D
djeter
Guest
A Saint I never understood for the longest time until Fr. Robert Barron wrote a piece about her in The Priority of Christ:
The Noncompetitive Divine Reality Of Divine Love
Thèrése tells us that she endeavored to write down her spiritual memoir at the prompting of her sister, who was also her religious superior to whom she was bound in obedience After praying that she say nothing displeasing to Christ, she took up the Gospel of Mark, and her eyes fell on these words “Jesus, having gone up the mountain, called to him those whom he chose, and they came to him.
“This verse, she says, is the interpretive key to her life, for it describes the way Christ has worked in her soul “he does not call those who are worthy, but those whom he pleases “ Hers will be a story of a divine love, graciously willing the good of the other that awakens an imitative reaction in the one who is loved. It is not a narrative of economic exchange — rewards for worthiness — but of the loop of grace, unmerited love engendering disinterested love, the divine life propagating itself in what is other
But there is more to it. She says that for a long time this purely gracious quality of the divine love bothered her, for it smacked of injustice how could we explain how God gives more to some and less to others, if all reference to merit is removed’ ‘What solved the problem for her was a comparison with the varietyof flowers.
“I understood that if all the flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked with little wild flowers.” Aquinas said that God is an artist and his canvas the whole of creation and that the variety of created goods contributes to the beauty and complexity of the design that God is crafting. Thèrése will tell how, then, God the artist of creation worked in her case, cultivating one of his smaller flowers.
Then Thèrése uses a magnificent metaphor that shows that she grasped something about the divine-nondivine relationship that was also central to Aquinas “Just as the sun shines simultaneously on the tall cedars and on each little flower as though it were alone on the earth, so Our Lord is occupied particularly with each soul as though there were no others like it.”
The noncompetitive divine reality, which does not become ingredient in the created world, is not “closer” to the greatest of his creatures than to the least and cannot be preoccupied with one at the expense of the other. Thus, Thèrése can honestly speak of herself, one of God’s smallest flowers, as though she were the privileged object of God’s affection and interest.
More reading selections from this wonderful piece here on how St. Thèrése Of Lisieux embodies “elevated prudence” and what that theological virtue means for the rest of us:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/11/06/therese-of-lisieux-an-example-of-elevated-prudence/
regards
dj
The Noncompetitive Divine Reality Of Divine Love
Thèrése tells us that she endeavored to write down her spiritual memoir at the prompting of her sister, who was also her religious superior to whom she was bound in obedience After praying that she say nothing displeasing to Christ, she took up the Gospel of Mark, and her eyes fell on these words “Jesus, having gone up the mountain, called to him those whom he chose, and they came to him.
“This verse, she says, is the interpretive key to her life, for it describes the way Christ has worked in her soul “he does not call those who are worthy, but those whom he pleases “ Hers will be a story of a divine love, graciously willing the good of the other that awakens an imitative reaction in the one who is loved. It is not a narrative of economic exchange — rewards for worthiness — but of the loop of grace, unmerited love engendering disinterested love, the divine life propagating itself in what is other
But there is more to it. She says that for a long time this purely gracious quality of the divine love bothered her, for it smacked of injustice how could we explain how God gives more to some and less to others, if all reference to merit is removed’ ‘What solved the problem for her was a comparison with the varietyof flowers.
“I understood that if all the flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked with little wild flowers.” Aquinas said that God is an artist and his canvas the whole of creation and that the variety of created goods contributes to the beauty and complexity of the design that God is crafting. Thèrése will tell how, then, God the artist of creation worked in her case, cultivating one of his smaller flowers.
Then Thèrése uses a magnificent metaphor that shows that she grasped something about the divine-nondivine relationship that was also central to Aquinas “Just as the sun shines simultaneously on the tall cedars and on each little flower as though it were alone on the earth, so Our Lord is occupied particularly with each soul as though there were no others like it.”
The noncompetitive divine reality, which does not become ingredient in the created world, is not “closer” to the greatest of his creatures than to the least and cannot be preoccupied with one at the expense of the other. Thus, Thèrése can honestly speak of herself, one of God’s smallest flowers, as though she were the privileged object of God’s affection and interest.
More reading selections from this wonderful piece here on how St. Thèrése Of Lisieux embodies “elevated prudence” and what that theological virtue means for the rest of us:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/11/06/therese-of-lisieux-an-example-of-elevated-prudence/
regards
dj
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