The little street
The young Carmelite places the sanctity of the Gospel to everyone by including it in the normal way of life, and his missionary impulse radiating the most genuine contemplation that pervades all his incredible apostolic fruitfulness.
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The doctrine of Saint Therese
The "little way" proposed by Therese is to unleash the dynamism of hope through the dynamics of a total trust in order to reach the end of the road as it were empty-handed despite the creature's commitment to cultivate and execute all the works Love, your hands should be filled only by the works and merits of God himself.
For Therese, all of us are called to reach the summit of the mountain of love and the Saints are those who managed to climb the mountain whose summit is lost in the sky. Therese was never questioned about the path that would lead to the "Mountain of Love" but it has to be led by Jesus in total abandonment.
It just the infinite love that, leaning on the creature, filled with all distances and all the works except the only work that only the creature could accomplish: the total abandonment.
Can not be the man to handle the Mercy of God even through his weakness or his sins, but God is merciful in his nature that is bent on our moment.
The discovery of Therese consists precisely in the need to surrender to grace because it is convinced that both love to climb and create works. The Mountain of holiness is thus a "Mountain of Love", which is easy to climb because it is easy for the arms of parents to raise their children. For Therese the "way short" is to be taken into the arms of Jesus and brought him right on top of the Mountain of Love.
The "little way" intuited by Therese is new to being incredibly short, so immediate as not even exist, because each path is used to bridge a distance. In the small path marked by Therese did not provide any space to go, no time to wait, if not letting grab here, now. However, even if the road is all of God, the creature must constantly seek the appropriate place and position where the Mercy may express all its fullness.
In other words in the love relationship as understood by Therese even if one took all the initiative, the next task would be to immerse themselves in the privacy that is offered.
In summary, the doctrine of Therese consists of the following principles:
- God is Love; His nature leads him to stoop to anything that is small and in need of love.
- The creature is so much more if you include the same as it's "nothing" that is, its poverty, its smallness and feels in his heart the infinite desires of God.
- The weakness, poverty and even the sin is not an insurmountable obstacle to Love, and sometimes even attract him.
- The Church is on earth the "fire of Love" which celebrates the encounter between the Creator and the creature.
- When the creatures is attracted and burn the infinite, carrying in his rise all those whom God has entrusted.
Therese understood through the movement of his charitable heart and through the eyes of faith the Trinitarian foundation of Mercy. The face of the Father and the Son's almost overlap in his heart and his mind, he understood that mercy is rooted in the mystery of God's nature.
Therese has taught us that Jesus not only is ready to lift, to sustain us each fall, but is willing to lift all our weakness and sin if we ask for His help.
Therese eventually would send the merciful love of God that everything wraps, like an ocean in which the drop is lost, like an abyss where it is sweet fall. Understood that in creatures there is a big problem "in giving love", but this may be all "infinite love receiving and giving love".
John Paul II in Lisieux (Homily 2 June 1980)
"Being kids, to become like children are to enter in the middle of the larger mission that runs through the heart of man. Therese, she knew perfectly. This mission stems from the love of the eternal Father. The Son of God, as man, in a visible manner, "historic", and the Holy Spirit, so invisible and "charismatic", brings it to fulfillment in the history of mankind.
