Feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 I was honored and pleased to celebrate the Mass and preach the homily for the Feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face at Holy Trinity Carmel in Arlington, Texas. The Carmelite sisters have dedicated their lives to prayer for the sake of the entire Church and especially for the priests, deacons, religious, and people of the Diocese of Fort Worth. Please remember to pray for the sisters of this Carmel.

+ Most Rev. Michael F. Olson
Bishop of Fort Worth


Homily: Feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face
Holy Trinity Carmel
October 1, 2015


Readings:
Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13
1 John 4:7-16
Matthew 11:25-30

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Public Domain

In our Gospel, Jesus admits that the Galilean ministry has not gone well. We see that the religious experts of His day have rejected His message. We also see that the little and simple people on the outer fringes have embraced it. Jesus shares His mutual knowledge and love of the Father with those whom He chooses and with those whom He calls. This love is His free gift to us and, as Therese teaches us so often, her Jesus will never be outdone in generosity!

Those who have received this Good News of love are not to hoard it but to share it. St. Therese knows that her very vocation is love. Her vocation of love is beyond even the confines of the dates of her earthly life, "I will spend my Heaven doing good on earth." Her vocation is Love. Love is at the very heart of Christian discipleship. It is first love that is fully manifested by Jesus Christ on the Cross.

There are very many times when injustice, especially an unjust system, seems to rule the day---but Therese shows us through her little way of confidence that it is love that will never be outdone---it is Jesus Himself who wins the day when we are overwhelmed by injustice and evil.

"His yoke is easy and His burden is light." The yoke that Jesus speaks of is for all of us; it is Jesus Himself; it is love; it is for us, the little way of confidence in God’s complete and loving Providence as shown us by St. Therese, the greatest saint in modern times. In today’s Gospel, it is the Scribes and Pharisees who are seeking to find the norm for living exclusively within the Law. They are trying to live within the Law without accepting it as a Covenant that involves personal conversion and confidence; they want the Law but without God Who has revealed the Law and Who has revealed Himself in the Law. They want the Law of self-sufficiency without the sacrifice of authentic love. The Pharisees and the Scribes are not unlike much of the religious leadership of Therese’s day inside her Carmel and also throughout much of Jansenist France. The trust in Grace is too frightening to them and cowardice scatters the flock as it exchanges love for politics or privilege.

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Therese is fierce and courageous in her vulnerability---the vulnerability of the Cross---on which Christ is first wounded. She promises to die "with weapons in her hands". The weapons of spiritual abandonment in trust in the unconditional love of God---trust that God loves each of us unconditionally; trust that is tenacious in the face of a spirituality of self-will and arrogant denial of reality that more often than not---passively colludes with evil through cowardice and sins of omission. The weapon of loving trust will not surrender to self-sufficiency and isolation from God or from Therese’s brothers and sisters in the Church. The weapon that loves God for God’s sake and not because of what He gives me.