I have recently discovered that my spirituality is very similar to that of St. Thérèse the Little Flower probably because I have lived with children under the age of 18 for 33 years. I think that many mothers can relate to this saint as well. She lived the little way like all people who are not rich and famous but want to serve God their loving Father through their littleness and simplicity. She chose to stay as a child in they eyes of God, performing all of her duties with love and obedience, no matter how small and insignificant they were.
Matthew 18:3: and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
I like to say that a child, frog and tree are holy because they are who they called to be without a mask or false persona or large ego.
St. Thérèse said, “Holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.”
I pray now by simply resting in Him, looking into the light and His eyes and He looks at me. I smile. He smiles and immediately fills me with a surge of joy
St. Thérèse said, “For me prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple look towards Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”
“I say nothing to him; I love him”
25 years ago God told me
YOU THINK THAT YOU ARE HELPING
BUILD MY CHURCH ON EARTH
WITH ALL YOUR RUNNING AROUND.
St. Thérèse said, “Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.”
He burns with the desire to come into your heart… go without fear to receive the Jesus of peace and love…”
“Trust and trust alone should lead us to love”
“A word or a smile is often enough to put fresh life in a despondent soul.”
“When one loves, one does not calculate.”
“And it is the Lord, it is Jesus, Who is my judge. Therefore I will try always to think leniently of others, that He may judge me leniently, or rather not at all, since He says: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”
Entering the Carmelite convent in Lisieux at the age of 15, Thérèse received the name Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus. She knew her own path to holiness was to embrace her own littleness and make continual efforts to love God in everything she did. She placed all her confidence in God, trusting Him to give the victory she was unable to make by herself. Thérèse called this way of holiness the “Little Way of Spiritual Childhood.
When Thérèse was about 22, she became ill with tuberculosis. Though her physical suffering became intense, she suffered spiritually even more, undergoing a darkness of soul. She knew that God loved her and that He would make fruitful her own efforts to love Him.
Thérèse died on September 30,1897 at the age of 24, having promised to send down from Heaven a “shower of roses” after her death. Almost immediately after she died, many people began learning about her, praying to her and receiving favors from her then clamoring to the Church authorities for her canonization.St.Thérèse was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925. In 1927, although she had never left her convent, St.Thérèse was proclaimed co-patron of the missions along with the great St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies,who had converted hundreds of thousands.
adapted from Tan Books and Publishing
joy of nine9 
Sweet woman. She set the bar high, eh? No wonder Jesus wanted her with Him! Thanks for sharing this story.
\o/
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nice insight- yes, now that you mention it , she was very sweet
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