The Little Way: An Ordinary and Humble Way

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Striving After the Greater Gifts

After reading St. Paul’s description in Corinthians 12 of the multitude of gifts which God has planted in the Church, the Little Flower was sadly at a loss because her heart was filled with so many great desires to embrace all the vocations in the Church. At the same time, she knew that she could not possibly fulfill them all in a lifetime. Reading further, she found St. Paul exhorting us "to strive after the greater gifts." He then proceeds to point out the most excellent way, that of charity, showing, moreover, that all the other gifts are nothing without charity. These words of light struck her with jubilant joy, for in them she recognized her own vocation. She understood that love contains and comprises every vocation. Delirious with joy, she exclaimed, "O Jesus, my Love,...my vocation, at last I have found it! My vocation is love! ...in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love ...and thus I shall be all things and my dream [to be all things] will be accomplished!"

We all know that this charity is the foundation stone for her Little Way. Moreover, it is the real foundation for all Christian spirituality, since not only is love the supreme commandment but also because God, whom we are first called to love, is Himself infinite love. Love is, therefore, both the way and the goal of the spiritual life. Love is not only the commandment and the way, but the reward, prize, and the mansion of eternal happiness.

In a few conferences we want to look more deeply into this intuition of Thérèse, which led her to the heart of the Gospel and up to the Heart of God. Because we are told that this youngest Doctor of the Church succeeded in rediscovering the Gospels, we want to take a sober look at the matter. This means that we do not have to rediscover them for ourselves, but it also means that there is something in the Gospels that lends itself to the forgetting or the misconstruing of the essential message.

Israel and the Church are presented in Scripture as the Virgin-Bride of God. St. Thérèse, in her youthful beauty, is surely the virgin-bride of divine wisdom: she entered Carmel when she was scarcely sixteen and then was plucked like a fresh rose that had no time to wilt in the garden when she was but twenty-four years old. This has all the makings for a romantic spirituality, and that may be nice for romantics, but we want to take a sober look at the basics. After all, Thérèse wanted to see her gift of love like an unpetalled rose over which Christ could march in a procession in glory. She writes: "I especially loved the processions of the Blessed Sacrament; what a joy it was to strew flowers beneath the feet of the good Lord! But before letting them fall, I cast them as high as I could, and I was never happier than when I saw my unpetalled roses touching the holy monstrance." Certainly, this expresses what she herself wanted to be and builds the background to her poem, "Strewing flowers," where we read:

B. The Sobriety of the Little Way

While Thérèse is a romantic saint, she had no romantic illusions. You can’t strew the petals without unpetalling the flowers: "The good Lord gave me the grace," she writes, "not to have had any illusions upon my entrance into Carmel. I found religious life as I had expected. No sacrifice astonished me, and nevertheless, as you know well, my dear Mother, my first steps met with more thorns than roses. Indeed, suffering stretched out its arms to me, and I cast myself into them with love."

Evidently, it was not a naïf, juvenile optimism that sustained the Little Flower for a few years before she was swept off into eternity. There is something more substantial to her intuition of love, which not only made her smile in the company of sisters under all circumstances, but even more when she was alone with God, for her goal in life was, first of all, to love and console God. Explaining this to a novice, she said, "It is for us to console God, not for Him to console us. I know very well that He has such a good Heart that when He sees you cry, He will wipe away your tears; but afterwards He will be very sad that He could not rest His divine head upon you. Jesus loves happy hearts. He loves a soul that is always smiling. When, then, will you learn how to hide your pain from Him, or to tell Him singing that you are happy to suffer for Him?"

That doesn’t sound much like a Little Way, does it? We want to ponder, therefore, the foundations of this Little Way to see why it is so called.

This recalls the anecdote of the life of St. Dositheus, who was the novice of St. Dorotheus. Dositheus was, among the Desert Fathers, like the Little Flower on three accounts. First, he was too delicate for all their austerities. He had been a military officer at the emperor’s court before he entered the monastery and never was up to the severe rigors of the fasting and penances. When he came, he was accustomed to eating some six pounds of bread a day (apparently a healthy military portion). St. Dorotheus, with time, got him down to about one or two pounds, which scarcely compared with the interminable fasting of the desert fathers. Like Thérèse, he also died of tuberculosis that was partly due to the weak diet to which he was subjected, which was similar to that of Thérèse. When Thérèse entered, they fed her all the leftovers, because, as you know, one shouldn’t waste food, and she was young and healthy.

