only love counts

Isaiah 66:10-14; Matthew 18:1-4

Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Therese of the Child Jesus.

when asked by her sister before a few days before she died for some word, St. Therese simply put, "only love counts."

A few days later she died with these words upon her lips, "My God...I love thee."

She writes in her autobiography the moment she discovered her calling.  After much toil in her soil looking for God's plan she is filled with ecstatic joy as she proclaims, "O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love...love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and place.  In one word, that love is everlasting."

Such wisdom for a child has the world seldom known but have often longed for.  We look to this child of grace to day  as we honor the grace of God who made her what she is a saint of saints. 

From the earliest moments of her life she remembers being smitten with God above and all things heavenly.  At the age of three she describes how she would hide between the curtains and the wall and there she would, "think, think about God, about life, about eternity."

She says "from a afar it seems easy to do good to souls, to make them love God more, to mold them according to our own ideas and views.  But coming closer we find, on the contrary, that to do good without God's help is as impossible as to make the sun shine at night."

On prayer: "payer is lifting up of the heart, a look towards heaven, a cry of gratitude and love uttered equally in sorrow and in joy; in a word something  noble, supernatural, which enlarges my soul and unites it to God...I just tell the Lord all I want and he understands."  

She would say that in union with God her little soul would learn to make giant strides.

Her little way has continued to shine the path for many.