Another Woman Doctor? Catholics Are Becoming So Modern!
I'm not exactly sure why, but we will be honoring Therese of Lisieux tonight at dinner. She died on September 30th, is listed this year for October 1st on Catholic Online, but is honored on the 3rd in the Celtic Daily Prayer Book. Also, I read a quote today from Dorothy Day mentioning "today is Therese's feast day and tomorrow's is for Saint Francis," which is still actually on the 4th (tomorrow). You follow?
At any rate, Therese is imminently popular for her wonderful embodiment of the Little Ways, a way of living she writes of as being a complete embrace of suffering and honoring God and others in tiny, undetected gestures of love and kindness. She did this so well that a sister nun in her convent, upon preparing for her funeral, remarked that there was nothing notable so say about her in eulogy! But her autobiography was nontheless dispersed widely to European monasteries, and within a few years she had become an enormously beloved figure among the common people of faith. She was canonized as a saint thereafter, and became promoted in 1997 as the most recent "Doctor of the Church."
She stands in remarkable contrast to so many bigger-than-life saints that bravely square off against pagan practices and evangelize thousands. Her meek and seemingly insignificant "widow's mite" of a life inspires hope and understanding for the rest of us aniwim of the world.