Since Dositheus was incapable of fasting and vigils, the only thing he was up to was an exercise of total dedication in fulfilling the tasks that St. Dorotheus charged him with. After a few mere years of this life, Dositheus died. Shortly thereafter, the abbot had a vision and saw Dositheus in heaven seated in the foremost ranks of the saints of the desert. When the abbot shared this vision with the other monks, they were overwhelmed and downcast, for, as they complained, what was the purpose of all their penances and fastings, if a wimp like Dositheus, who was nearly incapable of penances, was raised up to the highest heavens without any merits?

Struggling with this dilemma in prayer, the abbot received the answer: that while it was true that Dositheus was no ascetic, his exaltation was the reward for his great humility and obedience, which shines more greatly before the eyes of God than fastings and penance.

Another kindred Saint is Bl. Heinrich Suso, a German Dominican from the Fourteenth Century. He, unlike Dositheus, was a zealot at penances, even to the danger of his health. Among other things, he carried on his back beneath his habit a nail-studded cross that reached from the shoulders to the hips. After some ten years of this penance, an angel appeared to him, declaring: "Now, I am going to show you the higher way" and taught him the theology of pure love.

Thérèse, for her part, sought out a Little Way, precisely because she discerned that she was incapable of the rigors of the great saints. She needed a quick and simple way; she needed an elevator to heaven. She found it in pure love, humility, and confidence.

Now in this conference we want to talk about one of the key attributes of the Little Way: that it is a humble, ordinary way.

II. The Little Way is an ordinary Way

The more one reads in the writings of the Little Flower, the more one is impressed by the importance that she attaches to the ordinary things of life. The little duties and the little tasks are also a key to the understanding and even more to the proper implementation of the Little Way in our lives. As a Carmelite nun, she did not stand out among the other sisters. Except for her novices and a couple of other privileged souls, her spiritual greatness–to her delight–went unperceived by her fellow sisters at the Carmel in Lisieux. She became known to most of her fellow sisters only after her death at the publishing of her autobiography, The Story of a Soul.

When we reflect upon evangelical perfection and the charity of the Holy Family at Nazareth, we discover that ordinariness is a hallmark of the Gospel ideal. Virtue does not need a stage but rather a loving heart.

True love is self-effacing, because true love is pure. Love is like a master key; it has to fit all the doors, and so it cannot be complex. Rather, it must be very simple, the simplest of all. Charity is the common form and motivator not only behind every vocation and good work, but behind every virtue in the spiritual life. As St. Paul exclaimed, "If I should speak with the tongues of men and of angels but do not have charity, I have become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.... if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have charity, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have charity, it profits me nothing" (1 Cor 13:1-3).

Charity is the common denominator in the spiritual life; it is something universal and, therefore, ordinary. It is like the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is like our daily bread. Life would be impossible without these, and still, while they are most precious, they are most ordinary. Since they are ordinary and charity encompasses them, they are all inconspicuous.

Charity thrives on the ordinary events of daily life. This, of course, means that we do not need anything extraordinary in order to become a saint or to grow in charity. On the contrary, as Fr. Victor de la Vierge, OCD, the author of The Spiritual Realism of St. Thérèse, observes, charity, "nourishes itself silently on whatever is offered to it even in the dullest of days."

My father was a corner-store grocer in the good old days, where everything from tacks to produce, from brooms to poultry fit into space of thirty-by-fifty feet. Behind the checkout was the candy display. In those days you could still find a good selection of penny candies. A new family moved into the neighborhood, whose four or five-year-old son, Johnny, found his way to the candy display. Since he had no money, not even the pennies, he would ask: "Could I have one of these?" "Can I have one of those?" This went on for a while, but my father, realizing that a little boy’s tummy is something like a black hole, thought it necessary to gently cut Johnny off at the pass. "Johnny," he said, "it’s not right for friends to be always asking one another for little gifts. One should wait until the friend offers us something. Do you understand this?" Johnny agreed, "Yes, sir."

