Called Out of Darkness Page 0,3

Jesus of Prague.

This was the Boy Jesus, again, in lavish gold-trimmed robes, and wearing a golden crown on his blond head. He had a radiant and chubby face - picture a four-year-old - and He held a world globe with a cross atop it in His left hand, while He raised two fingers in blessing with His right. He stared forward with wise and clear blue eyes. I knew this was Jesus as He had appeared to someone, but I don't recall knowing the name of the saint who saw the vision, only that it had of course happened in Prague. The way we spoke of this image was like a little song: TheInfantJesusofPrague.

Another statue I remember from the chapel was that of St. Therese, The Little Flower, a beautiful Carmelite nun, who had died when she was a young woman. Her oval face, in its white wimple, was perfect sweetness, and she had a half smile on her faintly rouged lips. She stood gazing invitingly at us, innocent, timelessly happy, resplendent in her Carmelite robes of beige and white, under her long black veil.

In her hands, she held a crucifix, but she also held a huge bouquet of roses. She was known as The Little Flower, and this too was always spoken as a tiny song. The Little Flower had been in life a modest and simple girl, nothing as grand as St. Teresa of Avila, or St. Rita or St. Joseph, or St. Anthony of Padua, but The Little Flower worked miracles all the time.

Sometimes when this saint worked a miracle, the person found himself enveloped in the scent of roses. I pictured a shower of rose petals when I thought of such a moment. The Little Flower had said that she wanted to spend her Heaven doing good on earth.

I talked all the time back then to The Little Flower. . . .

And I talked to St. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus. I talked to the Blessed Mother unendingly, and I talked to Jesus all the time.

Even as a quiet little girl, I knew perfectly well that none of the statues or pictures of Jesus was Jesus. These were all symbols of Jesus. That's why you could have Jesus being crucified in a picture, or sitting at table at the Last Supper or Jesus as a beautiful little boy. You could talk to the Child Jesus or you could talk to Jesus on the cross, or Jesus in the tabernacle. It was all Jesus. Jesus was beyond time, and Jesus was actually beyond place. Yes, He was in the tabernacle, but He was everywhere, too. You could close your eyes and talk to Him in the middle of a sidewalk if you wanted to. Jesus heard you whenever you spoke to Him. And Jesus saw you all the time whether you wanted Him to, or not.

The concepts were not puzzling and they were part of life.

Jesus was God. Jesus was part of the Holy Trinity along with God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. God made the world, which meant that Jesus made the world. The Little Flower's statue wasn't The Little Flower. St. Anthony's statue was not St. Anthony. All these beings were in Heaven, but there was no definite boundary separating them from us.

Anybody in Heaven could listen to your prayers and help you, if you asked for help. The Virgin Mary and the saints were close to God and they could "intercede" for you. There came with these concepts a whole slew of interesting words, and those interesting words were part of the songs and prayers of the faith that I heard from the time I was born.

My talking to Jesus was intimate. Though we knew the Our Father, and we knew the Hail Mary, we spoke to God in our own words. In fact, in those earliest memories, I don't recall rote prayers.

The reason I've taken so long to describe this world in detail is because it is the world I knew before I was taught to read.

The knowledge of God, His Divine Son, and His saints was entirely iconic. And as scientists tell us, what we learn through pictures or icons is strikingly different from what we learn through the written word. The brain receives this information in a unique way. Learning from books is something else altogether.

My faith in God was strong before I ever saw a page of catechism, and certainly before I ever saw a page of the