THE LITTLE WAY of Thérèse the Little Flower by Samuel Bastian - HTML preview

CHAPTER V

LOVE

(PART I)

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e now come to the very heart of spiritual childhood. Just a

W stheheartgiveslifetothebody,lovegiveslifetothe soul.

Love animates all the soul’s powers. Without love, our works are dead. With love, they become living and meritorious.

[26] ACT OF OFFERING TO MERCIFUL LOVE, JUNE 9, 1895

We can compare love to sap in a tree. Where the sap flows, there is life. Where it stops, there is death. The richness of the sap shows in the abundance and quality of the fruit.

The life of spiritual childhood is fruitful because love is its sap.

This divine sap constantly bursts forth into flowers and fruits of virtue. In this life, everything is love, comes from love, and returns to love.

°°°

This does not mean other virtues are unimportant. Thérèse practiced them all heroically. But in her soul, love stood out like a queen among her attendants.

Love directed everything. It gave birth to, carried, and nourished all virtues. It inspired every act. Love did not erase the motives of other virtues. It added its own motive, making her whole life one continuous act of love. Her soul was like a garden where all virtues bloomed—but all were flowers of love.

She was humble because she knew her nothingness. But even more, she was humble out of love for Jesus.

She was generous because holiness requires it. But above all, she was generous because love does not count the cost. She practiced renunciation to grow spiritually, but even more to show Jesus her tenderness: “It costs us dearly to give him all he asks, but what joy that it does cost! Let us refuse him nothing.

He so wants our love!”

She trusted because of her weakness, but even more because of her childlike heart. A child loves to trust. “It is my title of child,”

she said, “that gives me all my daring.” [27]

°°°

[27] STORY OF A SOUL: CH 11

Trust leads to abandonment. But love leads to it even more perfectly. In Thérèse, abandonment was love that surrendered without reserve, happy to give itself as proof of tenderness.

When she was young, she offered herself to the Child Jesus as His little plaything—a ball of no value that He could throw, pierce, leave aside, or press to His Heart. [28]

Her motive was not self-interest, but joy for Jesus. That is true love.

Her zeal was the same. She pitied lost souls, but her deepest desire was to give Jesus more hearts to love Him: “There is only one thing to do here below—to love Jesus and to save souls for him so that he may be eternally loved.” [29]

Her hope was not heavenly glory. She left that to angels and saints. For her, love alone drew her home: “Oh! to love, to be loved, and to come back to earth to make love loved.” [30]

°°°

The spiritual life is truly a life of childhood. In children, nothing matters except love. Powerless for everything else, they love naturally, as they breathe. Their love shows in smiles, caresses, kisses, and even tears when they cling to their mother’s heart.

The child is pure love—nothing less, nothing more. Such innocence captivates every heart, and very specially God’s.

It was this that ravished the Heart of God in Thérèse. She was convinced of it, and wanted to convince us too. Shortly before her death she said:

[28] STORY OF A SOUL: CH 6

[29] 6TH LETTER TO SR CÉLINE

[30] STORY OF A SOUL: CH 12

“I want to give my little way to souls… to tell them there is only one thing to do here below: to strew before Jesus the flowers of little sacrifices and to win him by caresses! That is how I won him, and that is why I shall be so well received.” [31]

All her desires tended toward love. She saw love as her vocation:

“In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love!”… “What I ask for is love!”… “O Jesus, I ask of you only peace!… peace, and above all LOVE—love without bound or limit.” [32]

"I have no longer any desire except to love Jesus to folly! Yes, LOVE

is what draws me. I know of only one means to attain perfection: LOVE. Let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else." [33]

"Jesus! I would so love him! love him as never yet he has been loved." [34]

°°°

For her, the science of sciences was the science of love. To gain it, no sacrifice was too great:

“The science of love! How sweet is the echo of that word... I desire no other science. I having given all that I have for it, like the spouse in the Canticles, 35 I think that I have given nothing. [36]

[31] STORY OF A SOUL: CH 12

[32] STORY OF A SOUL: CH 13

[33] LETTER TO MARIE GUÉRIN

[34] 4TH LETTER TO REV. MOTHER AGNES OF JESUS

35 That is, the Canticle of Canticles, also known as the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, a biblical poem celebrating love and desire interpreted as an allegory of Divine Love.

