The Little Way

That is what Saint Thérèse of Lisieux has to teach us. We can go back to her now. Her high regard as a saint today has nothing to do with the impact she made on the global stage but rather the way she lived her everyday life and the words she wrote to chronicle it. While Saint Thérèse was living her unassuming life as a young nun, she was writing what would become her autobiography, now collected in a book called Story of a Soul. In this collection, we learn about a young woman who wants nothing out of life but to please the Savior she is passionately in love with. Yet, she sees herself as boring and uninspiring. She is little in spirit. She is broken. She is keenly aware of the mistakes in her past and the ones she is prone to make in her future. She knows how easy it is to let her contemporaries get under her skin and how tempting it is to respond in a less-than-loving way. She sometimes falls asleep during prayer. Her daily routine resembles the movie Groundhog Day, with each day looking exactly like the one before.

How could someone like this, whose life is quiet and repetitive, ever please an all-powerful God who expects so much of us? Saint Thérèse found a way—a little way. It is a very simple yet profoundly meaningful mindset. It’s easily attainable, yet foreign to most. It’s what has become known as The Little Way, and it is the reason she is a saint today.

The Little Way, a phrase she used but likely did not intend to coin, is what she calls an elevator to Jesus.[1] She needed an elevator because the staircase of perfection was too daunting for her—and for good reason. For those who tie God’s favor to their morality and good deeds, the staircase to His love will always be too steep. For those who feel farther from God because of their mistakes, the staircase is equally daunting. So Saint Thérèse searched her heart and the Scriptures, developing and chronicling a lifestyle of small, quiet ways to serve God amidst a repetitive, seemingly mundane life.

While the next few paragraphs will briefly cover The Little Way and how one can adopt it, Saint Thérèse was not writing a book or lecture for others to learn from, which sometimes makes it difficult to find a solid definition. Perhaps that’s a good thing. When we box things up and put boundaries around them, they tend to lose their mystery and adventure. There is no official definition, no bullet points, no neatly organized application steps. One has to read her thoughts to find the jewels—to read her words, digest them, and connect their heart to hers to discover the joy she found in The Little Way.

Saint Thérèse observed:

I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and the obscure grain of sand trampled underfoot by passers-by. Instead of becoming discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealizable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, so I must bear with myself as I am, with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new.[2]

I appreciate anyone who is well aware of their failures yet still desires Jesus. I admire anyone who knows they are deeply flawed but still longs for the One who is not. I aspire to be like anyone who knows they are not perfect but does not let their imperfections keep them from seeking a Savior who is.

The Little Way teaches one to take the most annoying, repulsive traits of others and offer them up as praise and celebration to God. It moves one from avoiding the undesirable and marginalized in society to seeking them out without hesitation. In Story of a Soul, Saint Thérèse recounts many opportunities to do just that. During her routine laundry duties, for instance, she was bothered by the splashes of dirty water hitting her face every time the Sister next to her scrubbed her laundry. At first, Saint Thérèse wanted to exaggerate wiping her face to show her friend how annoying it was. But instead, she decided it would be foolish to act out her frustration. Rather than being annoyed by her Sister’s negligence, she resolved to embrace it in the name of love. She wrote:

I put forth all my efforts to desire receiving very much of this dirty water and was so successful that, in the end, I had really taken a liking to this kind of aspersion. I promised myself to return another time to this nice place where one received so many treasures.[3]

Saint Thérèse transformed her initial frustration at being splashed with dirty water into a source of joy. She turned a moment of discomfort into one she looked forward to. Few could stomach a situation like this without some helpful mindset.[4] This is a glimpse of The Little Way.

Another example in Story of a Soul is told with a slight tongue-in-cheek tone. Thérèse describes a Sister who sat behind her during evening meditation, making an irritating noise—possibly breathing loudly or grinding her teeth. Thérèse admitted how distracting the noise was, and she was tempted to turn her head to signal her annoyance. Yet, she resisted. She wrote:

I remained calm, therefore, and tried to unite myself to God and to forget the little noise.

When that proved futile, she decided to embrace the annoyance, praying to God that she might grow to love the noise. She began listening intently, offering her exasperation to Christ as a concert. This transformation—from a common frustration to an act of worship—is central to The Little Way.[5]

What if we could all take our daily frustrations and interruptions, turning them into a concert for our Savior? What if we could transform life’s worst moments into opportunities to praise God? This is precisely what The Little Way is about: finding God in the repetitive grind of daily existence.

