Homily | October 1, 2026 | If I Avoid Scripture I The Little Way (Episode 291)

There are saints we admire from a distance, and then there are saints people seem to fall in love with.

Saint Therese of Lusseux is one of those saints.

Today the church celebrates her feast day.

More than a century after her death, people still read her.

They seek her intercession.

Churches are named after her.

Statues of her are everywhere.

People who know very little about Catholicism somehow know the little flower.

That's strange when you think about it.

She died at twenty four.

She was a cloistered Carmelite nun.

She never founded a religious order, she never established a university, she never wrote a great theological treatise, she never traveled to the missions.

She spent most of her adult life behind the walls of a convent in a small town in France.

And yet the church eventually declares her a young woman, a doctor of the church, patroness of the missions.

Why?

What did Therese discover that continues to speak to millions of people?

Well, I think we sometimes misunderstand her because we make her too sweet.

We surround her with the roses, we call her the little flower, we reduce her spirituality to doing little things with great love.

All of that is true, but beneath it is something much more radical.

Therese discovered what to do when you finally realize I cannot make myself perfect.

That is where her spirituality begins.

Most of us begin the spiritual life thinking holiness means climbing.

I'm gonna pray more, become more disciplined, conquer my weaknesses, overcome my sins, become more patient, more generous, more holy, and slowly I will climb the mountain towards God.

Therese wanted holiness too, but she became painfully aware of her littleness.

She saw her weaknesses, her limitations, her inability to become the great saint she desired to be by sheer effort, and instead of becoming discouraged, she became extraordinary in the way she discovered God.

If I cannot climb to God, God can come down to me.

That's the little way.

It's not spiritual laziness, it's not mediocrity, it is certainly not saying I am imperfect so it doesn't matter how I live.

It's the opposite.

Therese understood that holiness is ultimately not something we manufacture.

Holiness is something God accomplishes in us when we surrender ourselves to grace.

She lived in a time when elevators were becoming a symbol of modern invention, and she used that image for the spiritual life.

She wanted an elevator that could lift her to Jesus.

She discovered that the elevator was not some new spiritual technique, it was the arms of Jesus Himself.

Think about what she's saying.

My weakness does not frighten God.

My littleness does not disappoint God.

My inability to save myself is not the end of the spiritual life.

It may actually be the beginning.

Because Christianity is not primarily the story of humanity climbing its way towards God.

Christianity is the astonishing story of God coming down to us, to Bethlehem, the incarnation, the cross, the Eucharist.

God keeps descending.

And Therese understood the logic of it.

If God descends, then perhaps holiness begins not with me pretending to be strong, but with me becoming small enough to be carried.

That's very different from the way the world teaches us to live.

The world says prove yourself, build yourself, promote yourself, make yourself important, show everyone what you've accomplished.

Therese says become little.

Not childish, little.

There's a difference.

A child knows something adults spend years trying to forget.

I cannot do everything myself.

And perhaps that explains why Terez remains so attractive.

Because eventually life humbles every single one of us.

Eventually you discover that you cannot control everything.

You cannot fix everyone.

You cannot guarantee your health, you cannot prevent every tragedy, you cannot undo your past, you cannot make everybody love you, you cannot even overcome every weakness by sheer determination.

Eventually you will discover your littleness.

And when that happens, there are two possibilities.

We can either despair or we can become like Therese.

We can place our littleness into the hands of God.

There's another side of Therese people sometimes miss.

Her faith was not always emotionally easy.

Near the end of her life, while she was dying from tuberculosis, she experienced a profound darkness of faith.

The saint we associate with childlike trust did not spend her final months floating in spiritual consolation.

She knew darkness.

She was suffering.

She knew what it was like to feel the certainty and the sweetness she had one experienced, and then she knew what that felt like when it wasn't there.

And still she chose to trust.

That changes the meaning of her little way.

Trust is easy when you can see it.

Terez teaches us to trust when you can't.

Love is easy when you feel love.

Terez teaches us to love when the feeling disappears.

Faith is easy when God seems close.

Terez teaches us what faith can look like when God seems silent.

This is not childish spirituality.

This is real mature Christianity.

And perhaps that's why the church calls her a doctor.

She discovered something enormous while remaining very small.

God does not love some future perfected vision of yourself.

No, God loves you right now.

And his love is not the prize you receive when you finally become holy.

His love is the grace that makes holiness possible.

And that changes everything.

We spend so much of our lives saying, When I finally get myself together, then I'll come closer to God.

When I overcome this sin, when I become more disciplined, when my prayer life gets better, when I become the person I'm supposed to be, then I will really belong to God.

Therese reverses that she says, Come now, weak, imperfect, empty handed, let yourself be loved, and then allow the love to transform you.

Maybe that's why more than a century later people still love this young Carmelite nun from Lisiu.

Not because she made holiness sentimental, she made holiness possible.

She took it out of the hands of spiritual superheroes and returned it to ordinary people, to be to the impatient, to the struggling, to the anxious, to the person who keeps beginning again, to people like us.

You do not have to become great enough for God.

You have to become small enough to let God be great in you.

And perhaps that's the little way.

Not climbing higher and higher until finally we reach God, but opening our arms empty handed and discovering that all along God has been coming down to carry you.

Amen.