Someone remarked that of all things the obvious is the most easily overlooked. Among such things is the importance of the little things.. Those little things are important, not simply because they make up most of our lives, but also because it is through them that our identity is established and by them that our character is revealed.
A good way of illustrating the importance of little things, of the ordinary things of every-day life, is to look at the life of St. Therese of Lisieux. From a natural point of view her life was ordinary. She spent nine years in a little provincial convent in Normandy. During her first years there she was given menial tasks like house-cleaning and mending linens. Later she was given charge of the sacristy, and finally appointed “companion to the novices.” During all that time she apparently did nothing remarkable.
During her last illness, some of the nuns wondered what the prioress could find to say in the biographical notice customarily sent to Carmelite convents on the death of a community member. She never experienced any visions or revelations. She never worked any recognizable miracle.
But in the obscurity of her cloistered life, in ordinary and commonplace circumstances, she found all she needed to build a life of great holiness. That was not easy for her. She suffered from neuroticism that included at one point of her life a breakdown accompanied by hallucinations and catalepsy. She was plagued with recurring bouts of depression, scruples, and doubts.
After her death that seemingly ordinary, uneventful life quickly attracted world-wide attention. Her biography went through a record number of editions in various languages. Her beatification process began barely twelve years after her death and her canonization came just fourteen years later.
The speed of that process was the result of extraordinary events, miraculous cures, conversions, and favors of every kind granted through her intercession. All that, however, was after her death. Her life was characterized by the difficulties and the monotony of her continuous struggle with doubts and scruples. She came to the perfection of her faith through what she called her “little way.” By this she meant her complete surrender to the love and power of God in the ordinary events and circumstances of her everyday life. She showed how to find God’s love hidden, as it were, in plain sight, in the ordinary things, the little things of everyday life.