In her work with novices, St. Thérèse of Liseux gave many pearls of wisdom on accepting one’s faults as a path to holiness.
Newsroom (27/12/2021 4:15 PM , Gaudium Press)
“The privileges of Jesus are for children,” St. Thérèse often said. She was tireless in praising the trust, abandonment, simplicity, uprightness, and humility of children.
“I wish I had more strength and energy to practice virtue,” Sister Maria da Trindade, her novice, once said to her. The saint’s response held many facets of wisdom:
“And if the Good Lord wants you weak and fragile like a child, would you have less merit? Accept, then, to stumble at every step, even to fall, accept to carry your cross weakly; love your misery; your soul will profit more than if, carried away by grace, it would fulfill with generosity heroic actions that would fill your soul with personal satisfaction and pride.”
Another time when the novice was saddened by her weaknesses, Little Teresa told her:
“Once again you have strayed from the “Little Way”! The trial that saddens and discourages comes from self-love; supernatural suffering increases courage and gives a new impulse for good. We are happy to feel fragile and miserable because the more we humbly acknowledge it, expecting everything freely from the Good God, without any merit on our part, the more the Good God stoops down to us to fill us with His gifts in abundance.”
Excerpted with adaptations from:
DESCOUVERMONT, Pierre. Sister Maria da Trindade – A novice of Saint Theresa. São Paulo: Cultor of Books, 2006, p. 98.
Compiled by Camille Mittermeier
