The Richness Of Spiritual Poverty
October is my favorite month for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its litany of great feast days: Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Fatima, Saint Francis, Saint Faustina, Saint Pope John Paul II . . . and we hit the ground running with Saint Therese of Lisieux, whose feast day is Oct. 1.
I’ve always admired Saint Therese’s Little Way (doing small things with great love) in theory, and I’ve always admired her in a “she’s-a-doctor-of-the-Church-and-people-say-she’s-great” kind of way. Yet, I’ve never felt a strong connection to her or a calling to learn more about her. I couldn’t even utter more than two coherent sentences about the spirituality undergirding her Little Way until three weeks ago when a friend texted me and told me that she felt called to pass a book along to me that day.
The book is called “33 Days to Merciful Love”by Marian Father Michael Gaitley. In the book, Gaitley offers a guide to making an offering to Divine Mercy, taking Saint Therese and her Little Way as a model for understanding our relationship to the mercy that Christ yearns to offer us.
When I started reading about Therese’s spiritual blueprint, I remained skeptical about my ability to connect to her. My hopes heightened as I read the Day 13 reflection, in which Gaitley prefaces an excerpt from one of St. Therese’s letters by stating that its content has shaped his own spirituality since he first encountered it. How could a start like that fall flat?
Well. The content proved to be less than mystical and life-altering for me. Therese’s advice that I found particularly problematic is as follows:
“My [gifts and virtues] are nothing, they are not what give me the unlimited confidence that I feel in my heart. They are, to tell the truth, the spiritual riches that render one unjust, when one rests in them with complacency and when one believes they are something great . . . the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more suited one is for the workings of this consuming and transforming love.”
Wait a second. It’s good to be without desires or virtues? Doesn’t God give us desires and virtues so that we might serve Him? I was lost, and I realized that I needed to think and pray through Therese’s seemingly severe and counterintuitive position more thoroughly.
I love the particular gifts that God has given me, and this gratitude moves me to give thanks to the Lord. Good so far, no? Yet, I realize that, in loving spiritual gifts too much, I risk fashioning my life based upon a pattern of waiting for and receiving blessings and answers from God, training myself only to love God insofar as I feel and see Him.
Perhaps even more dangerously, I might try to frame my choices and accomplishments so they seem holy, fooling myself and others by saying I’m nobly seeking God in the world while I’m really looking for worldly success and slapping God’s name on it when I achieve it; through my self-guidance, willpower, and ability to frame a story well, “it all worked out as God planned.”
But what happens if I cultivate spiritual poverty? I no longer just seek God through this experience or in that achievement . . . I seek God Himself. Spiritual poverty purifies, removing the roadblocks from my path to God. To use Therese’s own image, it makes me a little soul that, unable to climb to the heights of holiness, seeks an elevator to be lifted up to the Lord. That elevator is no less than the embrace of Jesus.
Saint Therese’s challenge has become more clear: Let us honor the ways God has particularly and lovingly blessed us, while loving our poverty—even our spiritual poverty—more than anything, for it’s our poverty that impels us to run to the Lord again and again, accepting His mercy with arms that are empty, and thus entirely open. In our powerlessness, we become empowered to accept His love and mercy.
How do we start on this spiritual path?
I vote that we ask for the intercession of Saint Therese.
