Feast of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus

Often known as the "Little Flower", Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, was a carmelite known for her "little way" of doing all for love: fidelity to little things, trust, and complete surrender. She died in 1897, was canonized in 1925, and made a Doctor of the Church in 1997.

I want to go back this morning to look at Albert Nolan's first spiritual classic: Jesus Before Christianity. I am using a second edition written ten years after the first appeared in 1976. In the first chapter Nelson tells us, "Today we find ourselves faced with new threats, threats which, they say, will destroy us more certainly and inevitably than a nuclear war: population explosion, the diminishing of our natural resources and food supplies, the pollution of our environment and the escalation of violence. Any one of these problems by itself would be threatening enough to our future; taken together they spell disaster."

We need to wake up to the fact that we have been living dangerously by our desregard for the planet. We are the ones doing the damage. Let us ask the Little Flower to help us change and care for our planet.