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Gospel: Luke 9: 57-62
As Jesus and his disciples were proceeding
on their journey, someone said to him,
“I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus answered him,
“Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
And to another he said, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”
But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead.
But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”
And another said, “I will follow you, Lord,
but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”
Jesus answered him, “No one who sets a hand to the plow
and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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At the age of 24, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, whose feast day we celebrate, lay on her deathbed holding a crucifix.
Five of her final words were: My God, I love you!
That simple gesture of confessing her love for Christ while suffering, clinging to a crucifix, is key to understanding her spirituality.
Thérèse believed that no action was extraordinary in itself; on the surface, there’s nothing profound about speech, even from one’s deathbed.
What is profound is the devotion behind her words: My God, I love you! Thérèse reminds us that it’s not what we do or say that matters, as much as why we do it.
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A 20th century Saint later adopted Thérèse’s name and spirituality. We know her as Mother Teresa.
Like Thérèse, Mother Teresa spent her life doing ordinary things with extraordinary love: clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, washing the wounds of lepers, clutching people in her arms as they died of disease or starvation.
Each person, she said, was, “Christ in distressing disguise.”
Both of these saintly women proved with their lives, “My God, I love you!”
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We, too, can be Saints like them, simply by living ordinary lives with extraordinary love.
Show by your actions today, My God, I love you!
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Image credits: (1) Redbubble (2) Congregation of the Holy Cross, Therese of Lisieux (3) A Christian Pilgrimage, WordPress