Today we celebrate the feast of the little flower, the carmelite nun who died at the age of 24. She invited us all to understand that we are all called to be great but to do so with the daily task we encounter each day.
True greatness doesn't require us to leave our home and go to some distant place where we kiss the leper or are killed for the faith. Rather, true greatness comes in little moments, each moment being just as important as the last. We all advance to heaven not in giant strides but tiny steps, tiptoeing along.
This is the little way that makes souls enlarged with true charity and faith.
Just a few quotes from this mistress of Christ
"From 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 with out God's help is as impossible as to make the sun shine at night."
Thus she invites us to humility. All good that is accomplished through our hands is ultimately the work of the Good God.
"with me, prayer is a 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 do as a child who has not learned to read, I just tell our Lord all that I want and he understands."
What a beautiful understanding of prayer, a simple lifting up of the heart to God.
"I am a very little soul, who can offer only very little things to the Lord...a little victim of love."
THe measure of our gift to God is not seen in the size of the gift but the thought that accompanies it. Thus, St. Therese invites us to make everything a bountiful offering,a little sigh that becomes a giant token of love divine.
Therese on the importance of Scripture
"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 , 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; it is enough to realize one's nothingness, and give oneself wholly as a child to the arms of the Good God..."
A little way that leads us all along the path of holiness and love, as we tiptoe to heaven as children do, skipping along in the arms of Christ. A life of holiness is child's play.
My life is an instant,
An hour which passes by;
My life is a moment
Which I have no power to stay.
You know, O my God,
That to love You here on earth -
I have only today.
—St. Therese of Lisieux
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