DAILY BYTE
This week we have looked at the lives of different women who each in their own way have been heroines of faith. One of the things that St. Therese, Dorothy Day, Penny Lernoux and Anne Frank had in common was their writing. Indeed, it was through their writings that we have been drawn into their world of faith. As we bring this week’s devotions to a close, we do so with the story of a woman who was unable to read or write. Yet in spite of her illiteracy, her life story was written with great courage and faithfulness.
HARRIET TUBMAN (c.1820 – 1913)
Harriet Tubman was an African-American woman born into slavery on a plantation in Maryland around 1820. Growing up she experienced the typical cruelties and indignities of slavery, but a fervent faith in God convinced her of her worth and of God’s intention that she should be free.
Robert Ellsberg writes, “It is one of the miracles of Christian history that African slaves, having received a false gospel from their “Christian” slavemasters, nevertheless heard in the biblical story a message of life and liberation. The slavemasters’ teaching stressed the virtue of obedience and counseled slaves to be content with their lot. But the slaves heard a different message. The God of the Bible was the God who led Moses and the Hebrew slaves out of bondage in Egypt, who inspired the prophets, and who was incarnate in Jesus Christ. This was not the god of the slavemasters, but the God of the oppressed.”
Harriet Tubman enjoyed a special relationship with God. In 1849 she had a vision that she interpreted as a signal from God for her to begin her escape. Although small in stature, she was a remarkably strong and resourceful woman. Using all her skills she made a daring escape into the free state of Pennsylvania. But at once she was seized by a sense of wider mission. She said, “I had crossed the line. I was FREE; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land; and my home, after all, was in Maryland…. But I was free and THEY should be free. I would make a home in the North and bring them there, God helping me.”
And so, having made her perilous way to freedom, Harriet Tubman chose to return to the South to assist in the escape of others living in slavery. Over the next twelve years she returned a total of 19 times to “Pharaoh’s Land”, in the process rescuing at least 300 slaves and earning the nickname “Moses”.
Among slave owners she became one of the most hated figures in the South. A fantastic price was put on her head and wanted posters of her were widely circulated. More than once her cunning and her unassuming appearance saved her from being caught. The “Moses” of the wanted posters was imagined to be a person of impressive features and stature – probably even a man – and certainly not a scrawny, gap-toothed woman.
After the Civil War and the emancipation of all slaves, she continued to provide shelter and care to poor blacks, well into her old age. She lived into her nineties and died peacefully on 10 March 1913.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Thank you Lord for the stories of others that can inspire us to live more selfless and faithful lives. And thank you that you are a God who chooses to use ordinary people like us, in the messy circumstances of our everyday lives, to fulfil your loving purposes for all the world. Amen.
FOCUS READING
2 Corinthians 3:3 (The Message)
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.
Two quotes from Mother Theresa:
“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”
“In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”
This week’s devotions were written by Rev Roger Scholtz of the Manning Road Methodist Church in Durban. Comments and feedback can be e-mailed to bdc@mrmc.co.za
Friday, 30 April 2010
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Heroines of Faith - Part 4
DAILY BYTE
ANNE FRANK (1929 – 1945)
The story of Anne Frank is fairly well known. She was a Jewish girl who perished during the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazi’s. Yet her great gift was to maintain a candlelight of humanity in a dark age and so guarantee that darkness should not have the final word.
During the Nazi occupation of Holland, Anne’s family and another – the Van Daams – went into hiding in a secret annex in her father’s office in the centre of Amsterdam. With the help and support of Dutch friends, they remained undetected for two years, before being betrayed in 1944 and dispersed to the Nazi death camps.
It was during the time of hiding in Amsterdam that Anne started to keep a diary. For her it was not simply a distraction but a responsibility to record her experiences and feelings as accurately as possible. In the early pages of her diary she wrote, “I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.” What emerged were remarkable insights on the meaning of life and faith in the face of adversity.
