The Little Flower and Her Little Way
Marie-Françoise Thérèse was a little girl with big dreams:
she wanted to be a great saint. But there was one problem: compared to the great
saints like whom she wanted to be—St Augustine of Hippo, St John the Apostle,
St Ignatius of Antioch, St Agnes, St Paul of Tarsus—she was a mere small bird,
and they were eagles scaling the great heights.
But she couldn’t give up. She had to find some way to be a
saint despite her littleness. She turned to nature and discovered that,
even though the daisies and violets were lesser blooms compared to the
roses and the lilies, nature would lose her splendor without them. She was
content to be a little flower: “I saw that if all these lesser blooms wanted
to be roses instead, nature would lose the gaiety of her springtide dress—there
would be no little flowers to make a pattern over the countryside.”
St Thérèse of Lisieux was born to saintly parents, Saints
Louis and Zélie Martin on 2nd January, 1873 in Alençon, France—the
ninth of nine children. Four of her siblings had died at an early age, and her
mother too only lived four years after her birth. St Louis Martin, her father,
moved the family to Lisieux from where our saint passed her childhood.
From a young age she showed a simplicity in character and
holiness which soon bloomed into her desire to enter the Carmelite convent in
which three of her elder sisters had already preceded her. She was only
thirteen when she expressed this desire, and that was too young to be let into
the convent. But she was certain it was the Lord’s will that she be betrothed
to him already, and so, with the support of her father, she sought the bishop’s
permission; and the bishop refusing, she took the opportunity of a pilgrimage
to Rome to ask the Holy Father himself for the permission to enter Carmel at a
young age.
Eventually, she was allowed into the convent at 15, (she
took the name Sr Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face) and although
everyone thought she would be treated like a little child, she met suffering
there. But perhaps one of her greatest torments was more interior than
exterior. It consisted in a burning desire to do everything she could imagine
for the Lord:
“To be your spouse, my Jesus; to be a Carmelite; to be,
through my union with you, a mother of souls, surely this should be enough? Yet
I feel the call for more vocations still; I want to be a warrior, a priest, an
apostle, a doctor of the Church, a martyr—there is no heroic deed I do not wish
to perform.”
In the confines of her Carmelite convent, she could not do all these things. And again, she had to discover some way to quench this desire she had. And so, she meditated on the Church and the vocation of her saints:
“Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I saw that if
the Church was a body made up different members, the most essential and
important one of all would not be lacking; I saw that the Church must have a
heart, that this heart must be on fire with love. I saw […] that were this love
to fail, apostles would no longer spread the Gospel, and martyrs would no
refuse to shed their blood. I saw that all vocations are summed up in love…”
At this discovery, her heart found rest: “Jesus, my Love,
I have at last found my vocation; it is love!” In the heart of the Church,
she resolved to be love, in this way she could be all the things she
dreamed of.
And love was the foundation of her Little Way. She
made herself a Victim of Love, meaning she would gratefully receive the
tender love of her Jesus. To her, frail and imperfect as she saw herself to be,
Love had made a worthy choice for a victim, since “to be wholly satisfied,
[Love] must stoop down to nothingness and turn that nothingness to fire.”
Being a Victim of Love also meant that she had to
repay that love with love. But what could she possibly do to repay the love she
received from the Lord?
“Striking deeds are forbidden me. I cannot preach the
Gospel; I cannot shed my blood, but what matter? My brothers do it for me,
while I, a little child, stay close beside the royal throne and love for those
who are fighting. Love proves itself by deeds, and how shall I prove mine? The
little child will scatter flowers whose fragrant perfume will surround the
royal throne…”
She scattered these flowers by “never letting slip
a single sacrifice, a single glance, a single word; by making profit of the
very smallest actions, by doing them all for love.”
St Thérèse spent the rest of her life living this little way of love. She would apologize even when she was accused wrongly, she would make the great effort to smile in the presence of a sister who had the tendency to annoy her, she would endure patiently an irritating sister, she would gently care for the sick, even when they were hard to care for; she would do the most menial tasks like laundry, cleaning, with the greatest love. Even when she fell terribly sick with tuberculosis, the disease that eventually claimed her life, she endured the pain with patience and love, offering it up to her beloved Jesus.
Her little way made her inconspicuous even to her own
sisters with whom she lived since she exercised her virtue in such ordinary
ways that one of the sisters said. “She is very good, but she has certainly
never done anything worth speaking about.”
Her little way was also a way of confidence. She knew
she was only doing little, but she was confident that God was content with her
weak efforts:
“I still am weak and imperfect. I always feel, however,
the same bold confidence of becoming a great saint because I don’t count on my
merits since I have none, but I trust in Him who is Virtue and Holiness. God
alone, content with my weak efforts, will raise me to Himself and make me a
saint, clothing me in His infinite merits.”
On September 30th, 1897, after great suffering
from the tuberculosis, she died at age 24. Her last words were: “I do not wish to
suffer less. Oh, how I love Him! My God, I love Thee.”
The little flower soon became renowned due to her Story
of a Soul, an autobiography she had written under obedience to her
superiors. It consists of three manuscripts—all of which end with the word Love—and
in them many people through the ages have found what Pope Pius VII called the rediscovery
of the heart of the Gospel.
St John Paul II declared her a doctor of the Church, and her
doctrine is, simply, The Little Way of Spiritual Childhood. She had once
thought of herself as too little to be a doctor of the Church, yet God raised
her, in her littleness, to the greatest ranks of his saints amongst whom she
shines with a peculiar, tender and brilliant light.
Before her death, she promised to let down a shower of roses and to spend eternity doing good on earth. True to her promise, she has, down through the ages, inspired many to turn from the ambitious pursuit of great deeds, to the humble service of simple, ordinary tasks with great love; to not be discouraged by their littleness and weakness, but with confidence to approach the heart of Jesus like little children. Her little way is a way that can be embraced by all, and she remains proof that we can all be saints.
It is confidence, and nothing but confidence, that must lead us to love.
Her feast day is October 1st.
St Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, pray for
us, and teach us your Little Way.
