"You have become younger! You notice, in fact, that getting to know God better has made you regain in a short time the simple and happy age of your youth, including the security and joy — without any childishness — of spiritual childhood ... You look around, and you realise that the same thing has happened to others: the years since they met with the Lord have gone by and, having reached maturity, they are strengthened with a permanent youth and happiness. Although they are no longer young, they are youthful and happy!

"This reality of the interior life, attracts, confirms and wins over souls. Give thanks for it daily ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem — to God who fills your youth with joy.(Josemaria Escriva, "Furrow," Cheerfulness, no.79)

"Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face is the youngest of all the "doctors of the Church" , but her ardent spiritual journey shows such maturity, and the insights of faith expressed in her writings are so vast and profound that they deserve a place among the great spiritual masters. In the Apostolic Letter which I wrote for this occasion, I stressed several salient aspects of her doctrine. But how can we fail to recall here what can be considered its high point, starting with the account of the moving discovery of her special vocation in the Church? "Charity", she wrote, "gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it, and so I understood that the Church had a heart and that this heart was burning with love. I understood that it was love alone that made the Church's members act, that if love were ever extinguished, apostles would not proclaim the Gospel and martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood that love includes all vocations.... Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: "O Jesus, my Love ... at last I have found my vocation; my vocation is Love!'" (Ms B, 3vº). This is a wonderful passage which suffices itself to show that one can apply to St Thérèse the Gospel passage we heard in the Liturgy of the Word: "I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes" (Mt 11: 25). (Vatican Website)

THE LITTLE WAY EXPLAINED
by Hans Urs von Balthasar

"Therese's little way is a way to perfection, a way for those who have courageously resolved to love and to do nothing else but love."

"To remain little means recognizing one's nothingness, expecting everything from the good God, as a little child expects everything from his father. It means not worrying about anything nor being on the lookout for favors... I have always remained little, having no other ambition but to collect flowers of love and sacrifice and offer them to the good God for His pleasure. Again, to stay little means not attributing the virtues we practice to ourselves, under the impression that we are capable of such things, but to recognize that the good God places this treasure of virtue in the hand of His little child for him to use as he needs it; and that it remains God's treasure."(Therese of Lisieux)

"We must do everything that is within us: give without counting the cost, practice the virtues at every opportunity, conquer ourselves all the time and prove our love by every sort of tenderness and loving attention. In a word, we must carry out all the good works that lie within our powers -- out of love for God. But it is truly essential to put our whole trust in Him who alone can sanctify our work, who can indeed sanctify us without works, since He may even bring forth children of Abraham from the very stones. It is necessary for us, when we have done all we can, to confess that we are unprofitable servants, whilst hoping that God in His grace will give us all that we need. That is the way of childhood."(Ibid)

"The little way is one way, yet it is also "the" way. It is one way in the sense that it differs from other ways, above all from those of the "great souls" who go in for extraordinary penances and receive extraordinary mystical graces. But since neither the Gospel nor the great saints themselves reckon these latter as essential to Christian love, but recognize that love of God and one's neighbor contains the whole of the law, and all mysticism and asceticism, Therese's way, which makes this love absolutely central, can be described as the way.(H.von Balthasar)

"There are many reasons for this epithet "little". In the first place, because it by-passes extraordinary methods with a warning against them, and, like the Gospel itself, presupposes everyday life as its field of application. Again, because it can find no better picture to express the soul's eagerness to receive God's love than that of a little child aware of its littleness before God. Lastly, because it is a short way: it eliminates all measurable distances and, if it is really followed, keeps one in immediate contact with one's goal.

"But it is not at all little in the sense that, as opposed to the way of the "great souls", it is for the "imperfect", who hesitate and compromise. Otherwise it would not be a Christian way, for Christ's way leads without compromise to perfect love. What, then, are the hosts of the imperfect and the sinners to do? Is there no way for them? Of course; they are just the people for whom the little way has been prepared. They only need to enter upon it and expose themselves to the rays of divine love, and this fire will certainly not fail to purify them.

