25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 2:12,17-20 James 3:16-4:3 Mark 9:30-37
As the feast of St Therese draws near we will let her speak to us. She would have meditated on the gospel scene where Jesus held up a little child before his apostles and told them they must be like this in oder to enter the kingdom of heaven. “Anyone who welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” “The one who makes himself as little as this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” St Therese’s teaching, that of a little child becomes the perfect model to imitate in our lives.
Therese was always little. In the family circle at home, the last of nine children, she lived under the affectionate care of her older sisters. In Carmel, preceded by two of her sisters and entering at the age of fifteen, she was to die at twenty-four. The only seniority she ever enjoyed was in the novitiate. She was always “little Therese, both in her family setting and among her friends. She lived this supernaturally up to her entrance into heaven, due to a grace which made her understand the model given by Jesus to his most intimate disciples.
The child whom Therese took as a model and presents to us is not the tiny creature imposing its desires through its winning charm. It is rather the child she herself describes: “To recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God as a little child expects everything from its father…
“To be little is not attributing to oneself the virtues that one practices, believing oneself capable of anything, but to recognize that God places this treasure in the hands of his little child to be used, when necessary, but it always remains God’s treasure.