St. Therese of Lisieux teaches us to accept God in our weakness
Readings for the 27th Sunday OT
The children come to Jesus. In ancient times, children were not valued like they are today. A child was not considered a person until they were grown. Essentially, children were nobodies. They were not to be seen. They were not to be heard. This is why the disciples react so strongly to children coming to Jesus. They were crossing a serious social boundary. Jesus not only wants the children to come to him, but he also accepts them and rebukes his disciples.
If being a child in ancient times was to be a nobody, Jesus calls his disciples to let go of trying to be somebody – gain importance, assert their egos – and accept being a nobody. St. Therese of Lisieux is a premier example of being a nobody for God. Before the book Story of A Soul, which popularized St. Therese, she was an ordinary and unknown French nun. She was born and died in Lisieux, France, a rather out-of-the-way little town. And she died at twenty-four, a young woman in a very patriarchal world.
Yet the inner life of St. Therese was vibrant. She discovered that the way to being holy was found in littleness, in being a nobody or a child: “I see it is sufficient to recognize one’s nothingness and to abandon oneself as a child into God’s arms.” This involves turning away from oneself as a center of interest to adore God: “One has only to love Him, without looking at one’s self, without examining one’s faults too much.” Contrary to the disciples' desire for greatness, St. Therese writes, “To reach perfection, I do not need to grow up. On the contrary, I need to stay little, to become more and more little.” Being a little nobody is a means of self-denial, but not for any masochistic reasons. It is solely to adore God.
St. Therese teaches us God alone is our holiness. We do not have to expect perfect lives of holiness from ourselves! She advises us to surrender when we feel weak and helpless. And accepting our weakness and failure allows us to take the focus off ourselves and let God’s mercy into our hearts. St. Therese came to a profound insight: we cannot change ourselves, but God can and will. All we need to do is surrender in loving trust to God.
So, welcome experiences of weakness because they are more opportunities to open to God in simple trust. We cannot be big in God’s presence. We must be little. We must recognize our own nothingness—not because we are inherently bad, but because recognizing we are poor and in need forces us to go to God and trust in the Infinite Divine Mercy.
God loves our littleness. Just like a father loves his helpless infant son, God loves us. God is attracted to our powerlessness! Therese calls us to surrender, to accept our weaknesses as experiences of divine mercy. She assures us God’s mercy in Christ will lift us up.
The last session of the Synod on Synodality opens this month and lasts the whole of it. For the past three years, the Church has reflected on the road ahead and the way to be Church in this new time. This culminated in the first session of the synod, when bishops, priests, and laypeople gathered at the Vatican to deepen these conversations and identify the most salient issues. The same people will gather again in Rome this October to refine those reflections. Then, they will present their conclusions to Pope Francis, and he will issue a papal teaching. This teaching, possibly in the form of an Apostolic Exhortation, could result in changes.
Whatever happens, and I would not expect any major changes, the result of the synod will be a reminder that the Church is about relationships: our relationship with God and each other, with the poor and people who do not share our faith. And relationships in a Gospel key require a healthy amount of listening. To listen with authenticity is to be childlike. To respond with compassion and gentleness is also childlike. St. Therese was clearly practicing the basic synodal way long before Pope Francis convened the Church in a Synod.