FINDING PEACE IN GOD'S WORK WITHIN

SAINT THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS, VIRGIN, DOCTOR

Job 19:21-27; Ps 27:7-9,13-14; Lk 10:1-12

Finding the Source of Peace within

We celebrate the memorial of St. Therese of the Child Jesus or St. Therese of Lisieux. The Church in Nigeria moved her memorial from the 1st of October to the 3rd because of the celebration of Our Lady Queen and Patroness of Nigeria. The first reading continues the pliant of Job, who was in bitter spiritual, psychological, emotional, and physical afflictions. His three friends, who came to be with him to console him, added to his afflictions. They unwittingly subjected him to more torture as they insisted on making Job take the blame for the afflictions he was going through in the hands of God. These friends of Job spoke from their little understanding and popular theodicy. They were unfamiliar with the idea of the suffering innocent. In their traditional theodicy, Job must have committed sins against God for him to be suffering such an affliction. It is this their wrong or unrefined theodicy that added moral and psychological torments to his afflictions. “Pity me, pity me, you, my friends, for the hand of God has struck me. Why do you hound me down like God, will you never have enough of my flesh?” His friends’ words were like hounds tearing away his flesh.

But because Job was innocent of sin and free of their accusations, he found spiritual consolation in God, who dwells within the righteous soul. Deep within him, he was sure that God would vindicate his cause. “Ah, would that these words of mine were written down, inscribed on some monument with iron chisel and engraving tool, cut into the rock forever. This I know: that my Avenger lives, and he, the Last, will take his stand on earth.” These words describe the experience of the suffering innocent. They indicate the presence of God in the soul of the afflicted, letting us know that the afflictions are for the perfection of the innocent, which God alone can bring about in a soul. By these deep afflictions, the upright soul proclaims the goodness of God far better than those who go from place to place, as in the Gospel of today. “The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him, in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself was to visit. He said to them, ‘The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest.’”

The Lord of the harvest knows how to channel the works of the labourers for a bountiful harvest. There are those he sends into the field, which is the world, to preach the Gospel and others he retains in one place, who nevertheless make the work of the labourers effective by their afflictions innocently borne. While the labourers in the field are made unto the Son of Man by their itinerant preaching activities, the stationed innocent sufferers of affliction are made unto him in their afflictions patiently endured. St. Therese of the Child Jesus was among the ones configured into Christ the Lord through their afflictions innocently borne for the love of him. Job's words are typical of the confidence of innocent sufferers. “After my awaking, he will set me close to him, and from my flesh I shall look on God. He whom I shall see will take my part: these eyes will gaze on him and find him not aloof.” When the Little Flower of Jesus, as she fondly called herself, discovered the way of love as defining her vocation in God, she found peace in her afflictions. She submitted willingly and eagerly to the purifying hand of God the Father. She attained such purity of soul and penetration of God’s love that she prophesied that miracles would follow her departure. Therese was born in Alencon, France, on the 2nd of January 1873. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. She had no visible sign of holiness that could attract attention; God wrought the exquisite work within and hidden from everyone. She is a doctor of the Church because of her Little Way, which she taught in her memoirs written for her prioress under obedience. The publication of the memoirs after her death started the ‘storm of glory’ of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. Her miracles were so many that the Church fast-tracked her canonization process in 1925. May her prayers help us to love God with everything and in everything.  

Let us pray: O God, who open your Kingdom to those who are humble and to little ones, lead us to follow trustingly in the little way of Saint Therese, so that through her intercession we may see your eternal glory revealed.