St Terese of Little Flower
St. Therese is the proud founder and designer of “The Little Way”. This is the way of those who are not rich and famous, and who want to serve God through their littleness and simplicity. Like most of us, St. Therese knew that she was not capable of great sacrifices, or of performing great and mighty works. However, she chose to remain as a child in the eyes of God by performing all of her duties with love and obedience, no matter how small and insignificant they were. Thus, Therese gave us all the discovery of the way to please God and reach holiness, through a little way, best suited for the small, the meek and the humble. “If anyone is a very little one, let him come to me” (Proverbs 9:4).
St. Therese thrived on the love that surrounded her in her Christian household where prayer, the liturgy, and practical good works formed the basis of her love of Jesus. Thus, St. Therese entered the Carmel of Lisieux with the determination to become a saint. However, six years as a Carmelite made her realize how small and insignificant she was. She was, from the moment of birth, frail and she was always getting sick. With this, she saw the limitations of all her efforts. This kept her far off from the unfailing love that she wished to practice and thus her discovery of “The Little Way” came to be. She understood then that it was on this very littleness that she must learn to ask Gods help. From her writings in The Story of the Soul we can see that she decided that Jesus would carry her to the summit of sanctity. In the face of her smallness and nothingness, she trusted in God to be her sanctity. She wanted to go to heaven by a new, little way. She says, “I wanted to find an elevator that would raise me to Jesus.” The elevator, she wrote, would be the arms of Jesus lifting her in all her littleness.
During Therese’s journey to holiness she taught us a lot through her writings. She came to understand that in order for Jesus to “lift” her to holiness, she needed to become less. She needed to humble herself and to begin seeing her relationship with God like that of relationships between children and their parents. After all, God the Father was indeed her father as well. It is hard to think of ourselves as little children when we grow older in years, but that is exactly how our attitude towards God should be. Even if we live to be one hundred, God still sees us as His children, whom he will always forgive.
In return, to be forgiven, we must act like his children. Like a child, we must completely trust that our Father will take care of us, feed us, keep us warm in the winter, and buy us appropriate clothes and so on. In addition, if we do not trust in him but rely on our own path, we will not be taken care of properly. For example, if you were a parent and your child told you he no longer wanted you to help him because he could do everything on his own, you would be sad that they aren’t relying