A Little Way Through Lent

BY Father Dwight Longenecker

March 1-7, 2009 Issue | Posted 2/23/09 at 8:02 PM

As a young Anglican priest, I decided one year to really take Lent seriously. In my yard in England, there was a summerhouse — a pleasant little shed with windows and a door in which one could sit to take tea or read on a summer day. I decided through the cold of February and March to sleep in the summerhouse. I also decided to give up meat. Totally. To keep the hermit theme, I also grew a beard.

It soon got around the parish what extremes the young curate was going to, and the response was admiration among the young people and concern among the older and wiser that I was “just showing off.”

The experience was joyful and austere, and I learned much through it about myself and about asceticism and its relationship to prayer and the spiritual life. I would never discourage someone from taking Lent seriously in this way, but I have learned from St. Thérèse of Lisieux that there is also a Little Way through Lent.

Thérèse had a youthful inclination for heroics.

She wanted to be a valiant warrior for Christ. There is a charming photograph of her dressed in armor as St. Joan of Arc, and she wrote, “I have put on the breastplate of the Almighty, and he has armed me with the strength of his arms. Henceforth, no terror can wound me, for who can now divide me from his love? By his side, I advance to the battlefield, fearing neither fire nor steel; my enemies shall discover that I am a queen and the bride of a King.” Elsewhere she says, “I long to accomplish the most heroic deeds; I feel within me the courage of the crusader. I would die on the battlefield in defense of the Church!”

“You must be a whole saint or no saint at all!” is her battle cry, and she says on her deathbed, “I shall die with my weapons in my hand!”

And yet, this noble soul realizes that she does not actually have the constitution or the circumstances to be a Francis Xavier or Ignatius Loyola. She is enclosed in a convent with bourgeois women. She is a little girl — and a sickly one at that.

Therefore, she is thrilled when she discovers the secret mystery of the Little Way. In reading the 13th chapter of St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, she realizes that love is the burning heart of the Church, and that her vocation is love.

In Chapter 11 of Story of a Soul, she recounts her discovery: “Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that the Church being a body composed of different members, the most essential, the most noble of all the organs would not be wanting to her; I understood that the Church has a heart and that this heart is burning with love; that it is love alone which makes the members work, that if love were to die away apostles would no longer preach the Gospel, martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood that love comprises all vocations, that love is everything, that it embraces all times and all places because it is eternal!” 

She realizes that all the heroic deeds without charity are worth nothing. She writes, “You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.”

It logically follows that the smallest deeds done in the power of the gift of love become great in God’s sight. So this little doctor of the church teaches us: “Our Lord needs from us neither great deeds nor profound thoughts. Neither intelligence nor talents. He cherishes simplicity.” The Little Way through Lent is charged with the desire to make small sacrifices that are burning with the heart of Christ’s love in the world.

If we decide to take the Little Way through Lent, then our prayer is simply to share the gift of divine love that Thérèse discovered. Once that gift is given, the small sacrifices we make are tiny but dearly precious things. They are sparkling gems of goodness that glitter and burn with the reflected fire of divine love.

Thérèse said this was what took her through the difficult times: In a letter to her sister Celine, she writes, “In times of aridity when I am incapable of praying, of practicing virtue, I seek little opportunities, mere trifles, to give pleasure to Jesus; for instance, a smile, a pleasant word when inclined to be silent and to show weariness. If I find no opportunities, I at least tell him again and again that I love him; that is not difficult, and it keeps alive the fire in my heart. Even though this fire of love might seem extinct, I would still throw little straws upon the embers, and I am certain it would rekindle.”

Some worry that this “little way” is really an “easy way.” In other words, it is a cop-out. The Little Way is simple, but it is not easy. It is simple because it relies totally on God’s grace and his gift of divine love in our lives. It is not easy because to receive this gift of grace and the fullness of God’s love we must purify our lives and yield all to him.

Thérèse’s name in religion was Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, and as her name, so her nature. She gives us a childlike way to God — a way that contemplates the face of Christ, through whom we receive the gift of love. 

It is this gift that changes all our actions — charging our lives with love and making our little way through Lent a proper preparation for Easter triumph. 

Father Longenecker is the author of

St. Benedict and St. Thérèse — the Little Rule and the Little Way.

Visit him at DwightLongenecker.com

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