Isaiah 66:10-14 / Matthew 18:1-5 (2022 / 2024)
St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus is also known as the "Little Flower of Jesus".
St. Thérèse was declared co-patron of the missions with St. Francis Xavier in 1927.
This is quite astonishing because she was was a nun in the enclosed Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy in France.
Unlike St. Francis Xavier who travelled far and wide to spread the Gospel and baptized many people, St. Thérèse spent all her religious life in the cloistered convent.
Though she had thoughts of going off to the mission lands, her ill health forbade her from doing so.
Nonetheless she offered prayers for the missions and also her every little act was offered to God in prayer.
In her memoir The Story of a Soul, she said that she was just a very little soul and so she could only offer God very little things.
But it was doing these very little things with great love that that she offered it to God for the salvation of souls.
That is also precisely the message in today' s gospel - childlike humility is the way to the kingdom of God.
It is the small childlike humble heart, one that is like that of St. Thérèse, that is considered great in the eyes of God.