Lately I have been withdrawing from life and many of the people around me. I am taking longer breaks in solitude. It is strange to feel God call to us. It is a voice... like music, which moves through the whole body... and suddenly, I cannot choose anything else, I must go where I am drawn.
"For a long time I wondered why God showed partiality, why all souls don't receive the same amount of graces.
Jesus consented to teach me this mystery. He placed before my eyes the book of nature; I understood that all the flowers that He created are beautiful. The brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily don't take away the perfume of the lowly violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy.... I understood that if all the little flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose its springtime adornment, and the fields would no longer be sprinkled with little flowers....
So it is in the world of souls, which is Jesus' [God's] garden. He wanted to create great Saints who could be compared to lilies and roses. But He also created little ones, and these ought to be content to be daisies or violets destined to gladden God's eyes. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wants us to be.
I understood that Our Lord's love is revealed as well in the simplest soul who doesn't resist His grace in anything. In fact, since the essence of love is to bring oneself low, if every soul were like the Saints and Prophets who have shed light on the Church, it seems that God wouldn't come low enough by forming only their great hearts. But He created the child who doesn't know anything and only cries weakly, He created poor ignorant persons who only have natural law as a guide -- and it is to their hearts that he consents to come down: Here are wildflowers whose simplicity delights Him....
Just as the sun shines at the same time on the tall cedars and on each little flower as if it were the only one on earth, in the same way Our Lord is concerned particularly for every soul as if there were none other like it. And just as in nature all the seasons are arranged in such a way as to cause the humblest daisy to open on the appointed day, in the same way all things correspond to the good of each soul."
St. Therese of Lisieux, 1873-1897May I always be God's wildflower, in his deepest forest, blooming.
When I surrendered to God in 1989, God gave me the strength to quit alcohol and drugs. I was a long ways from being a better person. There was much unresolved in my heart. Years of dysfunctional behavior had to be healed. But in my sincerity and love for God was my perfection. In my brokenness as a human being God could use me and all I had to do was be sincere and as obedient as possible, which means sometimes I failed but got back up in humility and contrition and tried again.
ReplyDeleteI'm a much more balanced person now, much has been healed by God's grace, yet if I don't have that sincerity, surrender, and humility that I had in the beginning, God can't use me.
Praise the Creator, the Sustainer and Source of all creation.
I greatly admire St. Therese for writing this section in her book because it made apparent to me that even if we are not all made to be great prophets or saints, we can still help the world, and be for God what He made us to be. I think it allows us to look over the events in our lives and find a certain amount of peace. No matter how long it takes a seed to bloom, eventually it will become a flower, and all flowers have an equally beautiful place in God's garden.
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