Online talk to commemorate Feast of St Therese of the Child Jesus

By CTK Council

KUCHING — Christ The King (CTK) OCDS Community organised an online talk on 27 September 2022 on, “The Revolutionary of the Little Flower – Influence of St Therese of Lisieux on Dorothy Day”.

More than 100 persons from St Joseph’s Parish and Carmelite Family both in and outside Malaysia, participated in this event. Fr Nicholas Hoh OCD, a Carmelite priest from Seremban was the speaker.

Fr Nicholas started his talk by sharing that to be spiritually matured, prayer is needed to cultivate our own reading and to meditate on the Law of the Lord, day and night. Lives will be transformed when we focus on the Lord, with active participation and contemplation, together with good works.

We must both listen to God’s word and serve Him. Our Holy Mother, St Teresa of Jesus mentioned in her Interior Castle, that the fruit of prayer is good work. Father further stressed both Martha and Mary must work together and co-exist in our spiritual life, as lived out by Dorothy Day.

Dorothy Day (8 November 1897 to 29 November 1980), was an American lady journalist, social activist and anarchist. After a bohemian youth, she came to know about the life of St Therese and became a Catholic without relinquishing her social and anarchist activism.

She was best known as a political radical among American Catholics, fighting for justice and other human causes. She was the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and the Catholic Worker newspaper.

Some of her shelter homes in the U.S. still exist today. For Dorothy, Therese’s Little Way was powerful, despite its simplicity. She likened it to a “dynamite” that will “blow” the Catholic Church.

Fr Nicholas said St Therese was born on 2nd January 1873 in Alecon and joined the Cloistered Carmel at a tender age of 15. She died in 1897 after living a life of humility and simplicity for nine years in Lisieux.

He pointed out that St Therese was an avid reader and assisted as the Novice Mistress. She was very charitable, kind, approachable, practical, thoughtful and showed great patience especially to those who were difficult to live with.

She was also involved in the sacristy and taking care of the elderly nuns. Gardening was also part of her duty in the Monastery. Her fidelity to her ordinary duties was the practice of radiating charity and faithfulness in a community of 20+ nuns.

Fr Nicholas ended the talk by emphasising St Therese’s spirituality, which is essentially her total Trust and Abandonment in God through her Little Way of Humility and Poverty. She has to become little so that Jesus could be the one to carry her Himself (The highway to Holiness).

Both Dorothy and St Therese show us the power of God’s love in the work of social and human transformation. They also show us the effects of being salted with God’s love bringing light in the darkness (Salt and Light).

Therese experienced great darkness in her faith as her death drew near. However, God gave her the grace to persevere and to die, still with the love of God in her heart (trial of faith, death of love).

St Therese’s Little Way was a path of holiness that is open to everybody who wish to be saints.