Lent is not meant to foster morbid gloominess and debilitating self-loathing, but to thrust us into the heart of Divine love.—From the Introduction. While reading the autobiography of St. Thérèse, Fr. Caster had an 'ah ha' moment that transformed his experience of Lent from one of narrow concern over what to give up to one of joyful freedom to enter into the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. "What struck me," he says, "was her insistence on the way we do things for God and not the things we do for him. It wasn't about what I was offering; it was about why." The daily Lenten meditations in this book—all colored by St. Thérèse's Little Way of Spiritual Childhood—will transform you, too, helping you focus not so much on what you have done to offend God, but on what he has done to redeem you.
Fr. Gary C. Caster is a priest of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, ordained in 1992, who has worked as a high school chaplain and religion teacher and director of Campus Ministries at Bradley University, Eureka College, Illinois State University, and Illinois Wesleyan University. He worked with the Office of Family Life to develop a program of marriage preparation, and taught Church history and ecclesiology to men in formation for the permanent diaconate. Fr. Caster has written and produced shows for EWTN. Presently he is the Catholic chaplain at Williams College in Massachusetts and continues to lead retreats and parish missions. He has contributed articles to various publications including Magnificat, Praying with St. Paul, and the soon-to-be-released, Praying with St. Luke. He also wrote Mary, In Her Own Words: The Mother of God in Scripture and The Little Way of Lent: Meditations in the Spirit of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.