26th Week, Tuesday, Oct 1: St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus (of Lisieux)
Job 3:1-3, 11-17, 20-23 / Luke9:51-56
Job speaks about his suffering; He didn't hold back on his feelings.
Joseph Stein's play Fiddler on the Roof is set in
Russia in 1905. It centers around a man named Tevye, the father of a poor
Orthodox Jewish family. One of the
delightful features of the play is the way Tevye talks to God from the heart.
He tells God exactly what is on his mind.
For example, one day his horse loses a shoe on the Sabbath.
Since
it is the Sabbath, Tevye cannot get the horse shod. And so he ends up pulling
the wagon himself. All the while he lets God know exactly how he feels about becoming
a horse. Job does the same thing in
today's reading. He lets God know exactly how he feels about the suffering that
has befallen him. Do we speak to God
frankly, from the heart? “God instructs
the heart not by ideas, but by pain and contradiction." Jean Pierre de Coussade
***
We commemorate today St. Vincent de Paul
(1581-1660), a man with a heart. All his life, he was a friend of the poor and
the suffering. To evangelize rural areas, he founded the Congregation of the
Mission or Lazarists and for the benefit of the proletarian masses the Daughters
of Charity, to whom he gave as their convents the streets of the city, the
houses of the poor and the rooms of hospitals. He did also much for improving
the education of future priests in the seminaries. The Church of France owes
very much to this man of vision for its revival in the 17th century. He is the
patron saint of works for the poor.
***
Kind of Spirit
Some of the disciples have witnessed the
Transfiguration, Peter has declared Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus has just
spoken about his paschal destiny… but the disciples are still in a narcissistic
cocoon: they are fighting about who is the greatest among them; they stop
someone from healing people in Jesus’ name because he isn’t one of them; and
they now want fire to come down and burn the Samaritan village because it was
not hospitable to them… Jesus turns and rebukes them. Some earlier versions of
the Bible tell us that he rebuked them saying, “Ye know now what manner of
spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to
save them” (King James Version, 9: 55b-56). This must become a daily
examination of conscience for Christians: “What kind of spirit do I have? Is it
one of tribalism, jealousy, violence, and exclusion; or is it one of humility,
fraternity, inclusive love, and delight in the other?”
***
There is only so much of setback and suffering that we can tolerate and endure. When we snap then we will let fly without reservations, our frustrations and our grievances. What we heard in the 1st reading is not just Job complaining about the tragedies that had happened to him. He was lamenting bitterly to the extent that he even cursed the day he was born. Who would not empathize with him at that point in time. What happened to him was beyond comprehension. It was only much later that Job would come to terms with God's plan and purpose for him.
In the gospel, the hotheaded disciples James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven to burn up the Samaritan village that rejected Jesus. They probably did not understand why Jesus would not allow it and He even rebuked them. Only much later would they understand and comprehend who Jesus was and what He came to do. If Jesus Himself can show understanding and tolerance, then we too must learn from Him. With understanding and tolerance, God will slowly reveal His plan and purpose for us. But when we give in to our frustrations and grievances, we might just forfeit God's revelation to us.
***
Saint
Thérèse of the Child Jesus (of Lisieux)
Feast Day October 1
From obscurity
as a young, idealistic Carmelite, Thérèse of Lisieux has emerged as one of the
best-loved saints. Her simplicity attracts us because she puts holiness within
our reach.
Thérèse was the
daughter of Louis and Zélie Martin. When she was four years old, her pleasant
childhood was interrupted by Zélie’s untimely death. Then Thérèse’s older
sister, Pauline, took responsibility for raising her in the faith. In 1882,
Pauline entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux, igniting a desire in Thérèse
to do the same. Thérèse’s fourteenth year was pivotal. Her sister, Mary, joined
Pauline at the convent. And at Christmas, the young saint had an experience she
described as her “conversion.” Later, in A Story of a Soul, her autobiography,
Thérèse described it as a release from depression and oversensitivity: “Jesus
flooded the darkness of my soul with torrents of light. I got back for good the
strength of soul lost when I was four and a half. Love filled my heart, I
forgot myself, and henceforth I was happy.” In spite of Thérèse’s youth, the
next year the bishop allowed her to become a Carmelite at Lisieux.
From childhood
Thérèse aspired to become a missionary and a martyr. It soon became clear to
her, however, that neither option was open to a cloistered nun. So she sought
the Holy Spirit and searched the Scripture for another way to excel:
We live in an
age of inventions. We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs.
And I am determined to find an elevator to carry me to Jesus, for I was too
small to climb the steep stairs of perfection. So I sought in Holy Scripture
some idea of what this lift I wanted would be, and I read, “Whoever is a little
one, let him come to me” (see Luke 8:16). I also wanted to know how God would
deal with a “little one,” so I searched and found: “You shall be carried in her
arms and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her son. . . .” (Isaiah
66:12–13 NAB) It is your arms, Jesus, which are the elevator to carry me to
heaven. So there is no need for me to grow up. In fact: just the opposite: I
must become less and less.
In 1897, Thérèse thought her dream of becoming a missionary was about to come true. The Carmelites at Hanoi in Indochina, now Vietnam, had invited her to join them. But on the early morning of Good Friday she began to hemorrhage from the mouth. She had contracted tuberculosis, which tortured her for several months before it took her life on September 30, 1897.
