On Being Wrong
Thérèse's little way & our big need for humility
October 1st was the feast day of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. This week I found a piece I’d started after I returned from the pilgrimage where I visited Lisieux, right before I got diagnosed with cancer. The words struck me as the right ones for now, so I dusted them off for us today.
The first thing I knew for sure when I set out on pilgrimage was that I was not interested in Saint Thérèse. (Super open-minded, I know. Big pat on the back.)
But you have to understand: I was so certain I did not like Thérèse. She was not for me. I had a different spirituality. She didn’t speak to me like she did to others.
(Translation: I had made up my mind, and it was closed.)
Now I knew others loved Thérèse and liked her little way and wanted to visit her home and church. So being the magnanimous tour leader I was trying to be, I shrugged sure when the guides proposed Lisieux for our group.
But secretly I longed for Paris, Chartres, and Lourdes. Give me the hearty fare, no light snack.
(Honestly, it gets more embarrassing the longer I admit it out loud.)
You know where the story is going, of course. You have walked this way, too. So sure of yourself, so certain you understood, so smitten with your own image of God, so comfortable with your own cozy couch of faith that you had no reason to leave.
Until you walk three whole feet inside the door of the convent at Lisieux, and you see the stack of Thérèse’s books and the pages handwritten with her words, and you realize: oh. She was a writer. I sort of forgot that. Then you see the photograph—because she’s not that far gone, there are real photos of her—decked out like Joan of Arc with her sword ready to fight, and you start to squirm: oh. That’s pretty badass. I love Joan, too.
And next thing you know, you are weeping—full body heaving, snot dripping, ugly crying—in her towering basilica because she was so small and yet so great, and this is the same exact story Jesus keeps trying to teach you and every other beloved thick-skulled follower who bumbles and stumbles in his way, because the spiritual life is one long summersault over and over again into the same humbling, holy rhythms of remembering your smallness and God’s greatness.
For the rest of the trip, you keep her smiling holy card tucked in your pocket, the photo where she looks like she’s about to burst with laughter, like you do so often in photos, so delighted by joy that you can barely keep it in. You keep her knowing smile even closer in your heart.
Because you were the lost sheep, for the millionth time.
But the small way of the Good Shepherd brought you back.
“I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such 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.” (Saint Thérèse of Lisieux)
Right now, so much is wrong in so many monstrous ways. Pick any part of the world, and your heart will shudder at the cruelty, violence, injustice, and hatred. People of good will must fight for right wherever we can. But we also cannot forget to admit when we are wrong, any moments big or small when our certainty misses the mark.
It is a tiny thing to admit you were stupid about a saint. The bigger point is to realize you have been wrong countless times on the long, winding road toward truth.
Every stage of life, every season of the year calls us to shed surety like brittle leaves, making space for new buds waiting underneath. I have been wrong about religion, politics, love, friendship, career, family, a thousand twisting turns over years and years, and if I do not stop to take stock in all the ways I’ve faltered or failed, I miss the chance to remember the hope that blooms from humility and the goodness that comes from growth.
We cannot stomp over the little way of love. Thérèse knew this, and I sheepishly thought her way was saccharine, too-small and too-sweet. Instead, I missed that a million small efforts add up to a sea change, that might and right are always stumbling blocks and seductions, that the least will be first in the kingdom of heaven.
May you admit you have been wrong, small and large. May you have the courage to speak it aloud. And whatever humble shoot of good growth pushes forth from the humus of your humility, may you tend it with the gentleness of a tender shepherd and the littleness of a laughing saint who knew how great it was to be small.
No one asked for this, but I’m delighted to share a photo dump from pilgrimage so you can witness conversion in real time.
I read The Story of a Soul while at my first Benedictine monastery working on my first book—during a horrible awful time in life. When he found out why I was there and that I was struggling to write, the guest master pressed the book into my hands. “Let Therese keep you company,” he said. And she did. That week was the shift that allowed me to write This Too Shall Last.
This reflection was beautiful, and also the photo commentary made me silly grin.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!! Another one of my favorite things about Thérèse is that she is RELENTLESS. She wasn't gonna let you go!! The photos are especially wonderful because 1) I love your commentary and 2) I've always wanted to go to Lisieux and I've never been. Thank you for taking me along for the ride!!