Like many people who live reserved lives, Saint Thérèse was unsure of where she fit in the Body of Christ, as Scripture refers to the Christian Church. She saw missionaries, clergy, evangelists, theologians, martyrs, cardinals, popes, authors, and more—great heroes of her faith who lived as the hands and feet of Jesus. Yet she knew she could never live up to their extraordinary feats. She was called to a smaller life but desperately desired to serve her God. If she could not be the hands and feet of her Beloved, what could she do? How could she participate in the Body of Christ while living a quiet, repetitive life? The answer was simple—she would be the heart of Christ.

Saint Thérèse wrote:

If the Church had a body, composed of different members, the Church also had a heart, and this heart was burning with love. I understood that it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood.

I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places… in a word, that it was eternal.

Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love… my vocation, at last I have found it… my vocation is Love![6]

Saint Thérèse realized that while she could not shed her blood like the martyrs or preach like the apostles, she could show love. She might never make a global impact, but she could make a profound difference in the lives of those she encountered daily. Just as a warrior on the battlefield relies on the support back at base, the hands and feet of Christ need the heart. Thérèse understood this. She could not be the hands or feet, but she could be the heart—and that was her mission.

She went on to write:

Yes, I have found my place in the Church, and it is You, O my God, who have given me this place; in the heart of the Church… I shall be Love.[7]

Many people struggle to find their place in God’s Kingdom. Many of us, having been saved from ourselves, are in love with Jesus for what He did on the Cross and desperately want to express it. Yet, the mainstream examples of serving God often feel out of reach. We might consider becoming a pastor, but perhaps our messy past prevents it. We might dream of being missionaries, but we lack the resources to uproot our lives. Perhaps we think about starting a nonprofit, leading a youth group, or joining a worship team, but those roles aren’t for everyone. What, then, of the single parent whose routine is focused on providing for and raising their child? What of the sailor stuck on a ship in foreign waters with no change of scenery for eighteen months? What of the young girl in a remote village who will spend her entire life within a 15-mile radius of her home? Where do the quiet ones fit in God’s Kingdom? Saint Thérèse’s The Little Way offers a profound answer.

The essence of The Little Way is simple: Jesus wants nothing more from us than our love. He doesn’t demand great feats or monumental works—just our love. Saint Thérèse wrote:

Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.[8]

We can display that love and gratitude in how we seek Him despite our brokenness, how we treat those we encounter, and how we intentionally seek out the undesirables in our immediate world—those most in need of love.

Saint Thérèse continued:

See, then, all that Jesus lays claim to from us. He has no need of our works but only our love. For the same God who declares He has no need to tell us when He is hungry did not fear to beg for a little water from the Samaritan woman. He was thirsty. But when He said, “Give me a drink,” it was the love of His poor creature that the Creator of the universe was seeking.[9]

He has no need of our works, only our love. This is what the broken should realize. In the end, no matter how great or small we are in this hazy existence we call life, we all have equally and only one thing to offer our Creator: our love. That’s it. It is the only thing untainted and wholly acceptable to Him.

We often complicate matters, but it really is that simple. All of our greatest earthly works will one day be ashes. Indeed, Scripture compares them to filthy rags[10] when measured against knowing and loving our Heart’s Desire. All that will endure is how we loved Him and others in our daily lives. Beyond that, we have nothing. Augustus Toplady expressed this beautifully in his hymn:

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress,
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.[11]

He desires us and nothing more. This truth plays out practically in our daily lives, but it must not be forced. We need nothing else in life but to, like a child, reach the lap of our Savior and find comfort and rest there. As Saint Thérèse exclaimed:

O Jesus, Your little bird is happy to be weak and little. What would become of it if it were big? Never would it have the boldness to appear in Your presence, to fall asleep in front of You.[12]

A child cares for little more than basking in the love of their parents. And a good parent would never reject a child for lack of performance. We expect nothing from them but to love and be loved. In the same way, our Heavenly Father desires us to seek Him as His children.

After learning about Saint Thérèse and The Little Way in a class I took at Fuller Theological Seminary, I wrestled with the lack of a simple definition or implementation guide. Frustrated, I shared it with a few of my closest friends. I ordered several copies of Story of a Soul and other works by Father Gary Caster and John Nelson and delivered them to friends in prison: David Young, Darrin Elliott, and Frederick Watson (whose backstories I’ll share later). I believed they could offer insight. Their lives, like Saint Thérèse’s, are lived in close quarters with the same people, following repetitive, mundane routines. Even Saint Thérèse referred to her room as her “cell,” while my incarcerated friends call their cells their “room.” They seemed perfectly suited to discuss Saint Thérèse and The Little Way.

[1] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 207.

[2] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 207.

[3] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 250.

[4] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 250.

[5] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 249.

[6] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 194.

[7] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 194.

[8] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 188.

[9] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 189.

[10] Is. 64:6

[11] Topladv, Trinity Hymnal, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me (tune 1).

[12] Thérèse, Story of a Soul, 199.