Fifteen minutes of peace reigned while my father congratulated himself for resolving the matter gently without hurting the little fellow’s feelings. All the while, however, little Johnny was still crouched there, meditating the treasures behind the glass. Finally, he looked up with tears in his eyes and asked woefully, "Aren’t you going to offer me something?"

You can do a lot of real loving and serving without being noticed, without harvesting any thanks. They say that time heals many wounds, but it can also expose them or purify the soul of them. Selfless service in ordinary things will gradually transform us, but it will also bring our self-love painfully to the service. Serving well will not be noticed; what will be noticed is when you fall short. You can go shopping a hundred times and then one day forget to buy bread, and people are complaining. If you haven’t been doing it principally for the love of our Lord, you are going to be in trouble.

Look at the Holy Family in Narareth. How ordinary their life was. They could live so inconspicuously and unobtrusively for nearly thirty years in Nazareth, and still their virtue did not stand out among their neighbors. After thirty years of supreme holiness, the reaction was: "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon? And are not also his sisters with us? And they took offense at Him" (Mk 6:3f).

In a similar vein, we are not surprised to overhear the conversation of two Carmelite sisters in the corridor before the chamber where Thérèse lies dying, wondering whatever they might be able to put into her obituary notice, since she never did anything special.

Charity is so ordinary on the outside, and it deceives our hidden, unvoiced expectations of honor and esteem. It is not surprising that many souls, after having toasted the excellencies of the Little Way, end up setting it aside in disappointment, as it fails to yield the sense of importance and honor that we should expect from the path of holiness.

Sr. Marie of the Trinity once asked Thérèse what the verse in the Song of Songs could possibly mean: "We will make for you chains of gold inlaid with silver" (1:10). It seems strange to inlay the more precious metal, gold, with less precious silver. You would normally inlay silver with gold, and gold with precious stones. Thérèse pondered on it in prayer and offered this answer: "Jesus gave me the key to the mystery. I understood that the gold chains stand for love, for charity, and they can’t be pleasing unless they are inlaid with silver, which means humility, simplicity and a childlike spirit. O who can tell what value God attributes to these humble virtues, since they alone are found worthy to enhance the luster of charity."

Like Naaman, we may get angered over the humility of the Little Way, which fails to exalt us. Naaman went to the prophet Elisha to be healed of leprosy. When he arrived at the prophet’s house, the latter didn’t even go out to meet him but sent a messenger to tell him to bathe seven times in the Jordan. Angered, he exclaimed, "I thought he would have come out to me, and standing would have invoked the name of the Lord his God, and touched with his hand the place of the leprosy, and healed me. Are not the Aban, and the Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel, that I may wash in them, and be made clean? So he turned and was going away in indignation?" (4 Kgs 5:11).

Fortunately, his servants who loved him, for he was a good man, remonstrated with him, "Father, if the prophet had bid you do some great thing, surely you should have done it. How much more now, that he has simply said to you, ‘wash, and you shall be made clean’" (4 Kgs 5:13). Fortunately again, he was a reasonable man; he went down to the Jordan, bathed seven times, and came out cleansed from leprosy.

So, too, could we easily be cleansed of our sinfulness, if we would but perseveringly follow the Little Way precisely in that which makes it so common and humble. It would starve out pride with its desire for recognition and esteem. Moreover, since pride is at the core of every sin, a path of ordinariness and humility would have to be a tonic for the entire spiritual life. Christ already taught us to seek the lower place at the banquet, "For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted" (Lk 14:11). You see, things work out just the contrary of how fallen nature would expect. Thérèse exulted to her sister Céline: "What happiness it is to be humbled,…it’s the only way saints are made!"

III. The Little Way is the Way of a Creature before God

The reason why an ordinary way of life so pleased Thérèse lies in her loving perception of what it means to be a creature. Only Christianity sets us in relationship with God as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. The attractive beauty of the humility and strength of Thérèse lies in her profound intuition and whole-hearted consent to her creatureliness before her Creator. She rejoices that He is our Creator, that He has called us out of nothingness. She delights over the fact that our existence is due to an excess of His love and not to any need on God’s part.

I understood that all the flowers He created are beautiful, that the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not detract from the perfume of the little violet or from the ravishing simplicity of the daisy.... I understood that if all the flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose its springtime finery, the fields would no longer be decorated with little flowers.

