Like earthly friends, saints come into our lives in different ways and for different reasons. St. Therese of Lisieux is one of those who’s been a friend for so long that I can hardly point to a time I didn’t know her.
When we were growing up, my parents had a red hardback book that told the story of St. Therese simply and beautifully. I remember sitting and reading and marveling at this little girl who felt so drawn to Jesus. She knew she wanted to join a convent as a cloistered sister, and she asked and asked until she was given permission.
The idea of knowing what you want to do with that much certainty was astounding to me as a child. I was in awe of St. Therese and how she knew her calling with absolute clarity.
Young St. Therese wished she could be like St. Joan of Arc. But she came to see that she had a different role. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate how St. Therese inspires us to be true to ourselves, true to the people God wants us to be. She doesn’t urge us to stretch ourselves or work ourselves to exhaustion. She tells us to talk to God, look inside ourselves, and focus on being our best self.
“The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm,” she says. “If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.”
Being a violet can be appealing in a world that often celebrates the flashier roses. And St. Therese’s greatest gift to me might be her emphasis on “the little way.”
Sometimes it’s hard to see purpose and ministry in packing the same lunches day after day or loading the dishwasher for the zillionth time or waiting in traffic on the way to pick a child up from school.
But St. Therese would nudge us to take on those little actions and see the value and the holiness in that service.
Those aren’t nuisances or interferences with life. Those are our life. Those are our vocation. We are called to fill the dish with birdseed or race to drop off the forgotten laptop at school or lug the groceries in from the car.
Our role is spending time making a dinner that only half the family eats or wiping up the soup that spilled on the floor.
Our purpose is filling out yet another tedious school form and then another and another.
We are called to make the bed and go to the orthodontist and ask again and again whether everyone has finished their homework.
But we are called to do it with holiness, embracing it as our work—service to others. We can find joy and God in even the smallest actions if we remember why we take them on.
“Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God,” St. Therese says. “Do all that you do with love.”
Doing everything with love sounds simple at times and impossible at others. I still grumble and wish the dishwasher would load itself. But I also appreciate St. Therese’s reminder that the little things are the big things, and that we can find holiness in the work that’s right in front of us.
Also listen to this 2021 Catholic Review Radio interview about the “Little Way” and the parents of St. Therese:
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