Today, we celebrate the memorial of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She was a 19th century French Carmelite nun who continues to stun the world with her spirituality, despite having lived on this earth for only 24 years. She is a Doctor of the Catholic church, an amazing feat for one so young.
Most people who know of her seem to know about her Little Way. She longed to become a saint, but realized that she was too little to do great things for the church. She came to understand that she could become a saint by simply performing all of her ordinary tasks with extraordinary love, a way of living that would benefit all of us.
Today I want to focus on her vocation. In her search to understand her calling, she turned to Paul, and she found her answer in the second and third chapters of 1 Corinthians. As she read Paul’s description of the body of Christ, she saw the heart of his body aflame with love. She exclaimed, my vocation is love. I, too, have struggled to find my place in Christ’s body, but when I read these words, I felt my heart well up with joy as I proclaimed, “that is my vocation, too!”
Over the years, I have come to understand more fully the importance of this vocation. God is love and the entire spiritual life is about becoming one with God who is love. 1 John 4:8. It is the only thing that clearly explains why Jesus said that to be his disciple one had to die to self and carry his or her cross. In such practices we become detached from things of the world, we become more open to God’s graces, and more generous and loving towards others. In other words, we become one with God who is love.
The problem with this understanding of spirituality is that human love is far from the selfless, self-giving love exemplified in Jesus. To understand what it means to become love, we need to pour through scripture to see what God says about love. We need to meditate on the ways in which Jesus loved, and learn to emulate his lived example. We can learn a lot by reading the lives of the saints, and learning how they understood this language of love. Moreover, we need the Holy Spirit to be our guiding light as we learn to live, move, and have our being in him who is love. Acts 17:28.
May the Lord, the giver of life, illuminate our minds with this understanding of love, and through this understanding wisely live said love in communion with the other members’ of His body. May our life of love attract others to Him so that they, too, can find their fullness of life in Christ.
In Him,
dw
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