Run with Sacrifice

Up to this point, we have aspired to live the Little Way with complete trust and blind faith in God but St. Therese did not stop there!  Not only did she rely on her total confidence in God but she fully cooperated with her own acts of generous virtue as much as she possibly could.  The Saint would often remind her novices of the importance of personal co-operation in the matter of our sanctification and modeled it beautifully for them!

St. Therese would explain that abandonment and confidence in God are only nourished by sacrifice.  So, the Saint is telling us that we have to do work- often times hard work- to help us along in our sanctification.  Having complete trust in Our Lord is extremely important but we need to put forth our own effort of sacrificial love in order to dive even deeper into our trust in God.

Here are some of St. Therese's own words on the matter:  "We must do all in our power to give without counting and to deny ourselves constantly.  We must prove our love by all the good works of which we are capable and which, after all, are of little worth....  Even when we have done all that we think should be done, we are to consider ourselves 'unprofitable servants' (Luke 17,10) hoping at the same time that God will, through His grace, give us all that we desire."

I love the beautiful way that the Saint has no doubt that Our Lord will fulfill her every desire.  In our own lives God will often times exceed our every expectation, as we place our trust in Him and do our own little works of sacrifice with love.

St. Therese concludes by saying:  "This is what all little souls who run in the way of spiritual childhood should hope for."  "Remember, I say run, not rest."


~Taken from "My Sister Saint Therese" pages 56-57