If we remember that this fourteen-year-old girl spent two years in a confined space with seven other people, with a death sentence hanging over their heads, her capacity to see beyond the horror of their immediate circumstances is astonishing indeed. Every evening she would finish her prayers with the words, “I thank you God for all that is good and dear and beautiful. I am filled with joy. I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
On another occasion she wrote, “I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion. I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage. If God lets me live…I shall not remain insignificant, I shall work in the world and for mankind! And now I know that first and foremost I shall require courage and cheerfulness.”
It is an excruciating thought that this remarkable young life was cut down so soon by such evil designs. But in the light of her tragic fate there is even more poignancy and power in these words written just days before her arrest: “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart…. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right…. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”
PRAY AS YOU GO
Help me today, dear God, to look beyond the hardships and miseries of my life and our world, to see the beauty of your presence and the wonder of your grace. Amen.
FOCUS READING
2 Corinthians 3:3-6 (The Message & CEV)
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.
We are sure about all this. Christ makes us sure in the very presence of God. We don't have the right to claim that we have done anything on our own. God gives us what it takes to do all that we do. His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn't written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!
ANNE FRANK (1929 – 1945)
The story of Anne Frank is fairly well known. She was a Jewish girl who perished during the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazi’s. Yet her great gift was to maintain a candlelight of humanity in a dark age and so guarantee that darkness should not have the final word.
During the Nazi occupation of Holland, Anne’s family and another – the Van Daams – went into hiding in a secret annex in her father’s office in the centre of Amsterdam. With the help and support of Dutch friends, they remained undetected for two years, before being betrayed in 1944 and dispersed to the Nazi death camps.
It was during the time of hiding in Amsterdam that Anne started to keep a diary. For her it was not simply a distraction but a responsibility to record her experiences and feelings as accurately as possible. In the early pages of her diary she wrote, “I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.” What emerged were remarkable insights on the meaning of life and faith in the face of adversity.
If we remember that this fourteen-year-old girl spent two years in a confined space with seven other people, with a death sentence hanging over their heads, her capacity to see beyond the horror of their immediate circumstances is astonishing indeed. Every evening she would finish her prayers with the words, “I thank you God for all that is good and dear and beautiful. I am filled with joy. I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
On another occasion she wrote, “I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion. I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage. If God lets me live…I shall not remain insignificant, I shall work in the world and for mankind! And now I know that first and foremost I shall require courage and cheerfulness.”
It is an excruciating thought that this remarkable young life was cut down so soon by such evil designs. But in the light of her tragic fate there is even more poignancy and power in these words written just days before her arrest: “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart…. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right…. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”
PRAY AS YOU GO
Help me today, dear God, to look beyond the hardships and miseries of my life and our world, to see the beauty of your presence and the wonder of your grace. Amen.
FOCUS READING
2 Corinthians 3:3-6 (The Message & CEV)
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.
We are sure about all this. Christ makes us sure in the very presence of God. We don't have the right to claim that we have done anything on our own. God gives us what it takes to do all that we do. His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn't written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Heroines of Faith - Part 3
DAILY BYTE
This week we’re looking at some recent heroines of faith. Yesterday we reflected on the life of Dorothy Day, who through her work as a journalist on a religious newspaper found a way to connect her faith with the social issues of her day and her particular concern for the needs and the plight of the poor. Today we look at another journalist we made a similar journey of awakening, but in a vastly different context.
PENNY LERNOUX (1940 – 1989)
In sharing Penny Lernoux’s story let me start by quoting Robert Ellsberg, who writes, “In the 1970’s Christians around the world became aware of two extraordinary and related stories unfolding in Latin America. One was about the spread of terror and repression wrought by brutal military dictatorships throughout the continent. The other story concerned the transformation of the Latin American church. Traditionally a conservative institution allied with the rich and powerful, the church was being renewed as a prophetic force, a champion of human rights and the cause of the poor. These stories converged in the imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom of countless Christians, guilty only of professing the gospel message of justice and peace.
