Over at Intentional Disciples, Fr. Mike has a nice reflection:
Today is the feast of St. Therese of Liseux, the “Little Flower,” and by happy coincidence the day’s Gospel (Lk 9:46-50) fits her beautifully. In response to the rivalry and envy Jesus recognizes between his disciples, he has a child stand next to himself and tells them, ““Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. For the one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest.” (Lk 9:48).
Children didn’t matter much in Jesus’ culture, and certainly would have been considered among “the least.” To “receive” one such as a child requires something of a death within us. How often have we had the experience of meeting someone who is important, and watched their gaze focus somewhere over our shoulder, searching for someone “greater?” I can tell you I’ve done the same thing to others; after Mass when one of Christ’s anawim (e.g., an adult whom I find to be a bit odd, or the woman who always has a complaint, or the bore) approaches me and craves my attention.
I can’t help but imagine that when you encountered Jesus, you knew you mattered. I can imagine his gaze was penetrating, and depending upon the state of your soul, immensely challenging or tremendously comforting – and perhaps both, simultaneously. But you knew you mattered. It can be the same way in prayer, at least when we are able to stop focusing upon ourselves.
The paradox is that the Church relies on St. Therese as patroness of the missions.
However, this irony passes if we look closely at St. Therese’s own sense of vocation.
She had a firm sense of having received a mission from God.
In her self-awareness as one sent on mission, she was very much a twin sister to the apostle St. Paul, the first world missionary of the Christian faith.
In fact, St. Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth provided St. Therese with the insight into her own vocation.
Her vocation, which she explains in her autobiography, was simply love.
After reading St. Paul’s letter, she wrote:
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.
With that insight, St. Therese lived out her life in the enclosure of a Carmelite monastery.
There she would be a faithful little powerhouse of love that drives to action the members of the Church— including missionaries— love that sets off the bounds of all vocations, love that embraces every time and every place, every mission.
St. Therese’s sense of mission involved the confident perception that she was to teach others this little way of love.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker wrote a very nice book (edited by Michael, btw) on St. Benedict and St. Therese – St. Benedict and St. Therese: The Little Rule and the Little Way.
Here is a brief blog post from last year in which Fr. Dwight describes his initial introduction to St. Therese:
I had my own experience of meeting Therese. In the summer of 1987 I was still an Anglican priest, and was living in England. I had three months free between jobs and decided to hitch hike to Jerusalem staying in religious houses along the way. One of my first stops in France was Lisieux.
I got a room at the Hermitage–the pilgrim guest house next to the Carmelit monastery where Therese lived and died. I went back to my simple room after finding my meal in the dining hall. It was a warm summer evening and the high French windows were open as I went to sleep. The net curtains blew gently in the breeze.
I was brought up as an Evangelical. I had become an Anglican. I had heard of St Therese, but considered her to be a sentimental sort of spiritual saint. She was a saint for girl scouts, a sweet litte thing who said a rosary bead as she went up the stairs one by one on her knees. The an Evangelical with an Anglican sensibility she didn’t appeal.
Once I got to Lisieux it didn’t get better. The road up to the Basilica was crowded with tacky gift shops with dangling glittery rosaries, bright religious cards and plastic holy water bottles shaped like the Blessed Virgin. I wasn’t attracted by the poor taste and commercialism and thought the French ought to have known better.
More
Fr. Dwight has a brief entry today, with news that he’ll be leading a Benedict/Therese pilgrimage to France in the spring!
(St. Therese, second from left)
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