Answer: The great Father Faber (1814-1863) who pioneered devotional insights into the life of the unborn Christ Child. As some of you know we have quoted Father Faber on a number of occasions. Besides being an impressive preacher and spiritual writer Father Faber also wrote many wonderful hymns – including Faith of Our Fathers and There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy. Two of his books that touch upon the mystery of the unborn Christ Child are Bethlehem and The Blessed Sacrament.
St. Therese of Lisieux is also known as St. Therese of the Child Jesus due to her well known devotion to the Infant Christ. Here is what St. Therese wrote in a letter to her aunt on November 16, 1896 about Father Faber:
“Fortunately, I have the deep Father Faber to console me. He understood that words and sentences here below are incapable of expressing feelings of the heart and that full hearts are the ones containing the most within themselves.” Letters of St. Therese of Lisieux, Volume II, ICS Publications.
Here is a surprising quote from Father Faber where he talks about devotion to ‘our dearest Lord’s life in the womb”.
“It would simply weary the reader to repeat almost word for word this description of our dearest Lord’s life in the Womb, changing the phrases to apply it to the Blessed Sacrament. The parallel is so complete, that it must already have suggested itself; and I have dwelt upon it at greater length, because, as the devotion to the life in the womb is especially a devotion of interior souls, so the corresponding thoughts with regard to the Blessed Sacrament are those which are most familiar to interior souls in their prayers before the tabernacle; and again as all the mysteries of the Sacred Infancy take their color and character from the life in the womb, to establish the analogy between it and the Blessed Sacrament is in truth to establish the analogy between the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Infancy altogether.”
The Blessed Sacrament, Fr. F. W. Faber
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