GREAT LOVE IN LITTLE THINGS


SAINT THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS, VIRGIN, DOCTOR

Job 42:1-3,5-6,12-17; Ps 119:66,71,75,91,125,130; Lk 10:17-24

The Joy of the Beloved

Knowing God's love for us is at the centre of our Christian spirituality and journey. This love is expressed in God the Father’s gift of his Son to be our Saviour, the sacrifice that takes away our sins. The Son’s love for us is evident in his obedience to the Father, accepting to become man in humility, even to the point of accepting death on the cross to save us and join us to himself. The Holy Spirit’s love for us makes him dwell in the Son's humanity and in all of us who believe in his saving death. The whole creation, by the Triune God, shows the same love of God. God made all things for our good and to lead us to comprehend his love and ascend to the divine presence. We have also contemplated God’s love in our celebrations of the angels: the archangels and the guardian angels. All these revelations and celebrations ought to inflame our hearts with love for God.

These various forms of God’s love for us ought to keep our minds focused on God and our hearts aflame with his love as we go through the purifying and transformative trials of our daily lives. The story of Job offers us an example. Though sorely tried, he kept his mind on God and his heart burning with God’s love. Not having the example of the Son of Man, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, his knowledge, love, and praise of God’s justice, mercy, and love fell short of expectation. For this, God gently reprimanded him. Job admits of his fault in the face of God’s gentle rebuke. “I know that you are all-powerful: what you conceive, you can perform. I am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words. I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge.” Our faith in the Son of Man gives us deeper insight into human life than Job, for it affords us experience of God's love. So, our Lord commends us to rejoice in our faith and the eternal life it offers. “Yes, I have given you power to tread underfoot serpents and scorpions and the whole strength of the enemy; nothing shall ever hurt you. Yet do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you; rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” This should be the cause of our daily rejoicing.

As man, Jesus Christ rejoiced greatly in knowledge of the Father’s love for him and for all who believe in his name and profess him as their Saviour. “It was then that, filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, he said: ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do.” The same joy fuelled his will, in union with his love for the Father, to go through his passion and death for us. Our Lord confirms that Job did not have this privilege when he said: “Happy the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.” How privileged we are to receive the gift of faith in Jesus Christ.

Her discovery of the Father’s love for us, expressed through the Son’s life, passion, and death, filled Saint Therese of the Child Jesus with love for God. It enabled her to endure every trial of her life with equanimity. Marie-Françoise-Thérèse was born in Alençon, France, on 2 January 1873. The death of her mother from breast cancer caused them to move to Lisieux. She became a nun at the Carmelite convent there at 15, after overcoming the superior’s resistance, who insisted on 16 or 21 as the age of entry. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. When her memoirs, written under obedience, were published a year later, they brought Saint Therese’s life and teaching to the public. The accompanying miracles proved the authenticity of her love for God and the lesson she wanted us to learn thereof. She was canonized in 1925, exempted from the usual 50-year-after-death requirement. To a Jesuit priest who advised her to moderate her desire to love God, she had replied: “Why, Father? Since our Lord has said, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Therese did not moderate her love for God, but let it permeate and direct everything she did. That is her little way: doing the little things with extraordinary love for God.

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. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.        

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GOD IS LOVE

Image
SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS   Deut 7:6-11; Ps 103:1-4,6-8,10; 1 Jn 4:7-16; Mt 11:25-30 Great Things hidden from the Wise We celebrate the solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ is a mystery, as coming from the mystery of the Son of Man. The human heart of Jesus Christ is a symbol and reality of the love of the Son of Man for his brothers and sisters. It is a human representation of the heart or love of the Son of God for us, his own people and creatures. As he revealed in Heb 2:14, that he took on our nature, that he may share everything in common with us. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death.” The Father brought us into existence to be the inheritance and the companions of His Beloved Son. The love of the Son for his own could not let him be, but made him take on our nature and appear among ...
Read more

CALLED TO KNOW AND PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL

Image
THE CONVERSION SAINT PAUL, APOSTLE Acts 22:3-16; Ps 117; Mk 16:15-18 Proclamation of the Gospel of the New Covenant Celebrating the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul brings us to a deeper reflection on the meaning and implication of the new covenant in Jesus Christ. As Paul himself narrated in the first reading to his people in Jerusalem, he was so zealous in the practice of Judaism, the religion of his fathers, that his eyes were closed to the new realities and relations God had brought into existence. Though these new realities and relations were prophesied by the prophets and the Law pointed to them, Paul and many of his contemporaries were blind to them. His words are: “I am a Jew and was born at Tarsus in Cilicia. I was brought up here in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was taught the exact observance of the Law of our ancestors. In fact, I was as full of duty towards God as you are today.” These words of Paul testify that zeal without the knowledge of the will o...
Read more

ESTABLISHING OURSELVES IN HIS PRESENCE

Image
THE 6TH DAY OF OCTAVE OF CHRISTMAS     1 Jn 2:12-17; Ps 96:7-10; Lk 2:36-40 Recognising the Incarnate Word for Self The Church, in the opening prayer, prays for the new revelation of God in the flesh to commence its purpose of setting us free from the bondage of sin and servitude to evil. The fact of the Incarnation means that human nature is redeemed in principle, by God joining it to the Eternal Word in a hypostatic union. The Lamb, the Word in human flesh, is already sacrificed to God, waiting for the consummation of the sacrifice on Calvary. Thus, He already started the work of redemption in principle, each of us must now appropriate the result of the redemption. The purpose of his appearance in human flesh is that he may enter our minds as God, who created us in love. He comes to receive us back into his company; this requires he enters the temple within each of us. We must recognise what he has already done for the love of us and respond in a similar gesture b...
Read more