontifical Faculties of Saulchoir, preacher at Notre Dame in Paris, and recognized by the Academie Francaise for the whole of his work. He is considered among the world's foremost authorities on the life and writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Bro is also director of the French publishing house, Éditions du Cerf, and a key figure in publishing the definitive editions of Thérèse's writings. He is likewise responsible for the religious broadcasts at France-Culture. His books, which have been translated into English, include St. Therese of Lisieux: Her Family, Her God, Her Message and The Little Way: The Spirituality of Therese of Lisieux.

Copyright © 1963 Continuum International