The Memorial of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus
"Have pity on me. Have pity on me, you my friends, For the hand of God has touched me. Why do you persecute me as God, And are not satisfied with my flesh? "Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! That with an iron pen and lead They were engraved in the rock forever! But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth. After my skin is destroyed, Then I will see God in my flesh, Whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. "My heart is consumed within me.
Hear, Lord, when I cry with my voice. Have mercy also on me, and answer me. When you said, "Seek my face," My heart said to you, "I will seek your face, Lord."
When you said, "Seek my face," My heart said to you, "I will seek your face, Lord." Don't hide your face from me. Don't put your servant away in anger. You have been my help. Don't abandon me, Neither forsake me, God of my salvation.
I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.
Now after these things, the Lord also appointed seventy others, and sent them two by two ahead of him into every city and place where he was about to come. Then he said to them, "The harvest is indeed plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore to the Lord of the harvest, that he may send out laborers into his harvest. Go your ways. Behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves. Carry no purse, nor wallet, nor sandals. Greet no one on the way. Into whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace be to this house.' If a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in that same house, eating and drinking the things they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Don't go from house to house. Into whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat the things that are set before you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'God's Kingdom has come near to you.' But into whatever city you enter and they don't receive you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust from your city that clings to us, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that God's Kingdom has come near to you.' I tell you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city.
We celebrate today the feast of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the young French Carmelite who died at twenty-four and yet became one of the Church's most beloved Doctors — precisely because she showed us that holiness lives in small, hidden things, not grand gestures.
And then we open to Job.
There's a raw, almost startling honesty in Job's cry: *Have pity on me.* He's not performing patience. He's not offering a tidy theological argument. He's bleeding out loud, surrounded by friends who have become accusers. And yet — and this is what stops us — from the depths of that suffering, something breaks through: *I know that my Redeemer lives.* Not "I hope." Not "I've been told." *I know.* The movement here is from devastation to bedrock certainty, and it doesn't pass through easy answers. It passes through the wound itself.
Thérèse understood this. Her "little way" wasn't about avoiding suffering — she died slowly, painfully, in spiritual dryness. What she discovered was that the smallest act of love, offered faithfully in the dark, is apostolic. It matters. It reaches.
Which brings us to the seventy sent out in Luke. Notice how Jesus sends them with almost nothing — no purse, no extra sandals, no elaborate plan. What they carry is peace, presence, and the announcement that the Kingdom has come near. That's it. That's the harvest.
Consider how that maps onto an ordinary Tuesday. The harvest doesn't always look like mission trips or dramatic conversions. Sometimes it's a moment of genuine attention given to someone who expected to be ignored. Sometimes it's staying present when everything in us wants to flee.
What suffering in your life are you still waiting to make sense of before you trust God with it? Where might you be overcomplicating your response to someone who simply needs your presence? And what would it look like today to carry peace into one place that doesn't yet have it?