God's Hand and the Little Flower
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Faith on Thursday, October 01, 2009 10:03 PM
I love St. Thérèse of Lisieux. What an inspiration she is!
Years ago when I was in college, we read Story of a Soul and studied the life of St. Thérèse in my Catholic Spirituality course.
Here is something interesting about St. Thérèse: did you know that she almost wasn’t?
Louis and Zélie Martin had nine children and Thérèse was their youngest. But neither of them planned to have any children at all. Before their marriage, each had sought entrance into a religious community, and been denied.
Had either of them been given their own way and lived out life in the monastery or convent, they would not have gotten married and their daughter Thérèse, great saint and Doctor of the Church, would never have been born.
Furthermore, according to the biographical notes at the beginning of my edition of Story of a Soul,* Louis and Zélie determined at the beginning of their marriage to live together as brother and sister, and did so for almost a year until their confessor intervened.
God basically had to convince the Martins to have children!
Aren’t we glad that he did?
I think there’s a lesson here, though. Both of Thérèse’s parents clearly had noble spiritual intentions, and what they were seeking was valuable in its own right: a life spent serving God. And yet God had other ideas.
Whenever I think of St. Thérèse’s parents, it reminds me of the importance of discernment in my own life. It’s possible for me to seek very good things that are not the right things for me because they’re not what God has in mind for my life. That’s a scary thought!
But on the other hand, Louis and Zélie Martin did end up on the path God intended for them, because they wanted to do his will and he was happy to lead them in that direction. That’s a comforting thought.
St. Thérèse was deeply in love with Jesus and entrusted herself fully to his care. Today on her feast day, we get a reminder to do the same.
*ICS Publications, third edition published 1996, ISBN 0-935216-58-8
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
