"I Will Spend My Heaven Doing Good On Earth."

Thanks so much to Julian for her lovely post on St. Therese the Little Flower. This is my favorite picture of Therese as a child. Like Julian wrote, Therese's faith is so child-like, simple, and trusting, and I think this picture reveals that reality about her.



I find that Therese has come up so much in my life recently, that I am just so grateful for her powerful intercession!! Even today! Before I realized today was her feast (I forget what day it is all the time), I thought to myself that I should grab her autobiography for a girl who works at the coffee shop I frequent. In fact, I went back in just to get it. Therese is her confirmation saint, and one day I asked her if she had ever read Therese's autobiography, The Story of a Soul, and she said she had not. I literally read in one day in that coffee shop.

Anyway, true to her promise, Therese is spending her heaven doing good on earth. For one, her relics have been drawing large crowds in the very secular UK this month, even showing up at a Protestant Church there!! I know Therese was praying for me while I was gone this summer, I just knew it. She expressed her ardent hope to spread the Gospel to all peoples:

"I have the vocation of an apostle. I would like to travel over the whole earth to preach your name and to plant your glorious cross on infidel soil. But oh, my beloved, one mission would not be enough for me, I would want to preach the Gospel on all five continents simultaneously and even to the most remote isles. I would be a missionary, not for a few years but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages."

I am so grateful for her intercession, and I thank God for revealing His power through the work of His precious little ones. I hope that all of us strive to emulate her, and that she prays for us to rejoice together in heaven!

Just an addendum: Benedict XVI's words on Therese today:

Today the Church remembers St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Carmelite of the Lisieux convent. Her testimony shows that only the word of God, received and understood in its concrete demands, becomes a source of renewed life. To our society, often permeated by a rationalist culture and widespread practical materialism, little Thérèse of Lisieux points out, as the answer to the great questions of life, the "little way," which looks instead to the essential of things. It is the humble way of love, capable of enveloping and of giving meaning and value to every human circumstance. Dear friends, follow the example of this saint; the way followed by her is within everyone's reach, because it is the way of total confidence in God, who is Love and who never abandons us.