One woman who helped to tell these stories was Penny Lernoux, an American journalist based in Latin America…. She had drifted away from the church, disillusioned in part by its conservatism and seeming irrelevance. In the early 1970’s, however, she came into contact with priests and missioners who were living out a different model of the church in solidarity with the poor. The encounter renewed her faith at the same time as it affected her mission as a journalist. As she later wrote,
‘It was through them that I became aware of and entered into another world – not that of the US Embassy or the upper classes, which comprise the confines of most American journalists, but the suffering and hopeful world of the slums and peasant villages. The experience changed my life, giving me new faith and a commitment as a writer to tell the truth of the poor to the best of my ability.’”
In her willingness to see in a new way, and in her courage to tell the truth of what she saw, she became a voice of the voiceless and a hero to many who depended on her to reveal the truth of what was happening to them. Her critique extended not only to the political systems in Latin America, but also to the hypocrisy evident in the institutional church. For this she faced opposition, disparagement and condemnation, yet remained resolute in her commitment to speak out in the name of truth, however uncomfortable that may have been for her.
She died on 8 October 1989, one month after being diagnosed with cancer. Two weeks before her death she wrote, “I feel like I’m walking down a new path. It’s not physical fear or fear of death, because the courageous poor in Latin America have taught me a theology of life that, through solidarity and our common struggle, transcends death. Rather, it is a sense of helplessness – that I who always wanted to be the champion of the poor am just as helpless – that I, too, must hold out my begging bowl; that I must learn – am learning – the ultimate powerlessness of Christ. It is a cleansing experience. So many things seem less important, or not at all.”
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, open my eyes that I may truly see, and my mouth that I may truly speak, and let me be a faithful witness to your truth, whatever the cost of that may be. Amen.
FOCUS READING
John 8:32
Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free!”
This week we’re looking at some recent heroines of faith. Yesterday we reflected on the life of Dorothy Day, who through her work as a journalist on a religious newspaper found a way to connect her faith with the social issues of her day and her particular concern for the needs and the plight of the poor. Today we look at another journalist we made a similar journey of awakening, but in a vastly different context.
PENNY LERNOUX (1940 – 1989)
In sharing Penny Lernoux’s story let me start by quoting Robert Ellsberg, who writes, “In the 1970’s Christians around the world became aware of two extraordinary and related stories unfolding in Latin America. One was about the spread of terror and repression wrought by brutal military dictatorships throughout the continent. The other story concerned the transformation of the Latin American church. Traditionally a conservative institution allied with the rich and powerful, the church was being renewed as a prophetic force, a champion of human rights and the cause of the poor. These stories converged in the imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom of countless Christians, guilty only of professing the gospel message of justice and peace.
One woman who helped to tell these stories was Penny Lernoux, an American journalist based in Latin America…. She had drifted away from the church, disillusioned in part by its conservatism and seeming irrelevance. In the early 1970’s, however, she came into contact with priests and missioners who were living out a different model of the church in solidarity with the poor. The encounter renewed her faith at the same time as it affected her mission as a journalist. As she later wrote,
‘It was through them that I became aware of and entered into another world – not that of the US Embassy or the upper classes, which comprise the confines of most American journalists, but the suffering and hopeful world of the slums and peasant villages. The experience changed my life, giving me new faith and a commitment as a writer to tell the truth of the poor to the best of my ability.’”
In her willingness to see in a new way, and in her courage to tell the truth of what she saw, she became a voice of the voiceless and a hero to many who depended on her to reveal the truth of what was happening to them. Her critique extended not only to the political systems in Latin America, but also to the hypocrisy evident in the institutional church. For this she faced opposition, disparagement and condemnation, yet remained resolute in her commitment to speak out in the name of truth, however uncomfortable that may have been for her.