The spouse in the Canticles refers to the Church, the spouse of Christ. (compare Ephesians 5:25-27, 2 Corinthians 11:2, Revelation 19:7, Revelation 21:2 and Isaiah 54:5)

[36] STORY OF A SOUL: CH 8

Her last words echoed her whole life: “Oh! I love him!… My God I loveYou…” 37

Thus she lived on love and died of love.

Towards the end of her life she cried: “O my God! your love has gone before me even from my childhood; it has grown with my growth, and now it is an abyss whose depths I cannot fathom! ”

°°°

At Baptism, Divine Love is planted like a seed. It longs to grow.

Blessed is the child whose mother nurtures it with prayer, obedience, charity, and small sacrifices. In such soil, love flourishes.

When a soul begins to serve God, she must be taught to desire love and to form the habit of doing all things for love.

Love strengthens every virtue and corrects faults. Love should direct the whole spiritual building. Begin with love, continue with love, and perfection will be built by love.

Love makes all things light. As St Augustine said, nothing is hard for one who loves. If something is hard, love rejoices in it.

"Let us love, then," Thérèse said, "let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else."

Whatever stage of spiritual life we are in, let us enter the way of love, esteem it, desire it, and ask for it. God will give us the grace to understand.

°°°

Thérèse summed it up: To love is to please God, using every opportunity, even the smallest, to offer Him little gifts of love.

37 At the time of her death on 30 September 1897, Thérèse three blood sisters who were nuns present at her bedside along with the prioress. At her final moments: she gazed at her crucifix, said words including “Oh! I love Him… My God, I love You,” then fixed her eyes upward in a brief ecstasy before dying around 7:20 pm.

She explained: “I have ever remained little, having no other occupation except to gather flowers—the flowers of love and of sacrifice—and to offer them to the good God for his pleasure.”

Her secret of holiness was simple: “If you wish to become a saint, that will be easy for you. Have but one end only: to give pleasure to Jesus.”

"How shall I show my love, since love is proved by deeds? Well, the little child will strew flowers… to let no little sacrifice escape me… to suffer for love’s sake, and for love’s sake even to rejoice… thus shall I strew flowers… and then I will sing, even if I must gather my roses in the midst of thorns.” [38]

To love is to act in all things through love. It is simple and practical. Anyone can do it with grace.

In dryness, she sought small chances to please Jesus—a smile, a kind word. If none appeared, she told Him again and again that she loved Him. “Even though this fire of love might seem extinct, I would still throw little straws upon the embers, and I am certain it would rekindle.” [39]

°°°

Ordinarily, the little soul offers only little things. But love does not want to lose even one. “I do not wish that creatures should possess a single atom of my love… All shall be for him, all! And even when I have nothing to offer him, I will give him that nothing.” [40]

This is “all for Jesus” lived unceasingly. It is the soul given over to every demand of love, watchful for every chance to please Him.

[38] STORY OF A SOUL: CH 11

[39] 16TH LETTER TO SR CÉLINE

[40] 7TH LETTER TO REV. MOTHER AGNES OF JESUS

Love uses joys as well as sorrows. Thérèse wrote: “It seems to me that if we take Jesus captive by our sacrifices, our joys enchain him too… offer to our Spouse the little joys he scatters on our path.” [41]

She smiled at every trial, hiding her sufferings playfully from God. She made this smile her heaven:

"My Heaven is to smile on the God I adore… My Heaven is love! "

At her death, she knew she could no longer prove her love by sacrifice. That is why, while on earth, she wanted to do everything possible to please Him.

°°°