A book of 30 meditations by John of St. Samson inviting us to listen in on his prayers of aspiration as the Church makes its way through the liturgical year and through the various Mysteries of Christ and His Church. John of St. Samson was a French Carmelite and mystic. He is known as the soul of the Touraine Reform of the Carmelite Order, which stressed prayer, silence, and solitude.
John was blind from the age of three after contracting smallpox and receiving poor medical treatment for the disease. He insisted very strongly on the mystical devotion of the Carmelites. After a series of healings word spread and the local bishop asked his theologian his opinion of the healings. The theologian replied, "If people had the faith of Br. John, and lived as authentically as he, the gift of healing the sick would be far more common."
Donatien of St. Nicholas, a disciple and editor of his works "it is certain that this illuminated blind brother has been chosen and given to us by God to be the teacher and director of the spiritual life of our Reform." Donatien later wrote "his face was frequently beheld to be divinely radiant, resplendent with as it were some luminous ray, as I myself and other very trustworthy brothers have witnessed." John of St. Samson has been referred to as the "French John of the Cross" by students of Christian mysticism.
The work is expertly translated from the French by Carmelite nun Sr. Veronica of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of the Wahpeton cloistered Carmel. In his preface to the book, Fr. Charlò Camilleri writes "Notwithstanding the fact that blindness impeded him from using visual imagery to clarify his ideas, and that the texts are generally full of crowded ideas, digressions, and loosely connected concepts, his doctrine is sound and inspires the reader to live radically the call to divine transformation."
