St. Therese of Lisieux’s spirituality is the best news since the Gospel. The closer one draws near to her life, the simpler she becomes. The Gospel is much the same. St. Thomas Aquinas says that God is perfect simplicity. It is therefore no wonder so many popes have professed their love for the Little Therese.
Just when we think we have teased out the formula for living the Christian life—a program for prayer, a liturgical preference—both the Gospel and St. Therese tell us to become littler, or else we risk losing the joy of being a child of God.
“At a time of great complexity,” Pope Francis writes, “[Therese] can help us rediscover the importance of simplicity, the absolute primacy of love, trust, and abandonment, and thus move beyond a legalistic or moralistic mindset that would fill the Christian life with rules and regulations, and cause the joy of the Gospel to grow cold.”
When our prayer life and the humdrum of our daily routines threaten to turn connection with God into another to-do list item, enter St. Therese. For her, there is nothing boring or routine about trust. For a soul that trusts, God is “ever ancient and ever new,” to quote St. Augustine. Love of God is something that is borne of confidence, and to grow in confidence, we must embrace our empty-handedness before God.
“Ah, let us stay quite far from all that shines; let us love our littleness; let us love to feel nothing, and we then shall be poor in spirit, and Jesus will come to look for us, however far away we are. He will transform us into flames of love. Oh, how I would like to be able to make you understand what I feel… It is confidence and nothing but confidence which must lead to love,” writes Therese in a letter to a sister in her convent.
What does it mean to “love our littleness”? Therese never spoke in empty platitudes, so let’s get specific with her impassioned prescriptions.
Do you have a temper that gets the better of you? Are you indignant when corrected? Do you choose scrolling on your phone instead of prayer? All of these signs of your littleness, instead of being a source of anguish and shame, become points of entry for the blinding and all-consuming love of Jesus. Therese challenges us to love our weakness because it is precisely there where Jesus comes to save us. And being our Saviour is what he came to do.
Is your prayer dry? Love your littleness. Do you struggle with patience with your children, or feel jealousy when you see friends taking trips while you struggle to make ends meet? Love your littleness. These moments, big sister Therese says, are moments for Christ’s victory and glory in your life. In this way, our life—with its pains, joys, disappointments, or perhaps lack of rest—becomes a source of intimate communion and redemption.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. (2 Cor 12:9).
Let’s Therese-ify this verse: Therefore, I boast in my scrolling during prayer time! Therefore, I boast in my yelling at my kids! Therefore, I boast in my procrastination at work!
Because of Jesus, these things are not hindrances but gateways of his saving grace and we boast that we have a Saviour who can turn the worst ending (the death of God’s only Son) into the most epic love story. O happy fault!
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