"I Shall Be Love"

The Mystical Heart of Thérèse of Lisieux's Little Way

Longtime readers will know that I have a particular devotion to Thérèse of Lisieux. Encountering Thérèse’s Little Way was a decisive moment in my spiritual journey.

Many describe the Little Way as a practice of humility, but I disagree. In Stranger God I illustrate how the Little Way is a practice of love.

A key reason why I describe the Little Way as a practice of love comes from the mystical experience and insight that Thérèse describes in her memoir Story of a Soul. This experience is the origin story of the Little Way.

Thérèse’s experience was prompted by a crisis of vocation. Thérèse had felt called to something heroic. She wanted, and had expected, to do great things for God. As she shared with Jesus:

I feel within me other vocations. I feel the vocation of the WARRIOR, THE PRIEST, THE APOSTLE, THE DOCTOR, THE MARTYR. Finally, I feel the need and the desire of carrying out the most heroic deeds for You.

Thérèse wanted, “in spite of my littleness,” to “enlighten souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors.” To, like the apostles, “travel the whole earth to preach Your name,” to “preach the Gospel on all the five continents simultaneously and even to the remote isles.” She says, “I will be a missionary, not for a few years only, but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages.” She wants to be a martyr, to give everything to Jesus: “I would shed my blood for You even to the very last drop.” She dreams of being like her fellow countrywoman Joan of Arc.

And yet, there she was, a twenty-three year-old cloistered nun, and by her own account someone of limited talents and abilities. Many of us, I expect, can identify with Thérèse’s struggle. We have (or once had) heroic dreams for our spiritual lives. But most of us live quiet lives among friends, family, and co-workers. We have a mortgage. And the smallness and mundane nature of our lives can make us wonder, as Thérèse wondered, is “God not asking something more of me than my poor little action and desires. Is He content with me?” She cries out again in despair:

O my Jesus! what is your answer to all my follies? Is there a soul more little, more powerless than mine?

Thérèse receives her answer while reading 1 Corinthians 12, Paul’s famous description of the Body of Christ and the various gifts of each part:

I read there, in the first of these chapters, that all cannot be apostles, prophets, doctors, etc., that the Church is composed of different members, and that the eye cannot be the hand at one and the same time. The answer was clear, but it did not fulfill my desires and gave me no peace.

Why? Because she still didn’t know what her vocation was. Was she an eye, a hand, an ear, a foot? What part of the body was she?

She read on into Chapter 13:

Without becoming discouraged, I continued my reading, and this sentence consoled me: “Yet strive after THE BETTER GIFTS, and I point out to you a yet more excellent way.” And the Apostle explains how all the most PERFECT gifts are nothing without LOVE. That Charity is the EXCELLENT WAY that leads most surely to God.

At last, she had found her vocation. The key to the Little Way. What part of the body would she be? She would be the heart. This is the mystical vision that animates the practice of the Little Way. Becoming love. Thérèse describing her breakthrough:

I finally had rest...Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it, and so I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart is BURNING WITH LOVE. I understood that it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES....IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL!

Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love...my vocation, at last I have found it....MY VOCATION IS LOVE!

Yes, I found my place in the Church...I shall be Love. Thus I shall be everything...

For my money, this passage is the crown jewel of the Christian contemplative tradition. I find it more powerful and profound than anything I’ve read, from St. John of the Cross to St. Francis of Assisi to Julian or Norwich. And this conclusion — “I shall be love” — is why the Little Way as a practice of love. As I describe in Stranger God, the Little Way is becoming love in our day to day existence with others, in all its smallness and routine.

That is the mystical heart of the Little Way.

I shall be love, and in becoming love I shall be everything.