![]() ![]() ![]() Leaving to great souls, to great minds, the beautiful books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet. Then all seems luminous to me a single word uncovers for my soul infinite horizons perfection seems simple I see that it is enough to recognize one’s nothingness and to abandon oneself, like a child, into God’s arms. I close the learned book which is breaking my head and drying up my heart, and I take up Holy Scripture. Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles, surrounded by a crowd of illusions, my poor little mind quickly tires. Shortly before she died at the very young age of 24, she wrote these words in a letter to a Missionary in China: Saint Thérèse has a way of saying things we’ve all thought before (well, maybe not) but have not had the guts to say or the clarity of thought to put it into words. She takes what we all find hard and makes it simple, and she makes you believe that it really is so simple. In the Story of a Soul, her “little way” is as enlightening as it is humbling anyone who reads it can identify with it. For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus. I cannot recite them all, and not knowing which to choose, I do like children who do not know how to read, I say very simply to God what I wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me. There are so many of them it really gives me a headache! And each prayer is more beautiful than the others. I do not have the courage to force myself to search out beautiful prayers in books. Today, she is still teaching us how to pray, through her spiritual masterpiece, Story of a Soul. ![]() She knew more than anyone that the most important thing to do before any task or event, big or small, was to pray. Saint Thérèse, who never left the convent, is the patron saint of missionaries. We have much to learn from this “little” saint. ![]()
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