"The objection that Therese's little way makes it all too easy is far less justified than the suspicion that it be ins too high and presupposes too much. For even though Therese tries her hardest to encourage the sinner, turning round all the time to show him just how closely he may follow her footsteps, and proclaiming her own solidarity with sinners, it is still true that her basic presupposition is that of a saint: that life has no meaning unless it is the service of God.

"In fact, once a person has grasped this everything else follows automatically. And such a person will find in Therese the most delightful guide to love. But if he does not grasp this, or tries to add other possible meanings to life, then it will be useless for him to try to adopt any part of Therese's system. This system is indivisible, like the love of God and the Gospel. "Who is not for me is against me." "No man can serve two masters."

"The succession of renunciations demanded by Therese has been entitled "Construction" because they represent the steps leading directly to the state where each new call of God's love finds its response in faith. These renunciations form the entrance to the realm of ultimate love, a love so delicate as to require special laws for its workings. Here every obligation is simply the external expression of one's deepest desires; the most exacting commands are simply preparations for that free response to love which for the lover is far more compelling than the sternest command.

"Because the Son of God is perfect love the Father's wish is a command to him, which he freely fulfils -- he can do no other, for "at all times I do what is pleasing to the Father". All lovers love freely, and freely take upon themselves the command of the beloved. They treat his wishes as commands, and subject themselves to him as servants; to those standing outside this relationship it is all incomprehensible, they cannot grasp its laws. Few theologians have shown the same skill as Therese in mapping out the realm of love; she has sketched a sort of map of the spirit on which certain hills and rivers are noted for the first time. But how much even then she has left to be discovered!

"Therese begins, as is the custom amongst saints, at the point where most Christians leave off -- where what God commands shades off into what he "merely" wishes. But again, like all the saints, she realizes that this shading is deceptive, because the supreme commandment of love includes every one of God's wishes. Only a person who is neither saint nor lover would dream of separating the obligation ex justitia from the free gift ex caritate in this commandment which requires a man's whole and undivided heart. For the saint caritas becomes justitia; if he were ever to make the distinction in his own case he would know that he was not obeying the law of perfect love.

"The care she expends will appear exaggerated to the average Christian; the unbeliever will treat it as crude anthropomorphism. Therese knows better. For her there is nothing more tender than God and his love, nothing more delicate and precious, requiring to be handled with the utmost care. And if it seems that the eternal Godhead of inaccessible light and absolute power has no need of such attentions, still she knows that the Son of Man, tender of heart, whose face is hidden in sorrow, is the true revelation of God's being. Therese wishes all her life long to be doing what Veronica did once: to console Our Lord, and lighten his burden by her boundless self-surrender. Here, more than ever, we must allow her to speak for herself.

"Our Lord is thirstier than ever. He finds His disciples in this world lukewarm and indifferent; and amongst His own disciples He finds very few, alas, who surrender themselves unreservedly to the tenderness of His boundless love. How favored we are to be able to understand the intimate secrets of our Spouse." "When I was a postulant it cost me a great deal to perform certain exterior penances customary in our Order; but I never gave way to my repugnance, for it seemed to me that the Crucifix in the courtyard was looking at me with imploring eyes and begging these sacrifices of me."

"When I am suffering a great deal, instead of adopting an air of sadness I answer with a smile. At first I never used to manage it, but now it is a habit which I am very glad to have contracted." "It hurts the good God enough to have to test us on earth without having to listen to us complaining of how hardly we are being used. So we should not let anyone notice how we are being hurt. It is really a question of delicacy and tact not to complain of the beat and cold, or wipe away sweat, or rub our frozen hands together -- or if we do, to do it secretly, so as not to reproach the good God." "The sufferings which God sends us are tokens of His love and favor. How boorish it would be to accept them with a gloomy countenance, and so burden Him with our ingratitude!" "Alas, it is great pain to Him thus to fill our cup with sorrows, but He knows that it is the only way to prepare us 'to know Him as He knows Himself'." (St Therese)