Even so is it in the world of souls, who are the garden of Jesus. He wanted to create the great saints, who can be compared with lilies and roses, but He also created the smallest flowers, and these could be content to be daisies and violets destined to please the glance of the good Lord, when He spreads them out at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wants us to be...

I understood, moreover, that our Lord’s love also manifests itself in the most simple soul which does not offer any resistance to His grace, even as it does in the most sublime souls. For that which is proper to love is that it is self-abasing. [en effet le propre de l’amour étant de s’abaisser]. 

Thérèse rejoices that God is omnipotent, while she is weak and small. She rejoices in His infinite wisdom and over her own limitations of mind and body. She explains her humble perspective in just such creaturely imagery:

It seems to me, that if a little flower could talk, it would say simply what the good Lord has done for her without trying to hide benefices. Under the pretext of a false humility she would not mention that she is a disgraceful flower without perfume, that the sun ravished her of her splendor, that the storms broke her stem, when she recognizes that it is all quite the contrary in herself. The flower which is going to narrate her story rejoices to have to publish the kind and totally gratuitous attention of Jesus. She acknowledges that there is nothing in her capable of drawing His divine gaze upon her and that His mercy alone produced all that is good in her. It is He who planted and made her grow in a holy soil, entirely impregnated her by a virginal perfume.

Initially, the recognition of her littleness overwhelmed her, and she was much at loss as to how she could ever become a saint, how she should ever achieve the holy union with God that she so ardently desired. Recall that she was the baby of the family, and that the traumatic loss of her mother at four years of age and then of her surrogate mother, her sister Pauline, a year or two later, undid her emotional security. Still, she was consoled, for she was convinced: "The good Lord would not inspire desires which cannot be realized." Reflecting on this axiom and her littleness, she wrote, "It is impossible for me to grow up," she drew her conclusion, "I must bear with myself just as I am with all my imperfections."

That is to say, she accepted her creatureliness, her weakness, and all her imperfections and was still resolved to become a saint. She only had to figure out how. "I want to find a means of going to heaven–a Little Way, very straight, very short, an entirely new way.... I should also like to find an elevator to carry me up to Jesus, for I am too little to climb the steep staircase of perfection."

She set off on another of her biblical pilgrimages in search of an answer, letting her fingers and eyes do the walking until she came across the words of eternal wisdom: "Whoever is a little one, let him come to Me." Rejoicing at her discovery, she continued her search and came upon the even more consoling invitation:

"As a mother caresses her child, even so shall I comfort you, I will carry you at My breast and shall balance you upon My knee" (Is 66,13; cf. 66,12). Ah, never had words more tender and melodious come to rejoice my soul. Oh, the elevator that is to take me right up to heaven are your arms, dear Jesus! For this, I don’t need to grow up. To the contrary, it is necessary that I remain little, that I become so more and more. O my God, You have surpassed my expectations and I wish to sing Your mercies,.... That which she esteems, that which she solely desired is to give pleasure to Jesus.... Now that He seems to be approaching her to draw her to the place of His glory, your child rejoices. For a long time now, she has understood that God doesn’t have need of any one (and even less of her than of any other) in order to do good on earth.

To repeat the key thought: "For this, I don’t need to grow up. To the contrary, it is necessary that I remain little, that I become so more and more." It is as if by the backdoor she had discovered the essence of the Gospel. After all, in the Gospel it is asked, "Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of God?" The answer is one of simplicity and humility: "Jesus called a little child to Himself, set it in their midst, and said: ‘Amen, I say to you, unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whoever, therefore, humbles himself as this little child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 18:2-4).

St. Thomas raises the objection that this can’t be true since charity is greater than humility. And then he offers this explanation:

Charity necessarily accompanies humility. This can be verified by considering one who is humble. Just as in pride there are two things, namely, inordinate affections and an inordinate estimation of self, even so and contrarily is it with humility, since it does not seek its own excellence, nor deem itself worthy. This necessarily leads to charity. Everyone desires the excellence he loves. Hence, the more one has of humility, the more he loves God; and the more he looks down on his own excellence, the less he attributes to himself. Thus, the more charity one has, the more humility he will also have.  

