I must decrease so that he may increase

In an episode of The Wonder Years (I believe Season 2), Kevin starts 8th grade and finds out the new Math teacher means business. Kevin gets D’s on quizzes for the first time, but is too prideful to seek help. But when he fails the first big test, he admits that he is completely lost. Then the teacher says, “Good. Now you are ready to start.”

Too often we think we are experts in so many things. But it is not until we accept we know nothing that we can actually come to know something. How can you learn if you already think you know it?

The more I have learned, the more I have found there is that I do not know. There is so much out there to learn and I know that on my own power I will never know enough to save my life. So I know there is a need for medical doctors, teachers, plumbers, car mechanics, and so on. But there is also a need, if not a greater one, for spiritual doctors and theologians.

If a glass is half-full with oil, how can you put water in it and expect to drink that water and obtain what your body needs without becoming sick? First, the oil must be washed out so that greater amounts of purer water can be placed in the glass and your body can be nourished. In the same way, how can Christ fill you and nourish you if you keep filling yourself with that which is contrary to him? If I am full of self-pride or any of the other vices, how can I find room for the virtues of Christ? As John the Baptist said, “He must increase; I must decrease” (Jn 3:30).

Why not me?

Do you ever catch yourself praying that you can be spared of a certain peril or suffering? When you do this, do you think of the other people it could effect and who else could instead receive that peril or suffering? “Please don’t let that happen to me, Lord.”

Last year in a class, my professor, a priest, offered: A woman once observed that when someone is about to die they always cry “Why me? Why me?” She thought, “Why not me? I am no better than everybody else.”

I truly admire my friend Carrie for the suffering she is enduring now. Her faith has not appeared to waiver at all. I am not saying she hasn’t questioned. Mother Theresa and even Christ did that. But she knows that what she is enduring will make her stronger and allow for her to be a role model for others. And I am already noticing her become that role model.

Christ willingly accepted suffering for our sake, even though he first asked God to let the cup pass. But he knew that it had to be done so he went along with it. Yet so often we want to avoid as much suffering as possible. After all, that is what our culture tells us to do. “If Jesus is so great and loves us so much, then shouldn’t he make our life easier?”

To that I ask: “If Christ is so great, why are you not eager to join him in everlasting life?” Remember, like Christ, you must first die to this world so that you may have life in the next!

St Therese of the Child Jesus

"I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul." These are the words of Theresa of the Child Jesus, a Carmelite nun called the "Little Flower," who lived a cloistered life of obscurity in the convent of Lisieux, France. [In French-speaking areas, she is known as Thérèse of Lisieux.] And her preference for hidden sacrifice did indeed convert souls. Few saints of God are more popular than this young nun. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, is read and loved throughout the world. Thérèse Martin entered the convent at the age of 15 and died in 1897 at the age of 24.

Life in a Carmelite convent is indeed uneventful and consists mainly of prayer and hard domestic work. But Thérèse possessed that holy insight that redeems the time, however dull that time may be. She saw in quiet suffering redemptive suffering, suffering that was indeed her apostolate. Thérèse said she came to the Carmel convent "to save souls and pray for priests." And shortly before she died, she wrote: "I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth."

[On October 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church, the third woman to be so recognized in light of her holiness and the influence of her teaching on spirituality in the Church.]

Comment:

Thérèse has much to teach our age of the image, the appearance, the "sell." We have become a dangerously self-conscious people, painfully aware of the need to be fulfilled, yet knowing we are not. Thérèse, like so many saints, sought to serve others, to do something outside herself, to forget herself in quiet acts of love. She is one of the great examples of the gospel paradox that we gain our life by losing it, and that the seed that falls to the ground must die in order to live (see John 12).

Preoccupation with self separates modern men and women from God, from their fellow human beings and ultimately from themselves. We must relearn to forget ourselves, to contemplate a God who draws us out of ourselves and to serve others as the ultimate expression of selfhood. These are the insights of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and they are more valid today than ever.

Quote:

All her life St. Thérèse suffered from illness. As a young girl she underwent a three-month malady characterized by violent crises, extended delirium and prolonged fainting spells. Afterwards she was ever frail and yet she worked hard in the laundry and refectory of the convent. Psychologically, she endured prolonged periods of darkness when the light of faith seemed all but extinguished. The last year of her life she slowly wasted away from tuberculosis. And yet shortly before her death on September 30 she murmured, "I would not suffer less."

Truly she was a valiant woman who did not whimper about her illnesses and anxieties. Here was a person who saw the power of love, that divine alchemy which can change everything, including weakness and illness, into service and redemptive power for others. Is it any wonder that she is patroness of the missions? Who else but those who embrace suffering with their love really convert the world?
(This entry appears in the print edition of Saint of the Day.)