Yesterday, on the Feast of St. Therese, I filled y’all in on how the Little Flower and I became good friends, and how she played heavenly matchmaker for me {totally true!}.
But there’s more to the story, and it’s not as happy as yesterday’s chapter.
Despite my affection for her, and all the roses {literal and metaphorical} that she’s showered me with, it’s actually surprising to me that Therese and I have stayed friends for so long.
Because, truthfully, I’ve never really loved her Little Way.
{I know, I know, that makes me a heathen of the worst kind. But just hear me out.}
My heart’s desires have always tended toward the grand and the glorious — I want to do all the things and help all the people, and I don’t like to be bothered with perfecting my mundane, everyday moments.
You see, I’ve never really wanted to think of holiness as within the reach of my ordinary life.
I’ve always wanted to achieve it by martyrdom or heroism or some great feat of virtue. By saving the whole world. By looking for sanctity somewhere — anywhere — but in front of my face.
But here’s a Saint who says that “we must be content to be daisies, destined to give joy to God’s glances, as He looks down at His feet.”
Is that all? Where’s the holiness in that?
Give me St. Joan of Arc and her to-the-death courage on the battlefield!
Give me St. Catherine of Siena, who shamed popes with her fiery zeal, or St. Claire, who held back a hoard of fierce warriors and saved her city!
Give me Mary Magdalene, the one whose sin and repentance were both great, who won the Heart of Christ with her brazen, confident love. These women were no humble daisies, were they?
One of the most well-known passages of St. Therese’s Story of a Soul is one that’s always rubbed me the wrong way:
The good God would not inspire unattainable desires; I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to sanctity. For me to become greater is impossible; I must put up with myself just as I am, with all my imperfections. But I wish to find the way to go to Heaven by a very straight, short, completely new little way. … I … would like to find an elevator to lift me up to Jesus, for I am too little to climb the rough stairway of perfection. … The elevator that must raise me to the heavens is Your arms, O Jesus!”
Wait, I thought the Christian life is all about becoming greater in holiness and ridding ourselves of imperfection? Aren’t we supposed to climb the stairway of perfection?
If there’s an elevator, am I not just letting my sinful self off the hook? Isn’t it kind of cheating to let Jesus carry me?
Shouldn’t I be throwing all my own effort into making myself holy?
That’s the way to sainthood, right? Not by elevators and daisies.
Or is it?
It’s taken me so many years of spiritual strife, but what I’ve finally come to realize is that she’s right.
I’ve spent the better part of my life looking for holiness on my own terms. Making my own effort. But Therese knew from an early age what so many of us miss altogether:
Holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.”
I often forget that the Little Flower, contrary to what many people think, was extremely spirited and also had a great desire to do and be all the things.
In fact, St. Joan of Arc and St. Mary Magdalene were two of her greatest heroines, and she desired to imitate their courage and zeal.
In her Story of a Soul, Therese wrote that she “longed for martyrdom” so intensely that she was driven to “find an answer” for a way to satisfy this longing.
It’s almost as if Therese was struggling with the ordinariness and littleness of her vocation, and she needed to reconcile her heart’s longings with the life she knew God had called her to.
So what was her answer?
O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my calling is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and You gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.”
And so Therese set out to forge a path of sanctity by practicing her “Little Way of Love,” at the heart of which is an unshakable confidence, not in her ability to make herself holy, but in God’s desire to perfect her and raise her up to Himself.
Therese knew God had not graced her with a mission like that of His martyrs and missionaries and priests — and she embraced her littleness in the place that God had put her.
She didn’t go looking for death in the arena or at the stake. Instead, Therese embraced abandonment to God’s perfect will for her life. She put herself in the “elevator” of Jesus’s loving arms, and trusted in Him to fulfill her desire for holiness.
But, don’t think, like I did for so long, that this idea of the elevator is a way for weak souls to just make peace with sin and give up striving for virtue. Far from it.
Therese’s Little Way was a means for her to offer herself as a “victim,” a martyr, for love. She saw clearly what our culture has never understood, that “love lives only by sacrifice.”
Therese’s secret to sanctity is actually the one thing that I’ve always had such an aversion to: She saw The Present — all the tiny moments of life, with all their unexpected crosses and joys — as a chance to allow God to perfect her.
We must do all in our power to give without counting and to deny ourselves constantly. We must prove our love by all the good works of which we are capable … hoping at the same time that God will, through His grace, give us all that we desire. This is what all little souls who run in the way of spiritual childhood should hope for. Remember, I say run, not rest.”
But me? I’ve always, deep down, been afraid of suffering. Been afraid to “run in the way” that God sets before me everyday, because for some reason it seems harder to get up and do the day-to-day than it does to offer myself to the lions in the colosseum.
And this is why I said yesterday that I feel closer to my Little Flower friend now as a wife and mother than I ever have before.
Because it’s only now — amidst the constant demands and the sleepless nights and the messy house, and yes, even amidst the small triumphs — that I am beginning to truly understand what the Little Way is.
And I’m finally starting to love it.
On my wedding day six years ago {a day that Therese helped to bring about!}, I chose to embrace sanctification according to my Vocation to the married life, which doesn’t usually {but more these days than before} include martyrdom or great, saving-the-world heroism.
I chose that day, whether or not I realized it, to find holiness nowhere else than in the place where Jesus put me.
And each moment of each day, He’s asking me to choose all over again. To choose love. To be love.
Somedays, it’s easier to love the whole world than those little, needy faces in front of me. But that’s the elevator that Jesus is offering me.
The Little Flower reminds us that “Our Lord needs from us neither great deeds nor profound thoughts. He cherishes simplicity.”
And that’s a good thing. Because these days, my life as a professional mouth-feeder, diaper-changer, and puzzle-player doesn’t revolve around many {or any} great deeds or profound thoughts.
There’s so much that could be said on the beauty of the Little Way practiced in motherhood {and if you read nothing else on the subject, read this from Jenny at Mama Needs Coffee}.
But this sums it all up:
“I know of one means only by which to attain to perfection: LOVE. Let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else.”
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