Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Memorial of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Little flower
The favoring hand of my God was upon me.
Our word “prayer” begins in the Latin precor, to pray, beg or beseech, moving to French preire  – an entreaty of uncertain outcome. precor is also the root for precarious. Will God show up or won’t he? Am I praying for the right thing? What is God’s will? Can I, living in my body for a finite time, enjoy a relationship with the infinite, almighty, creative God? Jesus called this being Abba and prayed to his Father. Can I call God Father like he did?
In our everlasting struggle as supernatural beings in a natural world (Teilhard’s words), we want to rid ourselves of the dualistic way of seeing the world as one or the other. But that’s difficult at best, because we live and breathe and have our being right here near the dinner table and the bed. Even the glorious sunrise and sunset beckons me to understand the science alongside the beauty.
Clarence Heller, poet-artist-spiritual director-friend, strives to express his relationship with both earth and heaven. Every day he offers “a piece of goodness,” like this one:
Autumn Goodness by Clarence Heller
Today, the Immense Goodness spewed from the depths
like juice from a fully ripe piece of fruit
on the tip of God’s tongue
so close I can touch it
see it, smell it
experience its transition
as another leaf falls and
others deepen their hue before my eyes
if dying can be so beautiful
then let me die also
perfect imperfection of individuality
I too yearn to be an instrument of love
past and future converge in the present
never stopping, but pausing to notice
that God is here among us
Clarence’s poems often remind me of the words of St. ThĂ©rèse, the Little Flower. At age 24, the young French nun had no plans to become a “doctor of the church” – she died so young of tuberculosis, suffered from the obsessive fears that come with scrupulosity, but sought always the “confidence of the little child who sleeps without fear in its father’s arms.” Even before she was given permission to enter the convent at age 15, she had made loving God her life’s work.
The king asked Nehemiah,
“Why do you look sad?
If you are not sick, you must be sad at heart.”
The Little Flower determined early not to pass her own sadness on to others, but instead to offer them the joy of her salvation. Joy made manifest in the midst of rejection and pain is far more contagious than the happiness of success and comfort.
Gratitude is not a simple emotion or an obvious attitude. It is a difficult discipline in which I constantly reclaim my whole past as the concrete way God has led me to this moment and is sending me into the future. At its deepest level, gratitude embraces all of life with thanksgiving: the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not so holy. Gradually I can discover in them the pruning hands of God, purifying my heart for deeper love, stronger hope, and broader faith. Gladness and sadness are never separate. Joy and sorrow really belong together. Mourning and dancing are part of the same movement. Jesus calls us to recognize that. – Henri Nouwen
I get a little older and the boundaries between earth and heaven, between natural and supernatural become thinner. I sleep more and eat less, trust my imagination more and my body less. The space around me does not require accomplishment so much as invite trust and patience. Gratitude seeps in around the edges of everything; those God-given thankfulness muscles carry me along every road toward every destination.
And I hang on to it all, like a drop of water resting on a feather.
Then the king, and the queen seated beside him,
asked me how long my journey would take
and when I would return.
I set a date that was acceptable to him,
and the King agreed that I might go.
 (Nehemiah 2, Psalm 137, Philippians 3, Luke 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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