As we celebrate the Memorial of St. Thérèse of Lisieux on October 1, I call on her powerful intercession to pray for our diocese, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, lay leaders, parishes, schools, and people, that we may all practice her Little Way of loving God in the details of our lives.  

I write and speak much about the lessons of love, perseverance, suffering, and humility that St. Thérèse can teach us by her life and her words.

Abundant confidence in the Lord

One aspect of her spirituality that has always intrigued and indeed amazed me is St. Thérèse’s abundant confidence in God. Her whole life was one of trust and surrender to the goodness and providence of God. 

This submission of her mind, heart, and will to the Father enabled her to have an enormous hope and absolute conviction in the power of the Lord. 

She writes, “What offends Jesus, what wounds Him to the heart, is want of confidence,” and, “It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to love.” 

This enduring trust in the mercy and goodness of God gave St. Thérèse peace and joy, even when she felt her littleness and inadequacy, even when she felt enveloped by a spiritual darkness in the last months of her life as she suffered and died from tuberculosis.

We can often feel overwhelmed by our responsibilities, defeated by our problems, discouraged by our weaknesses, and hopeless in the light of the world’s suffering, injustice, and violence. In such moments, St. Thérèse encourages us to throw ourselves into the arms of the Lord, confiding all to Him, surrendering our need to control, giving Him our poverty and inadequacy. 

She, in fact, would say that nothing pleases Him more, because in such moments, we give God a free hand to work and act in us. 

What we most fear and resist on a human level, namely the Cross, actually becomes our salvation, if we have the grace to accept and embrace it.

Small sacrifices, each an opportunity to offer ourselves to the Lord 

St. Thérèse wanted to do bold and noble deeds — evangelize distant countries, offer her life as a martyr, and even imagined what being a priest must be like, but realized that, as a cloistered nun, all these doors were closed to her. 

So, she took her limitations, littleness, poverty, and inadequacy and offered it all to the Lord in a blazing act of self-oblation. 

She seized the small opportunities for love, service, and sacrifice that life offered her and turned them into spiritual treasures. 

How paradoxical, in a Gospel-like way, that this young woman who never left the confines of her monastery and died at 24, has had more spiritual influence and global impact than most martyrs, priests, and missionaries in the entire history of the Church!

St. Thérèse boldly predicted that she would become a saint! Such astonishing confidence easily sounds like boastful arrogance until we understand that she could only think such a wondrous thing because she had absolute trust in the Lord, solely relying on His mercy, power, and graciousness. 

In and of ourselves, we are nothing, but with God as our Champion and Savior, and we as His beloved, trusting children, He can do anything. 

Lifted up to the heights

St. Thérèse lived during the time of many technological innovations at the end of the nineteenth century, including the elevator. 

She used this image to illustrate how the Lord would lead her home to heaven. “The elevator which must raise me to heaven is your arms, O Jesus! And for this, I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more.” 

Our enterprising and hard-working American spirit can lead us to think that our spiritual growth towards holiness is all on us. If we just pray harder, do more good works, offer another novena, muscle our way through life, we will achieve sanctity. 

We must always do our part, of course, in the practice of our Faith, but, in the end, the Lord accomplishes His work of salvation and sanctification in us. We do not achieve or create sainthood for ourselves. 

If there is any measure of God’s love and grace present and working in us, it is only because He wills it and we have allowed Him to accomplish it.

St. Thérèse shows us to never lose hope or trust in the Lord. When we confide in His power and mercy, we can boldly advance along the way of salvation, knowing that Christ has already gained the victory for us. 

So, when our problems pile up, when we feel the weight of sorrow and grief, when our abilities and resources feel like a bucket of water in the midst of a forest fire, like St. Thérèse, we can push the button of the Lord’s elevator in prayerful boldness and let Him lift us to the heights.