"This care for our Lord eventually becomes the essential mark of sanctity. "If you want to be a saint, it will be easy ... you have but one goal: to give pleasure to Jesus."(von Balthasar)

"As soon as God sees us convinced of our own nothingness -- He stretches out His hand to us; but if we wish to attempt great things, even under the pretext of zeal, He leaves us alone. It is sufficient therefore to humble oneself and to bear our imperfections meekly: that is true sanctity."(Therese of Lisieux)

"Her battle is to wipe out the hard core of Pharisaism which persists in the midst of Christianity; that will-to-power disguised in the mantle of religion, that drives one to assert one's own greatness instead of acknowledging that God alone is great. "With the utmost severity and unsparing clarity Therese directs her attack against every ascetical practice which aims not at God but at one's own 'perfection', and which is nothing more than spiritual beauty treatment."(Hans Urs von Balthathasar)

"Jesus does not demand great deeds, but only gratitude and self-surrender. 'I will not,' he says, 'take the he-goats from out of Thy flocks, for all the beasts of the forest are Mine... Shall I eat the flesh of bullocks, or shall I drink the blood of goats? 0ffer to God the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.' That is all Jesus asks of us! He has no need of our works, but only of our love." (Therese of Lisieux)

"Sanctity does not consist in performing such and such acts; it means being ready at heart to become small and humble in the arms of God, acknowledging our own weaknesses and trusting in His fatherly goodness to the point of audacity." (Ibid)

"But this ideal overlooks what Paul showed to be the very basis and raison d'etre of God's testament with the chosen people: Abraham's faith, which implicitly includes hope and love as well. The people forgot that the law and its works are prophetic in character, pointing towards the Messiah; they are meant to express faith in the promised Christ who would fulfill the law and its works. The people attributed a significance to the law in itself which obscured and sometimes even destroyed its true significance. Yet how easy it was under the Old Law to fall into a religion of justification by works! God first revealed himself as the God of justice, not as the God of love. And besides wishing to prepare humanity for love by means of the law God also wished the failure of the law and its works to demonstrate what happens when men rely upon their own achievements apart from the Cross of Christ. "Now the law entered in, that sin might abound" (Rom. 5: 2o).(Hans Urs Von Balthasar)

"Therese does not reject works out of hand; there is nothing even remotely Protestant about her interpretation of St. Paul. But she knows that everything good and virtuous in man is grace, the gift of God's justice. "To be little means not attributing the virtues we practice to ourselves in the belief that we are capable of them; but recognizing that the good God places this treasure in the hands of His little child for him to use when necessary; but the treasure remains God's always."(Ibid)

"Therese is weak, very weak; every day she experiences it afresh, but Jesus delights to teach her as He taught St. Paul, the science of glorying in one's infirmities... Seeing yourself so worthless you wish no longer to look at yourself, you look only at the sole Beloved Therese stands therefore in the true Augustinian tradition of "non parum, sed nihil"; "Maybe, if Peter had caught a few small fish, Jesus would not have worked a miracle, but he had nothing, so Jesus soon filled his net, so that it almost broke."

"The "little way" that Therese now constructs comes from renouncing everything in Christian love which seems to lend it greatness, power and glory. Love is brought to a state of weakness in which it learns the power of divine love, of littleness and darkness in which the greatness and glory of divine love are displayed. The basis of the little way, therefore, is one series of renunciations after another.

One year later: "If you knew how great is my joy at having no joy, to give pleasure to Jesus! . . . It is the essence of joy (but wholly unfelt)." Once more we perceive the subtlety of her psychological reflections, the joy of unfelt joy; but the purpose is plain enough: "To give pleasure to Jesus." In this way faith itself is drawn out of its own center: " If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, you will be to Jesus a pleasant place of shelter; you will suffer, of course, for you will be outside the door of your own home; but have no fear, the poorer you are the more Jesus will love you."