She died on 8 October 1989, one month after being diagnosed with cancer. Two weeks before her death she wrote, “I feel like I’m walking down a new path. It’s not physical fear or fear of death, because the courageous poor in Latin America have taught me a theology of life that, through solidarity and our common struggle, transcends death. Rather, it is a sense of helplessness – that I who always wanted to be the champion of the poor am just as helpless – that I, too, must hold out my begging bowl; that I must learn – am learning – the ultimate powerlessness of Christ. It is a cleansing experience. So many things seem less important, or not at all.”
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, open my eyes that I may truly see, and my mouth that I may truly speak, and let me be a faithful witness to your truth, whatever the cost of that may be. Amen.
FOCUS READING
John 8:32
Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free!”
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Heroines of Faith - Part 2
DAILY BYTE
This week we’re hearing the stories of five women of faith, who can challenge and encourage us in the living of our lives.
DOROTHY DAY (1897 – 1980)
In the year that Therese of Lisieux died, Dorothy Day was born in New York City. Growing up she had little exposure to religion, and by the time she was in college had totally rejected Christianity. Her friends and social circle comprised an odd assortment of communists, anarchists, artists and intellectuals, most of whom accepted Karl Marx’s dictum that “religion was the opium of the people.”
At the age of 29 she had a child with a man she deeply loved, and this sparked a mysterious conversion for her. She became aware of the aimlessness of her Bohemian existence and so committed both herself and her child to God. A painful consequence of this was the end of her common-law marriage, as the man she loved had no use for marriage or God. She also suffered from a sense that her conversion was a betrayal of the cause of the poor, as the church seemed to her to identify more with those in positions of power and privilege. She spent some lonely years in the wilderness, raising her child alone, praying for some way of reconciling her faith and her commitment to social justice.
The answer came in 1932 when she was encouraged to start a newspaper that would offer a radical Gospel critique of the social system and stand in solidarity with the working class. The ‘Catholic Worker’ was launched on May 1, 1933 – a publication that sought not only to denounce injustice, but also to announce a new social order based on the recognition of Christ in one’s neighbours.
In an effort to practice what they preached Dorothy Day converted the offices of the ‘Catholic Worker’ into a house of hospitality – the first of many – offering food for the hungry and shelter for the tired masses uprooted by the Depression. This became part of her enduring legacy as she continued to live out the implications of the gospel with great courage and often at great cost.
Her favourite saint was Therese of Lisieux (whom we looked at yesterday) whose “little way” indicated the path to holiness within all the business of our daily lives. From Therese, Dorothy Day drew the insight that any act of love might contribute to the balance of love in the world, and any suffering endured in love might ease the burden of others. But when people referred to her as a saint she would reply, “Don’t dismiss me that easily!” She wanted ordinary people to take the challenge of her life seriously, for she ardently believed that the challenge of the gospel was not for a few select “saints” but for everybody.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O Lord, we are all called to live extraordinary lives. And by your grace we can do so when we dare to take the challenge of the gospel seriously, and to express it in our daily lives. Strengthen us for this high calling we pray. Amen.
FOCUS READING
2 Corinthians 3:3-6 (The Message & CEV)
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives - and we publish it.
We are sure about all this. Christ makes us sure in the very presence of God. We don't have the right to claim that we have done anything on our own. God gives us what it takes to do all that we do. His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn't written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!
This week we’re hearing the stories of five women of faith, who can challenge and encourage us in the living of our lives.
DOROTHY DAY (1897 – 1980)
In the year that Therese of Lisieux died, Dorothy Day was born in New York City. Growing up she had little exposure to religion, and by the time she was in college had totally rejected Christianity. Her friends and social circle comprised an odd assortment of communists, anarchists, artists and intellectuals, most of whom accepted Karl Marx’s dictum that “religion was the opium of the people.”
