Friday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Year of Saint Joseph

Year of the Family "Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love"

Saint: Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, Virgin, Doctor (1873-1897)

Readings of the Day

RB: Ch 7:34 Humility

Mass: Baruch 1:15-22; Resp Ps 79; Lk 10:13-16

Unless you turn and become like children you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.

JESUS DOES NOT ASK FOR GREAT DEEDS, BUT ONLY FOR GRATITUDE AND SELF-SURRENDER.

(Saint Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, Chapter XI)

We commemorate a remarkable saint today in Saint Therese of Lisieux, also known as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, or the Little Flower . If you can get your hands on her The Story of a Soul, do so and give it a try. I am just going through Chapter XI, "A Canticle of Love" this morning. It is there will you find the Little Flower wanting to and giving all of herself to Jesus. Therese was not about to settle for mediocrity. She felt "called to the Priesthood and to the Apostolate"; she would "be a Martyr, a Doctor of the Church." She wanted to "accomplish the most heroic deeds-the spirit of the Crusader burns within me, and I long to die on the field of battle in defence of Holy Church." Saint Therese continued, "With St. Agnes and St. Cecilia I would offer my neck to the sword of the executioner, and like Joan of Arc I would murmur the name of Jesus at the stake." She goes on, you will see. However, Saint Therese does come to a conclusion after meditating on the 12th and 13th chapters of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, namely that she couldn't do everything. It was charity that provided her with the key to her vocation. She wrote this, maybe one of the most well-known quotations from her: "Then, beside myself with joy, I cried out: 'O Jesus, my Love, at last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love! Yes, I have found my place in the bosom of the Church, and this place, O my God, Thou hast Thyself given to me: in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be LOVE! ... Thus I shall be all things: thus will my dream be realised ... " 

May we be about LOVE too, for without it we are merely resounding gongs or clashing cymbals (1 Cor 13:1). Somehow I think Saint Therese is pleased with how Pope Francis began his 2018 Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate On the Call to Holiness (1):

The Lord asks everything of us, and in return He offers us true life, the happiness for which we were created. He wants us to be saints and not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence.

JESUS EST MON UNIQUE AMOUR.

Jesus is my only love.

(Etching in Therese of Lisieux's cell)

SAINT THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS,

SAINT JOSEPH,

PRAY FOR US.

Today's photo: An alcove in the chapel at Queen of Angels Monastery, Mt. Angel, OR.

© Gertrude Feick 2021