It was Christmas Eve in the year 1886. A fourteen-year-old girl attended midnight Mass with her family inside an enormous cathedral in France. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) was grieving her mother’s recent death and plagued with self-doubt. She wrote of worship that evening, “God worked a little miracle in me to grow up in an instant.” She opened her heart to Christ and resolved to serve him.
She approached the bishop a year later to announce her attention to become a Carmelite nun. “You are only fifteen and you wish this?” the bishop asked. Her resolute response, “I wished it since the dawn of reason.” And she convinced him to admit her six years before her she was eligible to join the Carmelite Order. Some sisters looked down on her youth and bullied her. (I didn’t know bullying was a problem in convents!) She lamented her littleness in age and unimportance but asked God for strength to serve “by the little way.” She came to believe it wasn’t necessary to accomplish some heroic act or great deed. She wrote, “The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, the doing of least actions for love.”
Therese made her mark in her little way of love. Her resolve to fill every unpleasant moment and difficult circumstance with Christ’s love became legendary to her fellow sisters. She is best known for her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul. As Therese demonstrated, it’s not only the big things we do for God that matter; small deeds done with great conviction share God’s heart with the world. I am humbled by the simple prayer of this faithful woman who died at the tender age of twenty-four: