Michele Cohen
St. Robert Southwell Writing Group
When I was in my early thirties and filled with the zeal of my recent reversion to Catholicism, I read of Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day. I dreamed of becoming a medical missionary, of volunteering in a Catholic Worker home, of feeding the poor and of picking up the destitute on the street—no matter that I was married and raising four daughters. At the same time, I discounted what seemed to me to be the sentimental spirituality of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I didn’t understand that Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa lived out the “little way” of St. Thérèse, and that it can be anything but simple.
Thérèse was born on January 2, 1873, in the town of Alençon, France. She was the ninth child and the fifth surviving daughter of her parents, Zélie and Louis Martin, who were canonized in 2015. When Thérèse was fourteen, she had a strong calling to the religious Carmelite community, but because of her age she met with resistance. She petitioned the bishop and when that didn’t work, she petitioned Pope Leo XIII in Rome, who blessed her and told her that if it was God’s will, it would work out. It proved to be God’s will when she was granted permission to enter at the age of fifteen. Thérèse lived at Carmel of Lisieux, in virtual anonymity, until her death in 1897 at the age of twenty-four.
Thérèse wanted to be a great saint, yet recognized her littleness. In Story of a Soul, her spiritual autobiography published in 1898, she wrote, “Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers. Every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.” In Walking the Little Way, Joseph F. Schmidt, FSC, states that Thérèse’s genius is “her recognition of authentic Gospel holiness, which was lost to many ordinary Christians of her time.” Many believed sanctity was like climbing a ladder; only by struggle through the stages of virtue could one advance to higher rungs. Thérèse, who at fourteen experienced a conversion on Christmas Day, knew otherwise.
Traditionally in France at the time, young children left their shoes by the hearth to be filled with presents. After the midnight Mass, Thérèse overheard her father say how glad he was that this would be the last year. Thérèse, who had lost her mother at four years old and who had suffered a nervous illness when she was thirteen, was a hypersensitive child and the doted-on baby of the family. The remark broke her heart. Instead of ruining the evening as her hurt feelings tended to do, Thérèse was empowered by God’s grace to overcome them. Joyfully, she ran to the hearth to open her presents. In this small moment she realized she needn’t climb by her own efforts; instead, Jesus had stooped down to lift her “in all her littleness.”
With thirty years of striving behind me, I can now appreciate the value of Thérèse’s “little way.” She nudges me to let God help, to make small acts of love that no one notices, to rethink the email that attempts, however subtly, to make myself look better at my coworker’s expense, to bear patiently the multitude of little things that annoy or offend me, to keep my mouth shut when my husband makes the coffee too strong. These simple things can be anything but simple, which Thérèse knew all too well when she said, “They cost me much.” Thérèse is a powerful friend and intercessor, especially for those who yearn to do great things yet recoil at the thought of a small sacrifice, or for those who, at the receiving end of a bad comment, spiral out of control for days.
In her short life it seemed she accomplished nothing extraordinary, yet in 1997, Pope John Paul II declared St. Thérèse a Doctor of the Church. In his apostolic letter Divini Amoris Scientia (“The Science of Divine Love”), he writes, “The Spirit of God allowed her heart to reveal directly to the people of our time the fundamental mystery, the reality of the Gospel.” St. Thérèse lived a cloistered life and is now the patroness of the missions. She has inspired saints, popes, Catholic workers, and countless individuals to, as Mother Teresa says, do “small things with great love.” Dorothy Day, in her book Thérèse, says that St. Thérèse’s “little way” is of the child in its attitude of abandonment and acceptance. While St. Thérèse suffered from tuberculosis in 1896, she wrote a letter to Sister Marie and spoke of how Jesus taught her his secrets of love. She begged him to reveal these secrets to all the little souls.
May we be little and let Jesus lift us up.