Category: Therese of Lisieux

Everything is grace.

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“Everything is grace.”  A phrase uttered by St. Thérèse when she was not able to receive the Eucharist when she was dying.  I can’t say that that’s the first thing that comes to my mind when things go in a direction different than I would like–like they already are today.  🙂  Pray for me, Thérèse.   Pray for us.  May God’s grace meet us right where we are.

If we love God, we will understand that everything is grace, that Job’s sores were grace, that Job’s abandonment was grace, that even Jesus’ abandonment (‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?) was grace.  Even the delay of grace is grace.  Suffering is grace.  The cross is grace.  The grave is grace. . . . (Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, p. 144)

Tenderness

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I have been meditating on this quote of St. Thérése’s all week: “God is more tender than a mother.”  If your mother was/is less than tender, then this is comforting, and if your mother was/is a gracious and comforting woman, this is amazing.  Soak it in for all its worth.

“Give God that nothing”

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I am re-reading a slim volume on Mother Teresa, titled I Loved Jesus in the Night.  This book increases my hope whenever I pick it up.  Today while reading, I was reminded of something I wish I would remember  more often–and that is that nothing in our life need be wasted.  We can offer whatever we suffer, however small or insignificant it may seem, to God for the sake of others.  Whenever I do remember this truth, it makes such a world of difference for me.  It lifts me out of my small world of seemingly petty sufferings–mostly of my own making–into God who holds all things in His massive Heart.

If at the time of prayer or meditation it seems to you that not only have you been distracted in your prayer, but that you have done nothing at all, never leave that time or that place of prayer angry or bitter with yourself.  First–turn to God and give God that nothing.  (Mother Teresa)

P.S. I am continually struck by how much Mother Teresa was influence by her namesake, St. Thérèse, who wrote in one of her early letters: “If I felt that I had nothing to offer to Jesus, I would offer Him that nothing.” (LT 76)

Punishing with a kiss

St. Thérèse, as she often does, comes at things from a different perspective than we might . . .

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

This morning I was pondering my failings and starting to move to discouragement–as I am too often prone to do–when the Lord in His mercy brought to mind a section of a letter from St. Thérèse to Fr. Bellière in which she describes the ideal way for us to come to our heavenly Father when we realize our faults.  Reading it always brings me great hope–and I hope it does the same for you:

I would like to try to make you understand by means of a very simple comparison how much Jesus loves even imperfect souls who confide in Him:
I picture a father who has two children, mischievous and disobedient, and when he comes to punish them, he sees one of them who trembles and gets away from him in terror, having, however, in the bottom of his heart the feeling that he deserves to be punished; and his brother, on the contrary, throws himself into his father’s arms, saying that he is sorry for having caused him any trouble, that he loves him, and to prove it he will be good from now on, and if this child asked his father to punish him with a kiss, I do not believe that the heart of the happy father could resist the filial confidence of his child, whose sincerity and love he knows.  He realizes, however, that more than once his son will fall into the same faults, but he is prepared to pardon him always, if his son always takes him by the heart . . . . I say nothing to you about the first child, dear little Brother, you must know whether his father can love him as much and treat him with the same indulgence as the other . . .  (LT 258)

I pray that you will have the confidence to take God by His heart today and boldly ask Him to punish you with a kiss.

“. . . where all the beauty came from”

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Last night as I walked out of the chapel at the end of our time of adoration, this phrase from C.S. Lewis was running through my head: “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing . . . to find the place where all the beauty came from.”  Those of us who know Him know that place–the where that is a Who.

There is not and cannot be anything more beautiful and more perfect than Christ.  (Dostoevsky)

He alone is ravishing in the full strength of the term . . . beauty itself.  (St. Therese, Letter 76)

Yes, the Face of Jesus is luminous, but if in the midst of wounds and tears it is already so beautiful, what will it be, then, when we shall see it in heaven?  Oh heaven . . . heaven.  Yes, to contemplate the marvelous beauty of Jesus [. . . ] (St. Therese, Letter 195)

The face of Christ is the human face of God.  The Holy Spirit rests upon him and reveals to us absolute Beauty, a divine-human Beauty that no art can ever properly and fully make visible.  Only the icon can suggest such Beauty by means fo the Taboric light.  (Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon, p. 13.)

Christ is beautiful, and He comes to restore us to beauty.  (John Saward, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty, p. 56)

Make time today to turn your face towards this place–Him from Whom all the beauty comes from.

Desire to be thoroughly what you are

“Don’t long to be other than what you are, but desire to be thoroughly what you are.” (St. Francis de Sales)

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

For years I struggled with feeling that I just wasn’t good enough, that who I was wasn’t very likable.  I wasn’t content with just being “me” with the personality and temperament God gave me.  I have often gone back to these three quotes:

Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.  (St. Therese)

Don’t long to be other than what you are, but desire to be thoroughly what you are.  (St. Francis de Sales)

Most people don’t achieve holiness because they’re fighting who they’re meant to be.  (attr. to Thomas Merton)

(emphasis added)

God made you to be you.  Don’t rob Him of the treasure that you are.  Be fully who He made you to be.

Driving to the gym

God looks at our best efforts and comes to our help.

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I have been trying to establish a regular pattern of walking for exercise, and last week only managed to do a third of what I would have liked and started to get discouraged.  I have a  perfectionistic personality–which I’ve found harder and harder to live with as I’ve gotten older.  🙂  But then I remembered a story that Fr. Tim Gallagher shared during a series of talks he gave at our parish.  I’m not sure if I’ll remember all the details, but I do remember the point.  From what I remember, the story was of a priest who for medical reasons needed to start exercising more regularly.  But he wasn’t a lover of exercise.  He would get up, get dressed, drive to the gym, but then turn around and go home.  The next morning he would get up, get dressed, drive to the gym, turn around and go home–without ever exercising.  Fr. Tim’s point was how good it was that he at least got up, got dressed and drove to the gym.  That was an accomplishment!  A step in the right direction.  So I applied that to my situation last week–at least I walked once that week!  That’s better than nothing.  As long as I keep trying . . .  A good principle for our spiritual lives as well. 

Reminds me of something from Therese.  She uses the analogy of a little child trying to climb the stairs.  She keeps trying to lift her foot to go up the stairs, but is too little to make it.  “At the top of those stairs, he [Jesus] is looking at you lovingly.  Soon conquered by your vain efforts, he will come down himself, and taking you in his arms, will carry you forever into His kingdom where you will not leave him again.  But if you stop lifting your little foot, he will leave you on earth for a long time.” As long as we keep trying . . .  or driving to the gym . . . or trying to be kind . . . or deciding to pray even though it’s very dry and distracted.