The Little Way of St. Thérèse (Guest: Fr. Joseph Spence, FFm)

This seems like a mundane question, but why don't we start with first, what is the little way, just for someone who's just being introduced to this?

Good question.

It's the message that Therese most wanted to get out there.

And it's just that message of complete trust, surrender to God, abandonment to His mercy, to His love.

It's the way of letting God become our sanctity.

She said in prayer six, All of our justice is stained in her eyes, so I beg you, Lord, to be yourself my sanctity.

And there's a number of images she uses to describe that as well.

For example, the elevator, which she had seen for the first time actually on her trip to Rome when she was 15.

She saw the elevators in hotels.

And she would later use that image to describe the little way.

So she said, the elevator which will lift me up to you, O Lord, are your arms.

So the little way is this new way.

She talks about a little way, a new way, which leads us to God, which is this complete surrendering and just throwing oneself into God's arms and letting Him be Himself our sanctity.

And would that be like, to let Him be our sanctity...

I know that Pope Benedict, I remember writing something on holiness, and he talked about holiness as this participation in the mysteries of Christ's life.

You know, to let no longer I that live, but Jesus that lives in me.

Is that what it means, like that deep communion, that we have union with him, that he's living his life in us?

Definitely.

I mean, I think that's what it's all about.

Yeah.

It's about

letting God be himself.

It's about letting God express himself in us.

It's about leaving the first step to him.

Again, she wrote about that in many ways, and she was influenced in many ways in a little way.