The Little Way of an Enormous Soul

There is a peculiar paradox about small things that modern minds miss entirely, being too intent on discovering great truths to notice that the greatest truth is often small enough to be overlooked. We are forever seeking grand gestures and sweeping reforms, while overlooking the quiet revolution that might occur in a corner of a Carmelite convent. This is precisely why the story of Thérèse of Lisieux confounds the clever critics and delights the simple – for she discovered what philosophers have missed: that littleness is a kind of largeness, and weakness a particular form of strength.

Born Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin in 1873, she would become known to millions as the "Little Flower," though this nickname contains an irony that would have delighted her. For while she explicitly aimed at being little, she implicitly achieved something rather large. Her "little way" turned out to be an enormous highway on which countless souls have traveled. This is the first paradox we must grasp about Thérèse – that in pursuing insignificance, she became remarkably significant.

The modern mind, stuffed full of progress and psychology, would no doubt diagnose young Thérèse as suffering from an unfortunate childhood. Having lost her mother at four years old, she might be labeled as traumatized, fragile, over-sensitive. But this would be to miss the point spectacularly. For what actually occurred was not the crippling of a soul but its curious flourishing, like a flower growing through concrete. She did not become less because of her suffering, but more; not weaker, but somehow stronger – though it was the peculiar strength that comes only through admitted weakness.

Here we stumble upon another paradox, which is that Thérèse's great contribution to spiritual thought came precisely through having no great pretensions to spiritual thought at all. While learned theologians were writing elaborate treatises on mystical elevation, she was quietly revolutionizing spirituality by insisting it was quite simple. This simplicity, however, was not the shallow kind that comes from ignoring complexity, but the deep simplicity that comes from seeing through it.

Consider her approach to sanctity, which managed to be at once incredibly humble and incredibly ambitious. She did not say, like some modern spiritualists, that holiness was unnecessary; nor did she say, like some ancient ascetics, that it was impossibly difficult. Instead, she proposed something far more startling – that holiness was quite possible, precisely because it was not about doing great things but small ones with great love. This is rather like saying that anyone can be a great artist, not by painting the Sistine Chapel, but by painting their own kitchen ceiling with complete devotion. It is an idea that is either utterly mad or utterly profound – and Christianity has always specialized in ideas that might be either.

The sophisticates of her time (and ours) would no doubt find something suspicious in her childlike approach to spirituality. They would prefer something more complex, more suited to their own complexity. But this is to miss the whole point of Christianity, which insists that we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Thérèse took this literally, which is always a dangerous thing to do with Scripture – dangerous because it might actually work.

Her "little way" was essentially a rediscovery of something the Church had always known but had perhaps forgotten to emphasize: that God is not impressed by our achievements but by our love. This seems obvious when stated plainly, yet it is the kind of obvious truth that we are always in danger of forgetting in favor of less obvious falsehoods. We prefer to imagine that God is like a cosmic employer, checking our spiritual productivity charts, when He is actually more like a parent, simply delighting in His children's attempts to please Him, however clumsy.

Here we must pause to note something crucial about Thérèse's teaching, which is that it was not really her teaching at all. She would have been horrified to think she had invented anything. What she did was more like discovering America – she simply found something that was already there but that everyone had somehow missed seeing. The gospel had always said that the kingdom belongs to children and the poor in spirit, but somehow we had translated this into a complicated system that only doctors of theology could navigate.

The truly revolutionary aspect of Thérèse's spirituality was not its complexity but its simplicity – and this is precisely what makes it so difficult for modern minds to grasp. We are convinced that anything worthwhile must be complicated, that spiritual progress must involve elaborate techniques and esoteric knowledge. Thérèse suggested instead that it was mainly a matter of love and trust, like a child with its father. This is either nonsense or the deepest wisdom – and the whole history of Christianity suggests it is the latter.

But we must not imagine that this simplicity made her life easy. Indeed, she suffered terribly, both physically and spiritually. The difference was that she did not consider suffering an obstacle to holiness but rather an opportunity for it. This is another paradox that the modern mind finds difficult to process – that happiness might come not from avoiding suffering but from embracing it with love. Yet this is precisely what Thérèse demonstrated in her brief life, particularly in her final illness.

When she was dying of tuberculosis, she remarked that she had discovered joy in suffering, not because suffering is itself joyful (which would be madness), but because it provided an opportunity to prove love (which is either madness or the highest sanity). This is rather like saying that a soldier might find joy in battle, not because battle is pleasant but because it provides an opportunity for courage. The modern mind, which seeks to eliminate all suffering, might learn something from this – though whether it would be a comfortable lesson is another matter.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Thérèse is that she managed to be both intensely traditional and startlingly original. She was thoroughly Catholic, accepting all the Church's teachings without reservation, yet she found in these old truths something surprisingly new. This is rather like someone discovering that their own house, which they thought they knew perfectly, contains a room they had never noticed before. The truth was always there; what was new was the seeing of it.

The lessons we might learn from Thérèse are numerous, but perhaps the most important is this: that greatness does not consist in doing extraordinary things but in doing ordinary things with extraordinary love. This is a thoroughly democratic idea, suggesting that sanctity is available to everyone, not just to those capable of dramatic gestures or heroic acts. It is also a thoroughly revolutionary idea, suggesting that the whole world might be transformed not by grand schemes but by small acts of love.

In our age of big data and bigger ambitions, when everyone wants to change the world but few think of changing themselves, Thérèse's message is more relevant than ever. She suggests that perhaps we have been looking in the wrong direction – outward instead of inward, up instead of down. The path to greatness, she implies, might lie not in ascending to the heights but in descending to the depths of ordinary life and finding there something extraordinary.

This is not, it should be noted, the same as that modern cult of mediocrity which suggests that we shouldn't strive for excellence. Rather, it is a recognition that true excellence might consist in something quite different from what we usually imagine. It is the difference between a flashy performance that impresses everyone and a quiet act of love that impresses God.

In the end, what Thérèse offers us is not a new technique or system but a new way of seeing – or perhaps an old way that we had forgotten. She suggests that perhaps the universe is not as we imagine it, that spiritual laws might operate differently from physical ones, that the first might be last and the last first, and that a little flower might contain more of heaven than all the stars. This is either beautiful nonsense or the deepest truth – and the smile of Thérèse suggests she knew which.