I first learned that spirit would be directly accessible here when we were donated the statue I’m about to show you. This is a statue of St. Therese - or St. Theresa, as she’s usually called in the West - of Lisieux. The Catholic Church has declared her the greatest saint of modern times. She died in 1897 at the age of 24, and was named a Saint after only 28 years. She was later named a Doctor of the Church - the highest rank of Sainthood, and only the second woman to be named to that rank. This acclaim isn’t on the strength of anything particularly special that she did during her lifetime. Rather, it’s because so many people found that they’ve received miracles from praying with her since her death. Before she died, she said she’d spend her heaven doing good upon earth and would shower the earth with roses; since then, many believe they have received miracles and roses. This is one of the places this happens. We’ve had at least 100 miracles here. I t’s been on Channel 5 (our NBC affiliate) - they did a special report. It was their lead story for sweeps week in spring of 2003. It’s highlighted in a book that a nun put together of stories of St. Therese - she included a picture of the statue and the caption is “The miraculous statue at the Living Insight Center in St. Louis, Missouri.” I’m a practicing Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist, but I pray with her every day as I’m absolutely certain she’s here.

When we received this statue, I’d never even heard of St. Therese, and I had no frame of reference for experiencing beings that I couldn’t see. Furthermore, not being Christian, I wasn’t particularly familiar with saints. Also, having been a lawyer for 23 years at this point I was very visually oriented - if I couldn’t see it, I didn’t think it was there. The statue was donated to us by a woman who, when she came here on her first visit I played the singing bowls for her, and she told me that St. Therese came to her while I was playing the bowls and asked to move here. This did not fit with my reality - I honored it as her reality, but it wasn’t within my reality that a saint was presenting herself to this woman. Still, I was very grateful to have the statue even though it was a saint I’d never heard of.

About a week later, I was driving the statue to the Center and, to my definite surprise, St. Therese came to me. She asked me to call a particular friend of mine and invite him to help me bring in the statue. I could easily have thought of calling him because he’s a very large guy, but that’s really not what happened. I was in this presence, I was told to call him and I did. If I’d thought about it, I would never have called him because I knew very well that about a week earlier he’d been in a terrible accident. He worked for the Missouri Department of Transportation. He was driving a truck with an arrow on top that tells people to move over a lane. He was driving 10 mph in the fast lane and a kid hit him going 70. It must have been one of the larger trucks because he wasn’t killed, but he was injured. His back was in considerable pain, and he’d been to a chiropractor four times in that week. Despite this, when I told him St. Therese had asked for him he came right over. We carried in the statue from the parking lot behind the building, which was very difficult. It’s hollow but it’s very heavy. We placed it in front of the pedestal and I was thinking to myself, “Now what? How are we going to get it up there?” And before I could say anything, my friend picked it up by himself, lifted it onto the pedestal and turned around and said, “My God, my back’s been healed.” I’ve told this story thousands of times, but I still get goose bumps every time I tell it. About an hour later a woman of about 60 came to the front door crying. She’d been here once before and she’d had no intention of being here that day, she said, but she felt something beckon her as she was driving on Highway 40. It took her about 10 minutes of crying to get in from the front door. Many people cry with St. Therese when they experience her - many cry when they walk in the room before I even tell them that she’s present here. About an hour after that, another woman who’d been here called from her home on Mason Road (about 15 miles away). She said that she could feel a presence all the way out there and she wanted to know what that was. That was St. Therese’s first two hours here and it hasn’t stopped.

Sister recently explained to me that the Catholic Church’s understanding of St. Therese is different from what’s usually taught to people by the church. Typically people are told that St. Therese takes their prayers to God, as if he’s distant. But this Sister told me that the deep understanding the Catholic Church has is that a Saint like this becomes a clear beacon through which God shines. This is the experience we have here. St. Therese’s presence is clear, but many feel they are experiencing God through St. Therese. Truly amazing things happen here.