October 1, 2009
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, virgin and doctor of the Church
Today is holy to our LORD. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!" (And the Levites quieted all the people, saying, "Hush, for today is holy, and you must not be saddened.") Nehemiah 8:10b-11
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.” Luke 10:2-3
Piety
St. Theresa’s Prayer
Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
Compassion on this world
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world
Yours are the hands
Yours are the feet
Yours are the eyes
You are His body
Christ has no body now on earth but yours
Study
Today is the feast day of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as "Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus" and "The Little Flower." When Therese received her First Communion, she said "Ah, how sweet was the first kiss of Jesus! It was a kiss of love... I felt that I was loved."
St.Theresa had a desire to be a nun that started when she was only three. When she was ten years old, she begged to be received into the order of the Carmelites in Lisieux. She was admitted at age 16 and pronounced her holy vows within the year.
Thérèse is known for her "Little Way." In her quest for sanctity, she realized that it was not necessary to accomplish heroic acts in order to attain holiness and to express her love of God. She wrote: “Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."
This "Little Way" also appeared in her approach to spirituality exemplified in this quote:
"Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises, in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles in the way and a host of illusions round about it, my poor little mind soon grows weary, I close the learned book, which leaves my head splitting and my heart parched, and I take the Holy Scriptures. Then all seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul, perfection seems easy; I see that it is enough to realize one's nothingness, and give oneself wholly, like a child, into the arms of the good God. Leaving to great souls, great minds, the fine books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because 'only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet'."
On September 30, 1897 (112 years ago yesterday), at the youthful age of twenty-four, St.Theresa died of tuberculosis, with a loving glance at her crucifix. On her deathbed, she said, “Oh, I love Him! My God, I love You!” Then she breathed her last.
Only seventeen years later, when those born in the same year were just forty-one years old, the fame of her sanctity had so spread among the people that her cause was introduced at Rome. She was beatified on April 29, 1923, and canonized on May 17, 1925, an unusually rapid process for the Church. This is the equivalent of the Church canonizing today someone born in 1957. Consider the lifetimes of two modern-day spiritual giants whom we count among the cloud of witnesses. The late Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born in 1910. The late Pope John Paul II was born in 1920.
Many books have been written about this young saint. In one, Therese by Dorothy Day, she considers why this young nun was so loved by the world and her little spiritual practices were so important. Excerpts from that volume follow (italics added):
There has been so much discussion of the diminutive “little” which Therese used constantly that it is good to remember her words of explanation of August 6. “To be little…is…not to attribute to ourselves the virtues we practice, nor to believe ourselves capable of practicing virtue at all. It is rather to recognize the fact that God puts treasures of virtue into the hands of his little children to make use of them in time of need, but they remain always treasures of the good God. Finally, to be little means that we must never be discouraged over our faults, for children often fall but they are too small to harm themselves very much.”
It was the “worker,” the common man, who first spread her fame by word of mouth. It was the masses who first proclaimed her a saint. It was the “people.” What was there about her to make such an appeal? Perhaps because she was so much like the rest of us in her ordinariness. In her lifetime there are no miracles recounted; she was just good, good as the bread which the Normans baked in huge loaves. Good as the pale cider which takes the place of the wine of the rest of France, since Normandy is an apple country. “Small beer,” one might say. She compares to the great saints as cider compares with wine, others might complain. But it is the world itself which has canonized her, it is the common people who have taken her to their hearts. And now the theologians are writing endlessly to explain how big she was, and not little, how mature and strong she was, not childlike and dependent.
What did she do? She practiced the presence of God and she did all things – all the little things that make up our daily life and contact with others – for His honor and glory. She did not need much time to expound what she herself called her “little way.” She wrote her story and God did the rest. God and the people. God chose for the people to clamor for her canonization.
She speaks to our condition. Is the atom a little thing? And yet what havoc it has wrought. Is her little way a small contribution to the life of the spirit? It has all the power of the spirit of Christianity behind it. It is an explosive force that can transform our lives and the life of the world, once put into effect. In the homily he gave after the Gospel at the Mass of her canonization, Pope Pius XI said: “If the way of this spiritual childhood became general, who does not see how easily would be realized the reformation of human society…”
The seeds of this teaching are being spread, being broadcast to be watered by our blood perhaps, but with the promise of a harvest. God will give the increase.
From Therese by Dorothy Day contained in the collection Dorothy Day Selected Writings: By Little and By Little. Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Ellsberg. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books 1998.
Action
How can we use St. Therese’ “little way” to inspire our Fourth Day and use it to realize the change in people’s lives that are needed to save the world?
Although Christ and Therese have departed from this world, we remain behind as their hands to work in this world.