These two virtues, charity and humility, are joined in Thérèse’s final words to her beloved novice, Sr. Mary of the Trinity: "May your life be completely filled with humility and charity, so that you can soon come where I am going, into the arms of Jesus"

IV. A Bouquet in Honor of Humility

From her many sayings we could put together a kind of Litany of Humility. In honor of the Little Flower, we will call it a bouquet in which we can contemplate her manifold beauty, the beauty to which God is calling each one of us.

A. To be Hidden and Unknown

As Sr. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, she had the humility of spiritual childhood before God her Creator; as Sr. Thérèse of the Face of Jesus, she longed to step down even further in the self-emptying of Christ. When meditating the Song of the Servant in Isaiah 53–"His face was like one hidden from us; He seemed to us an object of contempt, the vilest of men"–she expressed her wish for obscurity: "Oh! how I wish that my face was hidden like His, so that here on earth nobody would recognize me." On another occasion, when asked what she was thinking, she replied: "Ah! how I would like to be unknown and counted for nothing" 

This longing came from her contemplation of the Holy Face of Jesus, about which she writes in a poem to Mary:

B. To be Weak

In the foregoing poem Thérèse already expressed her conviction that it is necessary to remain in the state of weakness or littleness, against which our nature so easily rebels. Thérèse’s novice, Sr. Marie de la Trinité, expressed the wish: "I would like to have more strength and energy to practice virtue." St. Thérèse responded:

And if God wants you to be weak and powerless like a little child, do you think you will be less worthy? Consent, then, to stumble at every step, even to fall, to carry your cross feebly. Love your powerlessness; your soul will draw more profit than, if supported by grace, you achieve with a certain flair heroic acts which fill your soul with personal satisfaction and selfish pride.

Thérèse is often misunderstood by many devout souls who, perceiving her gigantic heroism, conclude that the Little Way worked for her because she had such heroism. As a matter of fact, the order is the other way around. It is because she lived the Little Way that God granted her such great heroism of virtue. Remember she was a whimpering ball-baby as a child. Sr. Mary of the Trinity was trying by the dint of her own efforts and failing. To get her onto the right path, Thérèse told the famous parable that recalled her own childhood.

You make me think of the very little child who starts to hold herself up but does not yet know how to walk. Wanting absolutely to climb to the top of the stairs to find her mother again, she lifts her little foot to finally climb the first step. Useless labor! She always falls without making any advance. Okay! Consent to be this little child. Though practicing all the virtues, keep lifting up your little foot in order to clamber up the stairs of holiness. You will not even get to the first rung, but God asks nothing of you except your good will. From the top of the stairs He looks down at you with love. Soon, won over by your ineffective efforts, He will come down Himself and, taking you in His arms, He will take you away into His kingdom forever, where you will never have to depart from Him. But if you give up lifting your little foot, He will leave you on earth for a very long time.

On another occasion, but speaking on the same theme, she asked Sr. Mary of the Trinity:

The happy day when Jesus will Himself come down to carry you away in His arms,–will you be more advanced by having clambered up five or six steps by your own strength? Is it more difficult for Jesus to take you from the bottom rather than from the middle of the stairs? There is yet another advantage for you not being able to mount up: that is, to remain your whole life in humility, whereas if your own efforts were crowned by success you would not get any compassion from Jesus, He would let you climb up all by yourself and He would fear all the time lest you fall because of your self-complacency.

In a prayer, inspired by the example of St. Joan of Arc–one of her heroes–after telling our Lord that she go into battle for him, she reflects:

C. To Accept Being Subject to Temptations

We should also never get discouraged by our faults. If the devil gets the upper hand, "pick yourself up without surprise and humbly say to Jesus: ‘Even though the devil has just made me fall, I am not conquered. Here I am again at the beginning, ready to recommence the fight for love of You.’ Jesus, who is touched by your good will, will Himself be your strength." This discouragement, which stems from our pride, is the real cause of defeat, for the little faults from which we rapidly rise do not offend our Lord and only serve to keep us humble. When her confessor explained this to Thérèse as a youth, this truth filled her soul with joy and consolation, for until then she had been tormented by the thought that she was offending God.

