1 October 2020
Memorial of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
At the beginning of today’s first reading, Job complains to his friends: “why do you hound me as though you were divine, and insatiably prey upon me?” (Job 19:22) How often we can feel the same way when those around us accuse us in God’s name. But even when they accuse in God’s name, their condemnations are often patterned after the thoughts of the Evil One and not after God’s own words, which are always words of salvation and life.
In the face of all these accusations, Job bears this confidence: “I know that my Vindicator lives… my own eyes, not another’s, shall behold him, and from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26). This great expression of faith could also be used to describe the faith of today’s little saint, Therese of the Child Jesus. Therese entered the Carmelite cloister at Lisieux with a burning desire to make of her life a great offering to God, but she found herself incapable of practicing some of the standard corporeal penances that the sisters there regularly practiced. Some of her sisters mocked her for how fragile she was and how commonplace things could cause her great suffering. Maybe some today would call her a “snowflake.” But through prayer, Therese came to understand that, though she found herself unable to make the “great” sacrifices practiced by some of her sisters, God was offering her the grace to willingly choose and quietly “offer up” the little, unsought sufferings that ordinary community life offered her. She learned to smile and be thankful at unpleasant experiences, not because they thereby became pleasant, but because they were little sufferings that she could endure God for the sake of the salvation of the world, united to Christ, whose life was a pure “yes” to the world. Therese said that hers was just a “little way” of following Jesus, but it continues to yield great fruit. Previous Magis reflections indicate other aspects of her spirituality (see https://www.magisspirituality.org/ignatian_reflection/20-06-30/ and https://www.magisspirituality.org/ignatian_reflection/19-01-28/), but to enter more deeply into the relevance of her mission for our own times, the best place to start would be to read her own account of it in The Story of a Soul (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16772). Therese, patronesse of missions, help us to walk this little way of Christ!