"The first renunciation is of the pleasure and joy that accompany love. At a very early date we find her writing: "I need to forget the earth; here below everything wearies me, everything is an effort, I find only one joy, to suffer for Jesus... But this unfelt joy is above every joy... I hit upon the secret of suffering in peace. The word peace does not mean joy, at least not fel joy; to suffer in peace it is enough to will whatever Jesus wills." Unfelt joy; peace, not joy; a first formula in which to express the mysterious transcendence of Christian love. For that is the purpose of it all: to transfer the impulse towards acts of faith, hope and charity, away from the subject into God himself.

"And since faith seizes upon the whole of a person, the whole person is drawn out from himself into the transcendence of the act of faith. Certainly he still commits acts and feels their stress, but now they are centered outside his own experience. For instance he suffers, and is at the same time beyond suffering. "He is not here, for he is risen.... Come, and see the place where the Lord was laid": commenting on this text, Therese says: "That is, I am no longer susceptible, as I was in my childhood, to every sorrow. I am, so to speak, risen. I am no longer in the place people believe. Mother, do not worry about me; I cannot suffer any more, because all suffering has become sweet to me."

"To be placed outside the door of one's own home is a great grace, for it gently compels us to stop living unto ourselves. "When we are brought to misery we have no desire to gaze at ourselves, and we turn our gaze towards the One beloved. The good God does not compel us to remain in our own society; he arranges that we should find it so intolerable as to have to leave it. And I see no other way of becoming free from oneself than to visit Jesus and Mary." "How wearisome is company when Jesus is not there!" Therese is taken at her word when she renounces all desire for feelings or visions in her faith. The more she offers the more God takes, until all her feelings are hidden in God, and she is left in the darkness of naked faith. "I have no wish to see the good God whilst I am on earth. And yet I love Him! I also love the Mother of God and the saints very dearly, but I do not wish to see them either. I would rather live in faith"

"Renunciation of one's feelings in love and faith includes renouncing the sight of their fruit; and the specific fruitfulness of the supernatural virtues is derived from the latter renunciation. During her retreat before Profession, during which her Spouse seeks to detach her from all but himself, he does indeed "lead her by fertile and magnificent country-sides, but the night prevents her from admiring anything, and, what is worse, from enjoying all these marvels ". "Nor must you desire to see the fruits of your efforts, " she writes to Marie Guerin. "Jesus likes to keep for Himself alone these little nothings which console Him." And to the novices: "Offer to the good God the sacrifice of never collecting your own fruits. If it is His will that all your life long you feel repugnance at having to suffer and being humiliated, and seeing all the flowers of your desires and goodwill fall to the ground without bearing fruit -- do not be disturbed."

"When the fruit vanishes from sight, however, it takes away the consciousness of achievement, and leaves one feeling incapable of anything more. Quite early she writes to Celine: "What unutterable joy to bear our crosses FEEBLY! ... The grain of sand would set herself to the task without joy, without courage, without strength, and all these conditions will make the enterprise easier, it wants to work for love." "Here are we wanting to suffer generously, greatly... What folly!... We want never to fall? What does it matter, my Jesus, if I fall at every instant, for thereby I see my weakness, and that for me is great gain."

"Are you not ready to suffer whatever the good God wants? I know well that you are; then if you want to feel joy in suffering, to be drawn to it, what you seek is your own consolation, for when one loves a thing, the pain vanishes -- one must consent to stay always poor and without strength, and that's the difficulty, for where are we to find the man truly poor in spirit ... Ah! Do let us stay very far from all that is brilliant, let us love our littleness, love to feel nothing, then we shall be poor in spirit." "Please understand that to love Jesus, to be His victim of love, the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more apt one is for the operations of that consuming and transforming Love."

