Divine Needlework

​‘St Thérèse was simple, God knows she was simple; and on a hasty analysis we are tempted to say it was because she was just like a child – tell me, have you ever known a child like Thérèse? No, her simplicity, too, lay in the fact that she was, as near ordinary human nature can go, integrated; she knew what she was out for, and was determined to get it. Every moment of her day was built up conscientiously, laboriously if you will, into a pattern; every action of hers was a stitch in her divine needlework, her sampler, copied from the life of Jesus Christ. Her life, so short, was so businesslike; she cut out all the frills. And the reason why it makes you and me so ashamed of ourselves isn’t really that she was young and natural and impulsive, isn’t that she was French, and had the French knack of intimacy with the supernatural, but that she knew what she was about, subordinated her whole life to a plan. She was simple because to her there was only one thing that mattered; she wasn’t being distracted from her aim all the time by trifles and scruples as we are’.

Mgr Ronald Knox, 1888-1957

O Lord Jesus Christ, who hast said, except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven: grant us, we beseech thee, in meekness and lowliness of heart to follow the footsteps of blessed Thérèse thy Virgin; and so at last to come unto thine everlasting kingdom; who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Divine Worship: The Missal.