Wednesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
Blessed be the little child, who trusts in God wholeheartedly. We make things too complicated. We are the ones who fall away from grace. We are the ones who have shown God the way out. We bar him from our souls. God wants us to come closer to him in grace. He won’t force his way into our hearts. He respects our wishes. He wants to come to us when we open our hearts to him.
We have a beautiful saint in Therese of Lisieux. She lived out the likeness of a child’s trust in all she did. Her love for God was full and entire. I cannot say enough about her love and profound knowledge of God. She was raised in a deeply pious Catholic household. Her parents, Louis and Zelie Martin, were people of deep faith. They both had been rejected from religious orders in their early lives, and when they raised their children, they instilled their love of the Church on their five daughters. Three of Therese’s sisters entered the Carmelite Convent of Lisieux in France, and she was determined to join them as a professed sister. She wanted to join at age 15. She was rejected at first because of her age. With the support of her father, she went to Rome and appealed to the Pope even! She persevered and was admitted to the Convent. She wasn’t understood by many of her professed sisters and faced many social trials. She persevered in her vocation until her death at the age of 24. She wrote that her vocation comprised love.
“I finally had rest. I understood that love comprised all vocations. My vocation was love.”[2]
Near the end of her life she wrote, “I go to him with confidence and love.”[3]
St. Therese of Lisieux, saint of the little way, pray for us. Amen.
Reflection by Br. Matthew Marie, OSB
[2] Story of a Soul: the Autobiography of Therese of Lisieux, 3rd Edition, Translated by John Clarke, O.C.D, pg. 194.
[3] Story of a Soul, pg. 259.
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