Finding the ‘Little Way’ of trust and love
Religious Profession of Solemn Vows – Sr Mary Joseph of the Sacred Heart OCD
Sr Mary Joseph, in a few moments you will declare your solemn vows of religious profession. Placing your hands in those of Mother Prioress you will say, “With my whole heart I give myself to this religious institute restored by St Teresa to seek perfect charity in the service of our Mother the Church”.
You embrace the way of life proposed by St Teresa of Avila in her reform of the ancient order of Mount Carmel. And you do so for the sake of the Church, our Mother the Church. As bishop I say, ‘thank you’, firstly, for giving your life to seeking a more intimate union with your Lord, Jesus, and secondly for devoting your life to pray in intercession for the Church and the world.
As you have entered the life of Carmel here in Launceston I am sure that you have been inspired not only by the witness and writings of St Teresa of Avila but also by another, St Therese of Lisieux, whose spirituality has captivated the hearts of so many beyond the walls of Carmel. On this joyful occasion I would like to offer some comments on this inspiring and youthful saint.
This year marks the centenary of her canonisation. Her path to formal recognition by the Church as a saint was relatively quick. She died in 1897 and was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XV in 1921 and she was canonised on 17 May 1925 by Pope Pius XI, one hundred years ago. In 1927 she was given the title, “Patroness of the Missions”. She was declared one of the patron saints of France in 1944. In 1997 St John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church. He said that St Therese was “an expert in the scientia amoris”, the science of love.
This ‘science of love’ found expression in her way of living her consecration striving for the ‘perfect charity’ made in her solemn profession.
St Therese wrote of her path to embody perfect love in what she described as her “little way”, the little way of trust and love. It is this teaching that has become especially associated with her. She offers to all of us, not only contemplative sisters in Carmel, but all of us – clergy and lay people – a way to God via spiritual childhood. This teaching contained in her spiritual autobiography, Story of a Soul.
This spiritual path is, of course, grounded soundly in Sacred Scripture. In Matthew 11:25 we read, “At that time Jesus declared, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to mere children’”. St Therese, in considering herself a mere child, allowed God to reveal Himself to her in a most wonderful fashion. In her childlike trust and surrender she was indeed the beneficiary of many extraordinary graces.
In her spiritual autobiography St Therese tells how she discovered the little way. She wrote, “I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am, with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new”.
To describe that ‘way’, she uses the image of an elevator: “the elevator which must raise me to heaven is your arms, O Jesus! And for this, I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more”. She was content to remain as a little child in her relationship with Jesus.
Here one is reminded of images given to us in the Gospels where Jesus embraced little children. He placed children before his disciples and said, “unless you learn to become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).
St Therese recognised her own littleness in the sight of God. She is content to remain little. She did not aspire to greatness. This is, of course, the nature of the virtue of humility. This virtue was praised by the Lord and he spoke of it as essential if one wishes to embrace true faith in God and enter into the kingdom of Heaven.
St Therese knew that childlike dispositions of heart led her to place her trust and confidence in God and not in herself. She simply longed to be secure in the loving arms of Jesus.
In the face of tendencies that lie within all of us whereby we feel we need to prove ourselves before God by what we do, St Therese speaks of learning to surrender in loving trust into the hands of God. Within the history of the Church there has lurked the old heresy of Pelagianism which tends towards an individualistic and elitist view of being Christian, where holiness is viewed as a personal achievement growing out of ascetic achievement. This is not the truly Christian way and not the way to experience Christian joy in living the way of Christ.
St Therese always stressed the primacy of God’s work, his gift of grace. As a result, she could say: “I always feel, however, the same bold confidence of becoming a great saint, because I don’t count on my merits, since I have none, but I trust in him who is Virtue and Holiness. God alone, content with my weak efforts, will raise me to himself and make me a saint, clothing me in his infinite merits”.
Sr Mary Joseph, on this day when you offer yourself to Jesus in total surrender I pray that St Therese of the Child Jesus would look upon you with great joy and intercede for you that you, too, may discover the beauty and joy of the ‘little way’.
Archbishop Julian Porteous
Monday, 10 February 2025