St. Theresa, Little Flower

St. Theresa, Little Flower
Betsy McKenzie

There are few joys like
The slow, sweet consciousness
Of being in the right place.
Giving yourself, in faith and trust
To the hand that made us all,
To keep, to place, to have you
For an instrument of love.
Knowing it is not, ever,
The big or grand gestures that matter.
It is doing the little things,
Every day, with complete care,
Pouring out through your self,
God’s caring on a weary world.

February 21, 2006


The image is a photograph of St. Therese of Lisieux at her death in 1897. According to the website which is the source link:

The exterior events of her short life are soon told. She never did anything extraordinary, but did perform every element of the austere Carmelite regime extraordinarily well. She never held important responsibility, but was assistant to the novice mistress from 1893. (snip) It is likely that she would have been unknown if she had not, under obedience, written a short spiritual autobiography called L'Histoire d'une Âme (The Story of a Soul), edited by her sister. (snip) The special appeal of her cult lies in her extreme artless simplicity with her apparent sweetness. To the more discerning, it is clear that her message is very close to that of the Gospels which she so frequently cited, and that, carried to its logical conclusion, it requires very great courage and self-sacrifice, in which she excelled, for its realization. The way of simple, self-forgetful but complete obedience which she recommended is a more taxing undertaking than that of artificial use of exterior instruments of mortification which she rejected.