Posted on 10/01/2021 9:34:04 AM PDT by MurphsLaw
MEMORIAL OF ST. THÉRÈSE OF THE CHILD JESUS, VIRGIN AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
LUKE 10:13-16
Friends, today is the Memorial of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. The best introduction to Thérèse’s spirituality is a text that she wrote at the behest of Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, a sort of memoir of the retreat that she made in September 1896, just a year before her death.
What she offers is a "science of love," a way of knowing and acting that is utterly conditioned by the love that Jesus has placed in her heart: "Jesus deigned to show me the road that leads to this Divine Furnace, and this road is the surrender of the little child who sleeps without fear in its Father’s arms."
God, Thérèse concluded, is pleased to work with those who have become utterly docile to his direction, who have acknowledged their total dependence upon him, their readiness to receive gifts. Any sense that God’s love must be earned or that a relationship with him is a product of economic calculation is repugnant to a healthy spirituality: "Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude."
When this attitude is in place, anything and everything is possible. Following Thérèse, we can be pleasing to God and valuable to the Church in the humblest places and through the simplest acts. All we need to do is surrender, like a little child asleep in its Father’s arms.
Surrendering to God means realizing that we have sinned, that we suffer the co sequences of our sins (many fol,folks, bet a guy at God for not taking away the consequences- they thi k that because they are his children, that he will remove the consequences of our sins against him [note, I am talking about physical, emotional consequences etc, not the penalty of death, that God has taken away fro us who will spend eternity with him])
2 people living a life of hard rin,run, drugs sex. Debauchery etc. One gets saved- the other not. BOTH will suffer ruined livers, stds if the get them, I’ll health, and both will a,ways be slaves to their minds which have been corrupted by sin, ie both Wil, always struggle with impure thoughts, anger issues, whatever the case may be- while God will help in some areas, he does allow us to always battle with with results of the sins we sought when we turned our back on him.
Surrender means to stop being angry that God doesn’t take away the consequences because we think we are now special and deserve for it to happen, and accept the fact that WE brought it on ourselves.
When we can accomplish that, we go fro bitter self pitying, to humble acceptance of the consequences of our actions/poor decisions in life, and can have peace even while suffering th3 consequences.
We must realize that God must take vengeance on sins even if tne person has been forgiven in salvation. He .aid down what will happen, and told us why it must, we however must make the choice whether we think he is really serious or not. He is. Will we accept that? If we do, that is surrenderi g to God, and we can start to move onward and upward as the holy spirit now has a compliant humbled person to begin to truly sanctify.
i don’t think it’s misleading- it is a battle-like surrender in the end- As proud sinners, We want to ‘earn our way into God’s good graces’ all by ourselves- - and it isn’t until we surrender to the fact that we don’t earn it, that we truly get to where we can begin to grow after we get saved— I surrender ‘my will to achieve holiness by myself’- and now humbly accept that it is Christ who saves, not my own actions- that is what repentance is- repentance is not ‘vowing to God to renounce sin’ (because as sinners, we can’t even make such a pledge-)- it is humbly bowing before Christ and essentially saying “OK you Win- I will do it your way”
Every sinner is estranged from God, and every sinner (that wants to go to heaven) struggles with the idea that they don’t have to earn it (i think our society of work and reward, which makes us feel good about ourselves, has something to do with it perhaps- not many folks like to receive- they woudl rather give to feel as though they earned something- )
Not to mention the fact that we constantly battle against God all through our lives- We want what our hearts want- that is how it always has been- We have to constantly fight off the baser blacker desires, and surrender them to God if we are to grow- it’s always a struggle- some people struggle more than others- and a lot of it has to do with how early a person is saved, and how quickly or not they grow by obeying- if we go off into the world and live a life of debauchery- we will always struggle with those blacker lusts of the flesh throughout life-
We consonantly fight against the desires of the flesh- Even Paul had to- King David was out of lockstep with God and had to be reprimanded by Nathan, at which point David realized his sin and surrendered his desire to God (He still had to pay the consequences because His son pursued him relentlessly the rest of his life practically- and of course he lost a child with Bathsheba)
I dunno- i disagree- I think surrender is the word needed- many folks are truly angry with God because they suffer the consequences of their own sins- it isn’t until we surrender the ‘oh poor me’ attitude to God that we can get closer to Him-
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