Just before making her first profession, Thérèse was tormented by the thought that she had no vocation to Carmel, and at the same time, feared presenting the thoughts to her novice mistress. Humility indicated the path of opening her heart, and she did. The novice mistress saw more clearly than she did and assured her of her vocation. Additionally:

Moreover, the act of humility I had made just put the devil to flight, who perhaps had been thinking that I would not avow my temptation to another. As soon as I had finished speaking to the Novice Mistress my doubts were dispersed. In order to render even more complete my act of humility, I wanted to confess my strange temptation to our Reverend Mother, who, upon hearing it, let it suffice to just laugh at me.

D. Humility as Poverty in Spirit and the Love of Dependence

Thérèse also took delight in poverty, in which the spirit of loving dependence manifests itself. She writes:

Sometimes it is necessary to ask for indispensable things, but when one does this with humility, one does not fail to observe the commandment of Jesus. On the contrary, one acts like the poor who stretch out their hand to receive what they need. If they are refused, they are not astonished. After all, no one owes them anything. Ah! what peace inundates the soul that has raised itself up above the sentiments of nature.... No, there is no joy comparable to that which is enjoyed by true poverty in spirit.    

This poverty of spirit also meant a special detachment. She was the little ball that the Baby Jesus could play with or toss in the corner and neglect. "Give to the good Lord," she encouraged, "the sacrifice of never collecting any fruits, that is to say that you be willing throughout your life to suffer repugnance at being humiliated, at seeing all the flowers of your good desires and your good will fall to the ground without having produced anything. Then, at the glance of an eye, at the moment of your death, He will know very well how to decorate with the most beautiful fruits the tree of your soul."

E. Humility in Willing Service and Accepting Reproach

As a final flower in this bouquet of humility, let us mention Thérèse’s joy in being at the service and disposition of all. She writes:

We ought to be humble at heart, and you haven’t got there as long as you do not wish for the rest of the world to command you about. You are in a good mood as long as things go well, but as soon as they don’t go according to your way of thought, your countenance darkens. There is no virtue in this. Virtue consists in this: "to submit yourself beneath the hand of everyone" (Imitation, III, ch. 49,7), it means to rejoice when you are blamed.

Let us end our conference with St. Thérèse’s prayer for humility.

V. Prayer for obtaining Humility

O Jesus, when You were a pilgrim upon this earth, You said: "Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find peace for your souls." O Mighty Monarch of the heavens, yes, indeed, my soul finds rest in beholding You clothed in the form and the nature of a slave, humbling Yourself even to the washing Your apostles’ feet. I recall those words which You pronounced to teach me to practice humility: "I have given you an example, so that you might do as I have done; the disciple is not greater than the master... If you understand these things, blessed shall you be if you do them." I understand, Lord, these words issuing from Your meek and humble Heart, I want to practice them with the help of Your grace.

I want to abase myself humbly and submit my will to that of my [neighbors (sisters)]; I do not wish to contradict them in anything nor investigate whether or not they have the right to command me. No one, my dearly Beloved, had this right over You, and nevertheless You not only obeyed the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, but even Your executioners. Now it is in the Host that I see You crowning Your self-annihilations. How great is Your humility, O Divine King of Glory, that You submit Yourself to Your priests without making any distinction between those who love You and those, who — alas! — are tepid and cold-hearted in Your service. At their word You descend from heaven. Whether they advance or delay the hour of the Holy sacrifice, You are always ready.....

O my Dearly Beloved, beneath the veil of the White Host You appear to me meek and humble of heart. To teach me humility You could not have abased Yourself any more. Therefore, in order to respond to Your love, I want to desire that my sisters always put me in the last place and I want to convince myself that this place is truly mine.

I implore You, Divine Jesus, to send me a humiliation whenever I try to set myself over others. I know, O my God, that You humble the proud, but to the one who humbles himself, You give an eternity of glory. I desire, therefore, to take the last place, to share Your humiliations in order to "have a share with You" in the Kingdom of Heaven.

But, Lord, my weakness is known to You; every morning I make the resolution to practice humility, and each evening I acknowledge that I have committed many more faults of pride. At the sight of this, I am tempted to become discouraged, but I know that discouragement too is a thing of pride. Therefore, O my God, I wish to place all my hope in You alone; for You can do all things. Deign to bring forth in my soul the virtue I desire. To obtain this grace from Your infinite mercy, I shall frequently repeat: "O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my Heart like unto Yours!"