At the age of 29 she had a child with a man she deeply loved, and this sparked a mysterious conversion for her. She became aware of the aimlessness of her Bohemian existence and so committed both herself and her child to God. A painful consequence of this was the end of her common-law marriage, as the man she loved had no use for marriage or God. She also suffered from a sense that her conversion was a betrayal of the cause of the poor, as the church seemed to her to identify more with those in positions of power and privilege. She spent some lonely years in the wilderness, raising her child alone, praying for some way of reconciling her faith and her commitment to social justice.
The answer came in 1932 when she was encouraged to start a newspaper that would offer a radical Gospel critique of the social system and stand in solidarity with the working class. The ‘Catholic Worker’ was launched on May 1, 1933 – a publication that sought not only to denounce injustice, but also to announce a new social order based on the recognition of Christ in one’s neighbours.
In an effort to practice what they preached Dorothy Day converted the offices of the ‘Catholic Worker’ into a house of hospitality – the first of many – offering food for the hungry and shelter for the tired masses uprooted by the Depression. This became part of her enduring legacy as she continued to live out the implications of the gospel with great courage and often at great cost.
Her favourite saint was Therese of Lisieux (whom we looked at yesterday) whose “little way” indicated the path to holiness within all the business of our daily lives. From Therese, Dorothy Day drew the insight that any act of love might contribute to the balance of love in the world, and any suffering endured in love might ease the burden of others. But when people referred to her as a saint she would reply, “Don’t dismiss me that easily!” She wanted ordinary people to take the challenge of her life seriously, for she ardently believed that the challenge of the gospel was not for a few select “saints” but for everybody.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O Lord, we are all called to live extraordinary lives. And by your grace we can do so when we dare to take the challenge of the gospel seriously, and to express it in our daily lives. Strengthen us for this high calling we pray. Amen.
FOCUS READING
2 Corinthians 3:3-6 (The Message & CEV)
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives - and we publish it.
We are sure about all this. Christ makes us sure in the very presence of God. We don't have the right to claim that we have done anything on our own. God gives us what it takes to do all that we do. His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn't written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!
Monday, 26 April 2010
Heroines of Faith - Part 1
DAILY BYTE
Last week our theme was ‘Faithful Companions’. We reflected on the people who join us along the journey of life, offering to us strength, encouragement and inspiration to live faithful lives of our own. This week we continue with that broad theme, but in a different way. Over the next five days we will simply hear the stories of five people who, in quite varied ways, have demonstrated a remarkable faithfulness in the living of their lives.
All the stories that have been chosen are of women. Some died very young, others lived long lives. Some lived a long time ago in circumstances vastly different from ours today, others were virtually contemporaries of this generation. But all of them have something significant to say to us today. The invitation this week is for you to simply read and enjoy the stories of these five remarkable women, and then to ask yourself what you can take from the testimony of their lives.
I need to acknowledge a huge debt of gratitude to Robert Ellsberg for many of the biographical details of these women, contained in his outstanding book entitled, ‘All Saints: Daily reflections on saints, prophets and witnesses for our time.’
THERESE OF LISIEUX (1873 – 1897)
The story of Therese would probably never be made into a Hollywood blockbuster, because it is completely lacking in outward drama. When she was 15 years old she entered the convent of Lisieux, a small town in Normandy where she was born. There she remained, cloistered in the convent, until she died of tuberculosis at the young age of 24. One would think that the memory of such a brief and uneventful life would have remained within the walls of the convent. Instead, her name and reputation quickly circled around the world, and within 30 years of her death she was declared a saint by the Catholic Church.
The reason for this remarkable rise to prominence of this obscure young woman lay in the posthumous publication of her autobiography, ‘The Story of a Soul’. It is a compelling account of the path to holiness in everyday life, which immediately struck a responsive chord with the “simple faithful”. In her writings Therese considered herself to be of little account – literally a “Little Flower” – though for this reason no less precious in the eyes of God. She referred to her spiritual path as the Little Way, requiring the continuous offering of simple, childlike acts of faithfulness that were possible for all of God’s “little ones”. But Therese believed that this simple way might transform any situation into a profound arena for holiness, and that through the effect of the subtle ripples of faithful devotion, one might make a significant contribution to transforming the world.
