Homily for Tuesday, 1 October 2013– Memorial of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus

Tuesday of the 26th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 66:10-14c; Psalm 131:1bcde, 2, 3; Matthew 18:1-4

Children teach us a lot about humility and about total dependence on the care of their parents and of others close to them. The recent visit of my family, including my four-year-old niece Molly and two-year-old nephew Liam, for my perpetual vows as a Basilian and diaconal ordination, once again reminded me of the virtue of humility and of dependence on others; dependence on God.

Small children are among the best teachers of what it means to be humble and dependent on other people and especially on God. Yet we are all called to be humble. We are all called to depend ultimately on God. In this sense, while of course we are not called to be childish and superficial in our lives of faith, we are all called to follow the example of the humble; the childlike.

Jesus also emphasizes this call to all of us to childlike humility. After the all-too-proud disciples ask him in today’s Gospel from Matthew, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus invites a child from the crowd to his side, saying: “Whoever humbles him or herself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus says here that we are all capable of childlike humility, with God’s help perhaps, and again that this call to be like the child in spirit is for all who long for God’s kingdom.

Today we celebrate the life of St. Theresa of Lisieux, the French Carmelite nun beloved by many for what is often called her “way of spiritual childhood” or simply the “little way.” She died at just twenty-four years of age in 1897, but along the way taught us as Church so much about humility and dependence on God that she is recognized as one of the thirty-four most significant teachers of our faith: one of the Doctors of the Church.

Theresa of Lisieux, who took the name Theresa of the Child Jesus in religious life, is a saint and a Doctor of the Church because she humbled herself. She, among the “greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” is an excellent model for us of one like the child whom Jesus invited to his side from the crowd in today's Gospel.

Theresa echoes by her lived example the words of today’s Psalm: “O LORD, my heart is not proud, nor are my eyes haughty. I busy not myself with great things, nor with things too sublime for me.” Or, as Theresa herself wrote in her prayer of Self-Offering to the Merciful Love of God, “I come to you, O Lord, with empty hands; I do not ask you to count my works.”

And yet, like the Psalmist, Theresa of the Child Jesus found her peace in the Lord. May we, too, imitate St. Theresa’s example of childlike humility and dependence on God, and so be called among the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.