"Our Lord asks her where she wishes to travel; as a good Carmelite she chooses the ascent to the summits of love. And immediately she is confronted with many different paths; she feels incapable of basing her choice on her own survey; she leaves the way to the divine Leader. "Then Jesus took me by the hand and brought me into a subterranean way, where it is neither hot nor cold, where the sun does not shine, and rain and wind do not come; a tunnel where I see nothing but a brightness half-veiled.... My Spouse says nothing to me, nor do I say anything to Him either, save that I love Him more than myself, and in the depth of my heart I feel that this is true, for I am more His than my own!... I do not see that we are advancing toward the mountain that is our goal, because our journey is under the earth... I shall consent, if it is His will, to walk all my life the dark road upon which I am, provided that one day I arrive at the goal of the mountain of love, but I think it will not be here below."

"I wish to imitate the eagles; but the most I can do is to flutter my little wings; it is not within my poor power to fly off... But if You should remain deaf to the plaintive chirpings of Your pitiful creature, if you remain in obscurity... Very well! Then I am content to remain drenched, numb with cold, and I shall even rejoice at this suffering which is so well merited." We arc reminded again of the child trying in vain to climb the stairway: "You be that child, keep on lifting your little foot ... but do not imagine that you will ever be able to reach even the first step."

"The three images, of the subterranean way, the little bird and the tiny child, together convince us of the truth that all Christian effort is but a beginning. Only God can bring a work to perfection; and the more a Christian realizes that his efforts are but a beginning the more room God is allowed to achieve perfection. Therese stands by this teaching right up to the end: "If I am ever inclined to get worried because of some misguided words or thoughts, I turn towards myself and say, 'Ah, still standing at the same spot as at the beginning!' But I say it to myself very peacefully, and without sadness. It is so good to feel one's weakness and littleness."

"This quotation shows that the renunciation of progress is only complete when a person realizes that falls are inevitable. The natural man wishes to climb or at least to stand. But Jesus, who descended from heaven, chooses to fall. "Why should it frighten you that you cannot bear His Cross without weakening? On the way to Calvary Jesus fell three times; and you, a poor little child, would not be like your Spouse, would not fall a hundred times, if need be, to prove Him your love by rising up again..." "He would rather see you striking your foot against the stones of the way by night, than walking in broad daylight along a road gemmed with flowers which could easily slow your advance." "You are wanting to climb a mountain, whereas the good God wishes you to climb down. He is waiting for you in the fertile valley of humility." Once more it is the trick of slipping underneath: "Pass underneath . . . that is the advantage of keeping little."

"But there is a finality about this decision to "slip underneath", for the person doing it knows there will be no standing upright again, only the ultimate fall into the hands of God. A week before her death: "This afternoon I heard the answer given by one of the Sisters when someone asked how I was, 'She is terribly tired'. And I thought to myself, that is very true. I am like a tired traveler arriving worn out at the end of the journey. Yes, but it is into the arms of the good God that I am falling." And again this falling shows the advantages of being a little person; children do not fall far. "Children often fall, but they are too little to do themselves serious harm."

"We must also, however, renounce any heroics in our falls. If our Lord deigns to share his falls with us that is no reason for us to start comparing our own with his. Children's falls are usually the result of faults or silly mistakes. And it is not until those falls are taken at their true worth that Therese is completely sure that her little way is valid. During her younger days this had proved the tender point at which her scruples and anxiety had festered. This was also the point where the flow of healing began when she was assured that there are faults which do not offend the good God.

"Taken in the abstract the notion of a fall is inseparable from that of defeat and disgrace. But the same is not true in the realm of love, where a man's fall is incorporated into the law of Christ's fall, which is itself one moment in the downward movement of Christ from the Father to the world, to the Cross, to hell. For this is the realm where God or his angels quickly set everything right. "At the moment of Communion I liken my soul to a little baby of three or four whose hair is all tangled and his clothes all dirty as a result of playing -- these accidents have happened to me through struggling with souls -- but soon the Virgin Mary takes me in hand. She quickly takes off my dirty little pinafore, straightens my hair and adorns it with a pretty ribbon or simply with a little flower... and that is enough to make me presentable so that I can take my place at the feast of angels without blushing."