The last years of her short life were filled with great physical suffering as her health deteriorated dramatically. Yet she embraced her condition with joyful grace, demonstrating her conviction that every moment in life, if accepted and lived in a spirit of gratitude and love, is an occasion for heroism and a potential step along the path of holiness. When she died, surrounded by the Sisters of her convent, her last words were, “Oh, I love Him! … My God…I love you.”
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving and gracious God, thank you for the testimony of Therese’s life. Thank you for the reminder that she brings that our faithfulness and love in the small things of life really matter. Thank you that our devotion to you in the relative obscurity of our ordinary, everyday lives can truly become a significant part of your transforming power at work within the world. Like Therese we may simply be “Little Flowers”, but may our lives reflect your beauty and the fragrance of your love, today and every day. Amen.
FOCUS READING
2 Cor 3:3
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives - and we publish it.
Last week our theme was ‘Faithful Companions’. We reflected on the people who join us along the journey of life, offering to us strength, encouragement and inspiration to live faithful lives of our own. This week we continue with that broad theme, but in a different way. Over the next five days we will simply hear the stories of five people who, in quite varied ways, have demonstrated a remarkable faithfulness in the living of their lives.
All the stories that have been chosen are of women. Some died very young, others lived long lives. Some lived a long time ago in circumstances vastly different from ours today, others were virtually contemporaries of this generation. But all of them have something significant to say to us today. The invitation this week is for you to simply read and enjoy the stories of these five remarkable women, and then to ask yourself what you can take from the testimony of their lives.
I need to acknowledge a huge debt of gratitude to Robert Ellsberg for many of the biographical details of these women, contained in his outstanding book entitled, ‘All Saints: Daily reflections on saints, prophets and witnesses for our time.’
THERESE OF LISIEUX (1873 – 1897)
The story of Therese would probably never be made into a Hollywood blockbuster, because it is completely lacking in outward drama. When she was 15 years old she entered the convent of Lisieux, a small town in Normandy where she was born. There she remained, cloistered in the convent, until she died of tuberculosis at the young age of 24. One would think that the memory of such a brief and uneventful life would have remained within the walls of the convent. Instead, her name and reputation quickly circled around the world, and within 30 years of her death she was declared a saint by the Catholic Church.
The reason for this remarkable rise to prominence of this obscure young woman lay in the posthumous publication of her autobiography, ‘The Story of a Soul’. It is a compelling account of the path to holiness in everyday life, which immediately struck a responsive chord with the “simple faithful”. In her writings Therese considered herself to be of little account – literally a “Little Flower” – though for this reason no less precious in the eyes of God. She referred to her spiritual path as the Little Way, requiring the continuous offering of simple, childlike acts of faithfulness that were possible for all of God’s “little ones”. But Therese believed that this simple way might transform any situation into a profound arena for holiness, and that through the effect of the subtle ripples of faithful devotion, one might make a significant contribution to transforming the world.
The last years of her short life were filled with great physical suffering as her health deteriorated dramatically. Yet she embraced her condition with joyful grace, demonstrating her conviction that every moment in life, if accepted and lived in a spirit of gratitude and love, is an occasion for heroism and a potential step along the path of holiness. When she died, surrounded by the Sisters of her convent, her last words were, “Oh, I love Him! … My God…I love you.”
PRAY AS YOU GO
Loving and gracious God, thank you for the testimony of Therese’s life. Thank you for the reminder that she brings that our faithfulness and love in the small things of life really matter. Thank you that our devotion to you in the relative obscurity of our ordinary, everyday lives can truly become a significant part of your transforming power at work within the world. Like Therese we may simply be “Little Flowers”, but may our lives reflect your beauty and the fragrance of your love, today and every day. Amen.
FOCUS READING
2 Cor 3:3
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives - and we publish it.
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