A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. This is a special reading for today's feast of Saint Teresa of this year. The disciples came up to Jesus with this question. Who is of greatest importance in the kingdom of God? Our lord called over a little child and stood the boy in their midst and said to them, I assure you, unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God.
Whoever makes himself lowly, becoming like this little child is of greatest importance in that heavenly reign. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
There's one thing you can be sure of. Our blessed lord was not asking us here to be childish. He's asking us to be childlike and not with all the unvirtues of children. It's very easy to idealize kids kids because they could be mean. They can be nasty.
They can be angels. Most grandparents understand their kids are all angels. But ask the parents, they know better. But what is our Lord telling us here today? Get the word lowly.
Get the word lowly. Here his disciples are saying, lord, remember, when they talk about kingdom here, they're talking about a kingdom in this world. They're talking about having good jobs. They're talking about being close to the center of authority. As far as I can make out, there was no conception at all on the part of the disciples about the true nature of our lord's mission and his kingdom until after the crucifixion and after the resurrection.
Remember, when the disciples are are walking to Emma house after this crucifixion, They are downcast. Why? Because they they are in despair. Because they thought that Christ was going to establish the kingdom of God. What did that mean to them?
Their restoration of the kingdom of Israel. Getting rid of the Romans, throwing them out, and restoring God's kingdom in the Temple Of Jerusalem. And so when they say who's the greatest in the kingdom of God, what they're talking about is the is the kingdom of this world. And our blessed Lord said, he brings the little child over. He said, look, you unless you become as lowly that's the word I would like to pick out here.
Lowly. Now another word for lowly is humility, and another word for humility is honesty. If you can play the piano you don't say you can't. If you're a good swimmer you don't say, Oh no, I'm a very poor swimmer. That's a lie.
So being lowly, what does it mean? It means you know who you are, and you know what your relationship is to other people and to God. And who are we to talk about being the greatest in the kingdom of God? Now, today, we are celebrating the feast of the little flower. As you know, I when I look over this congregation, some of you at least remember her heyday when she was extremely popular, Extremely popular.
Well today, she's just scarcely a name for the most part. Here are just the she died at the age of 24. She went into combat when she was 15. This is the second half of the last century. She died 1997, I think, about that.
So she had only twenty four years on this life. I've lived more than three times her age already. And she went into a Carmelite convent in Lisieux, which was torn apart by internal dissensions. It was not a quiet, peaceful, triangle existence. There was warfare going on in the convent.
Who's gonna run this show? Just last evening, was talking to an ex seminarian from a monastery in the Middle West, and when he left the place that it was in a furor between two factions of the good monks over the old church and they bringing in what they call the new church. My question is who wants to belong to the new church? But anyway so her life was it was it was absolutely nondescript. She didn't enjoy good health.
She didn't she didn't accomplish anything at all. So here we are in Garrett Park celebrating her feast day. What's it all about? Why? Now, the great attraction for the of the little flower was her ordinariness.
You'll say, well, it's not ordinary for a girl of 15 to go into a Carmelite monastery. That is a strict order of Carmelites, complete cloister. That's very true, but there are plenty of women who have done it, and they are doing it today. The the the strict orders, the contemplative orders are getting more vocations than what we call the active orders. So what is the lesson of this little flower?
Do we all have to become Carmelites? Do we all have to go into religious orders? Do we all have to go into the Nile Valley and become hermits? Do we have to change our lives in the sense of doing something differently? Is that what we're asked to do?
To tear ourselves away from our present environment, our present responsibilities, and to flee, and to become like little kids? Is that what Christ is telling us? Now remember, people have done just exactly what I'm saying. It's a matter of history. The Nile Valley in the time of Saint Augustine was filled with people, men and women, who had fled from all over the Mediterranean bases and gone out there to live, well, I don't know what kind of lives.
They didn't have a lot of, well, of modern plumbing, that's for sure. So is that what is that is is that what being a good Christian means? See, think we've got to remember, there is no distinction in our vocation to be holy, to be saints. There is no distinction about it. Either you have either you achieve that or you're lost.
You're lost. And the thing that stops us, the big the big chasm is sin. Not disorderly conduct, not unsociable conduct, not antisocial conduct, sin which brings in God. That keeps us away from it. And we're here to live a life to accomplish our goal, which is salvation in spite of our weaknesses.
No matter so that so that that's we all have that. There is no distinction at all. So the question is how do I achieve that? And the ways are innumerable. In a sense, you can say the ways are as many as individual human beings have walked the face of the earth because every single life is an individual life.
And as our holy father says, it's unrepeatable. Unrepeatable. You walk you have an individual path of your own, but you don't have an individual goal. That is common to us all. And so what is the what is the lesson of the little flower?
In the in the convent of leisure, she didn't do anything special. I know she wrote this book, but that wasn't a great thing. A lot of people write books. The the thing that impresses me about that woman is her simplicity of knowing that she was doing God's will when she was doing very simple ordinary things. And this is the difficulty of our lives, to realize that what I am doing today on this rainy cloudy what I call suicidal Monday, that we realize that our eternity hangs on it.
Now that's you say that's a crazy statement. Maybe you said, I hope you won't because it's the honest simple God's truth. Because the only reality you have is this present moment. Not noon today, not tonight at dinner, not yesterday. It's this moment that counts, and your eternity hangs on it.
Because out of them out of this moment your eternity is being made. Out of the next moment your eternity is being made. Someone said today is the first day of the rest of your life. That's absolutely true. And so this this little lady, this she she went into the common at fifteen.
Well, that wasn't extraordinary. But it was she had to have special permission to do that. But her life was so ordinary. And I hate to use the word ordinary because of half of what I've said is true, there is no such thing as an ordinary life. Every life is extraordinary.
Every life. Every life is extraordinary. If we live it in the company of Jesus Christ, certain notice I said certain of our goal. Certain of the way and the means to that goal. That will keep us straight.
It isn't doesn't mean for one minute that you're not going to be tossed around. But remember, a boat tossed around is safe as long as it holds towards mooring. And as long as we hold fast to our Lord, living with him, offering on him up at the beginning of the day as I tried to point out yesterday, all our works and sufferings and our joys of the day, then we are consecrating our lives to God. And that is extraordinary. What we actually do isn't too important.
It's how we do it, why we do it, the soul that we breathe into our daily living. That's what matters. That's what transforms life. And remember, by baptism, you were transformed into something tremendously, eternally extraordinary. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit.
Amen.