ST. THERESE NOVENA - Ninth Day

THE LITTLE FLOWER: LIGHT AMIDST A CULTURE OF DEATH

NOVENA - NINTH DAY
Opening Prayer: O my God! I believe in You: strengthen my faith. All my hopes are in You: O secure them. I love You: teach me to love You daily more and more.

WORD: Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, ardent love is as unrelenting as the grave.
 Love's flames are fiery flames, the fiercest of all. (Song of Songs 8:6)

Reflection: SUFFERING-- THE PASSION OF LOVE

My Vocation is Love! I have no other means of proving my love except by strewing flowers, that is to say, letting no little sacrifice pass ... and in strewing my flowers I will sing. I will sing, even if my roses must be gathered from among thorns; and the longer and sharper the thorns, the sweeter shall be my song...”

The source and summit of Therese’s life, this is also her key to suffering: LOVE. Contemplating the God whose love emptied him from the crib to the Cross, Therese learned that the inescapable price of loving selflessly is a willingness to suffer pain. This is the secret of Therese’ outpouring of love and its apostolic fruitfulness: her love is crucified. In offering herself to Jesus, she gave herself up without any reserve to the trials and sufferings which marked her life as with a seal. "Love penetrated and possessed her" and suffering seized her as if she were its prey. The victim offered in holocaust had been accepted, "a better witness of abandonment and love." She wrote, "Under the winepress of suffering, I will prove my love to You."

Therese teaches that some, according to the will of God, suffer nothing more than the miseries that are integral to human life, while others are called to take on greater burdens, sharing more in Christ's salvific action. Whatever the portion of the Cross, she calls us to suffer joyously, patiently, humbly. Our salvation lies not in suffering but in the love with which we bear that suffering, uniting us to the Divine Heart whose outstretched arms transform suffering and death, the fruits of sin, into avenues of grace and life.

In response to her question if God delights in suffering, love answers: "No, our suffering never makes Him happy, but this suffering is necessary for us." Sin having made suffering necessary, God out of love wills it, since it is the means to bring man to love Him. Bitter remedy, but, given man's egoism, necessary remedy for the soul's health and happiness. "It costs God to make us drink at the fountain of tears," she wrote "but He knows that it is the only way to prepare us to know Him as He knows Himself and to share his life!”

To love God completely and love others out of selfless love for God: this is the fulfillment of the human heart.
With this in mind, Thérèse prays that God would raise a legion of souls who offer themselves as victims of holocaust to Jesus' merciful love, loving actively and making whatever comes an expression of that love. Victimhood is the ultimate destiny of her little way: Our littleness must be consumed by the infinite fire of divine charity. Like gold in a refiner's fire, once love is purified of its impurities, it becomes weak and malleable.

Her song, 'The Withered Rose,’ composed shortly before her death, articulate her own self-oblation, the passion of her self-squandering love: Like a rose that has just reached perfection, her petals are deliberately, lovingly, and tenderly shed under Jesus' feet as he takes his first steps on ‘our sad earth’, and as he treads his last to Calvary. This is her life's meaning — to be all for Jesus, for his easing, for his joy. This is Thérèse----Of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face--purified by the crucible of suffering, possessed by Love and has herself become love.


For Thee I die, for Thee, Jesus, Thou Fairest Fair! —
Joy beyond telling! —
Thus, fading, would I prove my love beyond compare,
All bliss excelling.
Beneath Thy feet, Thy way to smooth, through life’s long night,
My heart would lie;
And softening Thy hard path up Calvary’s awful height,
I thus would die.

DAILY PRAYER
O Lord, You have said: Unless you become as little children you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven; grant us, we beg You, so to follow, in humility and simplicity of heart, the footsteps of the Virgin blessed Thérèse, that we may attain to an everlasting reward. Amen.

St. Thérèse, beloved friend, you promised to spend your heaven doing good upon earth. We come before you in our need. We believe that you listen to us and approach God for and with us. You are love in the heart of the Church. You are love in the heart of God. With childlike faith and selfless love, you were ushered in the circle of our Lord's passion, offering us His Holy Face as the key to the mystery of suffering.
O Little Flower, remembering your promise "to do Good upon earth" and to shower down your "roses" on those who invoke you, obtain graces for these intentions which we place before you:
- For those who are sick and suffering, especially those with terminal illnesses
- For all who are burdened by physical and mental affliction, disease, and all forms of addiction
- For all who have lost faith in the Gospel of life, and especially for those whose old age or infirmity temps them to despair
- For all whom society has abandoned; for those who have no one to pray for them, for those who contemplate suicide
- For their families and all who care for them, nurses, doctors and health care workers
- For our political and religious leaders and all with positions of influence,

O St. Thérèse, our sister, obtain for us a strong faith and love to embrace the Risen Lord. May your intercession discourage the enemy and banish from our land the scourge of the Culture of Death. Anchored in prayer, fill us with apostolic zeal to become living witnesses to the Merciful Love of God and the dignity of every human life from conception to natural death. To the Child Jesus, whose Holy Face, radiant with the wounds of his blessed Passion, is our light and our salvation, be glory and honour in this dark night and in the everlasting day. Amen.

1 'Our Father,' 1 'Hail Mary,' 1 'Glory be' in reparation for sins against the gift of life.