Imitation

“Thou showest me to myself, what I am, what I am come to: for I am nothing, and I knew it not.”  (Saint Therese of Lisieux in “Imitation of Christ”).

Saint Therese of Lisieux

I like to read.  Ever since I was a little eleven year old school girl who visited the library with my library teacher, who used to say, “Who wants me to choose them a good book to read this week?”  I learned to love reading.

Because I enjoy reading and do not find it very strenuous, I became very used to reading all sorts of different things.  I would read fiction and non-fiction, and secular and non-secular books.  I would read about history and the future and science and all sorts of other things.

One of the things that I ready when I was still only a teenager, was the autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux.  It is quite a dense book, with a lot of focus on her early life and perspectives told about her that were very interesting.  She began her life as quite a sensitive and spoiled little girl, but credited her upbringing and the strictness of her sisters (her mother died when she was very young) with enabling her to grow in holiness.

Later – just after my experience of conversion, which occurred only a few years ago through no merit of my own while I was praying for my little niece who was very sick, I read the same book again.  Again, I found it very dense, but also very beautiful.

Saint Therese of Lisieux died at the age of twenty-four of tuberculosis.  She was so young and so beautiful.  And she is such a powerful Saint.  And she became a Saint by doing very small things – her little way, she called it.  She did not do anything extraordinarily big.  Instead, she focused on the little sacrifices that nobody else seemed to bother with.  If a nun in the convent was particularly irritating to her because of a sound she made or some of her behaviour, Saint Therese would choose to sit next to that offending woman and engage with her more warmly than anyone else.  And she would do this for love of Christ as a sacrifice to Him.  And she did this so genuinely, that often the offending nu would comment to others that little Therese favoured her above all others because she would certainly seek out her company more often than the company of others.

In other instances, she would avoid speaking to her own sister – who was the mother superior of the convent she was in, as this was enjoyable to her and she wanted to offer this sacrifice.

And she was humble…  “Thou showest me to myself, what I am, what I am come to: for I am nothing, and I knew it not. If I am left to myself, behold I am nothing, and all weakness; but it is very wonderful that I am so quickly raised up, and so graciously embraced by Thee. It is Thy love that effects this, freely preventing me and assisting me in so many necessities; preserving me also from grievous dangers, and, as I may truly say, delivering me from innumerable evils.” (Saint Therese of Lisieux in “Imitation of Christ”).

And I have been thinking about this today.  For there is still so much that I must do to make a proper imitation of Christ…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.