When desperate, I will readily pray for help! I guess that’s only human. For example, I will pray to find just about anything I've lost, especially if it's car keys or some other essential thing to daily life. Of course, I pray continuously for those of you who are struggling with health or family.
But I accuse myself of often forgetting to pray for inspiration or strength in the middle of just a regular day.
This is one lesson that St Thérèse of Lisieux, a Doctor of the Church, still teaches. That the all-powerful God is interested in every detail of our lives….every detail, for every one of us.
But Thérèse has an even deeper lesson for us. She teaches us that all those things in our lives which are weak, all the failures--the things that we would like to cover over and to hide away--these are the things that God is drawn to the most!
The little way of St Thérèse demonstrates for us that our weakness, our littleness, is the very stuff of salvation.
In our Christian Faith there is a basic mistake that we can make and that is to make our religion about what we do for God. We keep the commandments, we go to Mass; we say our prayers, we fast, we give money to charity. We have to do these things.
But our Faith is not first what we do, it is rather about what God does for us.
God has given us this great saint, the Patroness of CatholicTV, to teach us about something in which we think we are experts: love, which is the essence of God.
When Blessed Pope John II made her a Doctor, a teacher, of the Church he said that she taught us the ‘science of love’. And that is: God has loved us first. We can know that love, experience it, live in it. But we cannot earn it, merit it - we can only receive it as a free gift.
Sister Thérèse, continues to be love for us. This patroness of missionaries and, of course of The CatholicTV Network, she is a true friend to all who look to her for intercession.
Father Robert P. Reed
President of The CatholicTV Network
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