St. Therese of Lisieux, The Little Flower
When I was diagnosed with an incurable cancer, metastatic melanoma, in June, 2015, one of the saints I turned almost instinctively to was St. Therese because she also had an incurable disease, tuberculosis, that took her when she was so much younger (24 to my 66).
I pray that you have also seen perhaps in a prayer card that you carry with you this intense, beautiful young daughter of the Lord staring at you as she stares at me every day near where I work and sleep:
How did she do it? How did she surrender her life so gracefully to the Lord.
Answer. Total love of an all-loving, all-merciful God.
What does she teach me? The same. Total trust in God, cancer or no cancer. We can control almost nothing, but we should never, never worry because our loving and merciful God is always there.
I have spent many a day and sleepless night talking with her since my diagnosis.
I have gone back to re-read her powerful autobiography, THE STORY OF A SOUL, which I first read in the late 80’s.
Her words have given me indescribable comfort, and I finally feel I have some slight grasp of her Little Way
Of course, the best way to understand her Little Way is to read her book yourself, and when you read, always bring the book to prayer and ask God to help you understand what God taught this great Saint of Mercy.
I say “Saint of Mercy” because St. Therese deeply believes in the unfailing, unconditional mercy of God. She also wants us to be merciful with everyone, and when we can’t be merciful with everyone as even she occasionally wasn’t and writes about it, then we must be merciful with ourselves.
Whenever we fail at love or mercy, we give that failure to God. We can say as she said to the effect, “See, Lord, what a mess I am. I give you all my mess! You will have to fix it in your mercy. I cannot. I know you understand and forgive me because you are always my loving and merciful Father.”
Her Little Way was to try not be any more than God had created her to be. She had nothing to prove except to love God to the best of her ability and her neighbor. Nothing more.
She wrote, “Frequently, only silence can express my prayer.
However, this Divine Guest of the tabernacle understands all, even the silence of a child’s soul filled with gratitude.
When I am before the tabernacle, I can say only one thing to Our Lord:
“My God, you know that I love you”
and I feel my prayer does not tire Jesus.”
And thus she could write of her lifelong vocation:
“I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.
“Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love.”
Total, unconditional love is her Little Way, which is not to say it is an easy way. It is, however, God’s Way, and the Way that St. Therese followed all her life.
More than fighting cancer, for me, this Little Way, with the daily grace and merciful forgiveness of God when I fail, this Little Way is my life now in Jesus Christ.
St. Therese, pray for us.
St. Therese, pray for us.
St. Therese, pray for us.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
(Deacon Tom Bello, O.F.S.)
RELATED LINKS
The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux
Society of the Little Flower – Daily Reflections