Sing a New Song!

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, known as the Little Flower, was a girl who was attracted to Jesus at a young age, fell completely in love with Him during her days as a Carmelite sister, and lived her short life of 24 years only to love Him and serve Him. Early on, Thérèse got discouraged whenever she read long treatises or complicated spiritual documents that promised a plan for getting closer to Christ.

Paraphrasing her words, she said: “I’m too little for any of those fancy ideas. I’m like a little toddler just starting to take her first steps. I look up and there I see my Mommy at the top of a large staircase. I want nothing more than to run to Mommy but I can’t even walk yet. So I try to lift my little leg to climb the first step and I fall back down and cry. But Jesus (who is my Mommy at the top of the stairs) sees me trying to lift my little leg and comes running down the stairs to pick me up and take me to Himself. He comes, picks me up in His arms, and dries my tears. All I have to do is try to take a step and He comes to me out of love, He does all the rest.”

Once as a little girl, Thérèse found a finch, a tiny bird that had fallen from its nest and couldn’t fly. She took it home and placed it in the same cage as her pet canary. As the new bird got stronger and stronger, she tried to sing. But the finch’s song is not like the canary’s, and so just a few peeps came out. Each day the canary would sing her beautiful song and the young finch would listen and then try to imitate it. Eventually, to Thérèse’s surprise, the finch succeeded! She learned to sing like the canary. She had listened and tried to imitate the other bird’s song for so long, that it became her song too.

Thérèse would say, this is what we must do with Jesus. Just stay close to Jesus each day, listen closely to the music He makes, and try to imitate it. In time we’ll find that the song of His heart has become our song as well.