We can make it through November on God's steam

With the fall harvest behind us and Christmas still a ways off, November can leave us feeling uninspired.

Louisa May Alcott, the 19th-century British novelist, said November was the most “disagreeable month in the whole year,” and the statistics agree. People have a hard time with November.

In November, the Church intercedes for the souls of the deceased. We are reminded not only by the Church calendar, however, but also by the dismal landscape around us: all is passing away.

How fitting then, that November is the month when we remember all of those who have run the race before us. It is no small mercy that the Church chose to begin the month with the Feast of All Saints on the first of November. How important it is to always start by remembering the finish line. We need to remember that running well is possible and that it's been done.

It takes a good shot of motivation to compete with the likes of the saints. The thought of outdoing any of them is enough to make anyone want to throw in the towel. But, the saints would be first to remind you that they didn't cross the finish line on their own steam. The name of the game is staying in the game and not opting out when we realize that our reserves are depleted. We actually don't have what it takes. We need a fresh supply of “steam” daily.

This is where we can look to one saint in particular: St. Therese of Lisieux. St. Therese took the world by storm with her “little way” when her memoir was published in 1925. At the time of her canonization, 1 million copies had already been sold. In her writings, Therese addressed a world that was set on flawless “performances of faith” to secure their spiritual worth. In her childlike way, she asserted that she was not remarkable and that this lack “remarkableness” made her all the more worthy of God's Love.

At the time of her writing, Jansenism was a heretical theology that had lodged itself firmly in the psyche of many a devout Catholic. Jansenism took its name from Cornelius Jansen, a Belgian bishop who lived more than 200 years before Therese. He erroneously preached that God had already predestined those who would respond to his grace and those who wouldn't. What ensued was a panicked-race-to-the finish mentality where people scrambled to prove that they were worthy of salvation and of God's Love.

In his book Holy Simplicity, Joel Schorn writes that St. Therese sought to “give little things her attention and to do them well. She sought to reach heaven not by outward perfection but by letting God's love flow into the most ordinary of  tasks.”

This is how we survive all of the Novembers of our lives. If we live in this Theresian manner, our lives become not about what we are doing but rather about what God is waiting to do through us.  

On those grey mornings where we can't see any goals worth achieving or even the most menial item on our to-do list seems insurmountable or the thought of smiling at a certain co-worker seems beyond our ability, we are being called to nothing short of heroic fortitude. “Fortitude,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life”(CCC 1808).

These little gestures are not little at all as they summon to the surface super-human strength – a strength that is speedily supplied by God at the humble soul's first request.

This is the theology that sounded so looney and trite at first hearing that it caused Therese her fair share of ridicule in the convent. It is also the theology that eventually launched Therese over the finish line, crowned her with a canonization, and finally won her the title “Doctor of the Church” just for the irony of it all.

The next time you despise and revile your shrivelled November-self for your meagre but sincere offerings to God, remember your little sister Therese and where her meagre gifts landed her. When we are powered by love and not by self-serving activism, we don't just live a life that ends at us; we are a living gift to others and to God.