Joel Tabora, S.J. posted: " [Homily. Live-streamed Mass. First Friday. Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, Oct, 1, 2021.] Like every First Friday, we come together again today to consider God's love manifested to us through the heart of Jesus. But today is also the Fea"
[Homily. Live-streamed Mass. First Friday. Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, Oct, 1, 2021.]
Like every First Friday, we come together again today to consider God's love manifested to us through the heart of Jesus. But today is also the Feast of a remarkable Carmelite nun whose life was over after an illness when she was only 24 years old, St. Therese of Lisieux. Yet, from her autobiography, the Story of a Soul,[i] written under obedience and completed just before she died, we find the remarkable testimony of a person who from the cradle of her family life to her death in Carmel of Lisieux experienced being overwhelmed by God's love and wanting only to love him in return. To prepare for this homily I returned to this remarkable journal, a gift to me from Mother May of Carmel, Bacolod, and suggest that you may yourselves want to read and reflect on it. But even if you don't have time for that, I suggest on this First Friday that you ask yourself how it is in your life that you experience God's love? and What is your experience of wanting to love him back?
They are two simple questions. But they are asked in the background of what many experience to be a joyless life today. Indeed, Pope Francis observed, "The great danger in today's world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God's voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades."[ii]The quiet joy of his love is no longer felt.The pandemic makes everything worse. Covid restrictions don't even allow me my usual access to the centers of carefree consumerism and the scented temples of frivolous pleasures. So how am I loved by God? And how do I love God?
Speaking for herself, I think Therese of Lisieux might have said, "In small ways." I am loved by God is many small but overwhelming ways! How do I love God? I think she might have said "Surrender!" To God's small ways, surrender! It was how she interpreted her life. In completing her autobiography, so close to her death, she said, "I feel my mission is about to begin, my mission to make God loved, as I love him." She felt urged to share with people her "little way." "It is the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender."
So let us consider her "small way." Let us consider her "little way." Therese didn't need to be the golden sunflower nor the soaring eagle. It was sufficient for her to feel God's love as a little flower or as a little bird; many times she referred to herself as one or the other. The thimble is as full of God's love as the well, so no need to rue not being the well. God's love uplifts, cares and caresses in smallness and weakness. Jesus did not call to himself the mighty leaders of the G7 to touch the world with his love; instead, he insisted, "Let the children come to me." As Therese was impressed by Jesus' letting the small children come to him, so was she inspired by Old Testament scriptural passages such as, "Whoever is a little one, let him come to me" (Prov. 9:4); "for to him that is little, mercy will be shown" (Wisdom 6:7); "God shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather together the lambs with his arm, and shall take them up in his bosom" (Is 40:11); "As one whom a mother caresses, so will I comfort you; you shall be carried at the breasts and upon the knees they will caress you" (Is 66:12-13).[iii] Indeed, how do you experience God's love if you are too big for it, too grown up for it, too rich to bother with it, too oversatiated to be satisfied by it? How do you experience God's tender caress, if your strength and toughness are repelled by his touch? How does God's love touch your heart, when you cannot pray, "Lord be gracious to me and bless me, and let your face shine on me"? (Ps 67:1). Not the powerful eagle, flying high then swooping down on the foe, Therese prayed, "O Jesus, your little bird is happy to be weak and little. What would become of it if it were big? Never would it have the boldness to appear in your presence, to fall asleep in front of You…"[iv]
If God's love is experienced in smallness, God is loved in surrender. Yet, in surrender one is only loved more fully! Therese's little way is magnificent in the surrender she urged. Her Story of a Soul is a "lesson in how to live this 'way of trust' and absolute surrender."[v] Surrender to God's love in the way that he is loving you. Feel his loving you. Trust in his love. Do not think you are stronger or bigger or better than God's love for you. Pope Benedict XV felt that here was a secret of sanctity; Pope Pius XI taught that in this Little Way there was an essential for reaching the Kingdom of God. Therese shared what she described Jesus had taught her in secret, "I understand so well that it is only love which makes us acceptable to God that this love is the only love I ambition. Jesus deigned to show me the road that leads to the Divine Furnace [the Divine Fire of love], and this road is the surrender of the little child who sleeps without fear in its Father's arms. … Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude"[vi] This is the surrender of love. Jesus, without whom nothing had been created, had no need to tell us of his physical thirst, but in meeting the Samaritan woman "when he said: 'Give me to drink' it was the love of His poor creature that the Creator of the universe was seeking. He was thirsty for love. Ah! I felt it more than ever before, Jesus is parched, for he meets only the ungrateful and indifferent among his disciples in the world, and among His own disciples, alas, He finds few hearts who surrender to Him without reservations, and who understand the real tenderness of His infinite love."[vii] In this surrender to God's love, which removes ambition for all else, which prunes and purifies in ecstasy and in pain, Therese speaks of being the victim or martyr of God's love in true sacrifice: "I am a child, powerless and weak, and yet it is my weakness that gives me the boldness of offering myself as VICTIM of Your Love, O Jesus! In times past, victims, pure and spotless were the only ones accepted by the Strong and Powerful God. To satisfy divine Justice, perfect victims were necessary; but the law of Love has succeeded the law of fear, and Love has chosen me as a holocaust, me a weak and imperfect creature…"[viii] For Therese it is the Fire of divine love that transforms all things into itself, and being consumed by the Fire was her only desire.
The language of Therese, the images of a mystic, may be different from ours. But as we once again today focus on Jesus crucified on a Cross and on his heart beating in love for us, what is our way of finding God? Even in our own spirituality we may be so enamored by how perfectly we are finding God in this imperfect world, how systematically we are discerning God in this confusing world, that in our greatness we begin teaching God what Right and Justice and Holiness are. We become so strong willed, that in wrestling with God, we demand that He surrender to our great desires. For Therese, the fire was not Promethean. For Therese, the way to God's love was in smallness. And the way to find God was to surrender to his Love. To be consumed by its divine Fire.
[i]Story of a Soul: the Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (Quezon City: Association of Discalced Carmelite Nuns in the Philippines and Claretian Publications,2000)
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