"For those who love Him and, after each discourteous act, cast themselves into His arms and ask pardon, Jesus is vibrant with joy. We must humble ourselves, see our own nothingness, which is what many souls will not do." This immediate conversion is not called forth by the shame a person feels that such a thing could happen to him. If that were its basis it would still be dominated by the Old Testament ideal of perfection. Its only adequate basis is the need to have God's light streaming over the whole of one's soul. " If we meekly accept the humiliation of being imperfect then the grace of God's love returns to the soul immediately." Neither the desire for perfection nor its renunciation acts as her standard. The one standard is love, the love of God and the loving response to it of the soul which puts itself entirely at the disposition of God's love.

"By this time it has become clear what this way of renunciation involves, and what a surprise it holds in store for those accustomed to traditional spirituality: Therese's demand that we must even love our own imperfection and not long to escape from it. First the joy of being treated as weak and imperfect. "What you need, what is most profitable for you, is that you should be found imperfect. When creatures realize that you are without virtue that deprives you of nothing and does not make you any the poorer; it is they who lose inner joy! For there is nothing sweeter than to think well of our neighbor... For myself it is a great joy not only when others find me imperfect but, above all, when I feel I am."

"The first thought was traditional. The originality comes in the conclusion. "Now I have reconciled myself to seeing myself imperfect always and even to finding my joy in it" -- and this knowledge is connected with another one, which clarifies it: "At the beginning of my spiritual life, at the age of about thirteen or fourteen, I asked myself what I should learn later; I then thought it impossible for me to understand perfection better; but I realized very quickly that the further one advances along this road the further from the goal one believes oneself to be."

"It is indeed the case that the feeling of getting nowhere is a sort of indirect guarantee of being on the right road. Yet Therese's joy has an even deeper foundation -- a genuine love of her imperfection. "How fortunate I am to see my imperfection, to need God's mercy so greatly at the hour of my death." Mercy can only be fully accepted with the whole soul by a person who feels a deep need for it. Faults are welcomed as occasions of humility towards God: "Whenever I have been guilty of a fault which causes me sorrow, then I know that this sadness is a result of my infidelity. But I do not let it rest at that. I say to the good God, 'I know that I have deserved this feeling of sorrow; nevertheless, let me offer it to You as a trial bestowed on me by Your love. It grieves me that I have done it, but I am glad to have this sorrow to offer to You'."

"They are also occasions of humility towards one's neighbor. When she was seriously ill one of the Sisters asked her to perform some superfluous service: Therese, betraying her momentary annoyance, then stood there silently blushing. "That evening she wrote me a little note, 'This evening I have again shown you my 'virtue', my 'store' of patience. I, who am so good at preaching to others! I am glad that you were present to observe my failure. You did not correct me, and yet I deserved to be... Oh, how it does me good to have behaved badly; I prefer to have failed rather than to have appeared, by God's grace, a model of gentleness. It helps me beyond measure to find that Jesus is just as gentle and loving towards me as ever'." It is better to feel humbled through remembering one's faults than to be self-satisfied at the thought of one's conquests. "The remembrance of my faults humbles me and prevents me from ever relying upon my own strength, which is only weakness; it just tells me more and more of God's mercy and love."

"We must do everything that is within us: give without counting the cost, practice the virtues at every opportunity, conquer ourselves all the time and prove our love by every sort of tenderness and loving attention. In a word, we must carry out all the good works that lie within our powers -- out of love for God. But it is truly essential to put our whole trust in Him who alone can sanctify our work, who can indeed sanctify us without works, since He may even bring forth children of Abraham from the very stones. It is necessary for us, when we have done all we can, to confess that we are unprofitable servants, whilst hoping that God in His grace will give us all that we need. That is the way of childhood."