On Oct. 1, we celebrate the feast day of St. Therese of Lisieux, a saint of the 20th century. Little noticed while living on this earth, but great in Heaven, St. Therese lived such a humble life that, as she lay dying, one of the sisters in her Carmelite convent said, "What will we write about her? She didn't do anything!"
She didn't do - she loved.
That's the secret of her sanctity. She trusted in the love and mercy of the Lord Jesus, believing that the God who came down from Heaven to become one of us would reach down to the little souls, the weakest of believers, and raise them up to Himself out of love. She imitated the love of the Lord, doing everything with great love, seeking to always act according to the demands of love.
And, in so doing, she consoled the Heart of Jesus, the hearts of her neighbors, and enlarged her own heart enough to become a conduit for the love of the Lord during her earthly life and into her life in heaven.
"My mission - to make God loved - will begin after my death," she said. "I will spend my heaven doing good on earth. I will let fall a shower of roses."
Let us ask her to let fall some of those roses into our own lives and the lives of those we love. Let us pray for her intercession for all of our needs, especially those that seem most difficult or impossible, for the Little Flower is mighty in Heaven.