A Missionary Even While At Home

I first came to know her when I was a little girl. I grew up admiring her and desiring to follow her footsteps… all the way to the Carmelite monastery. She was a shining example for me as a child and now as a mother who stays home with her children most of the time. I first came to know her through books and other forms of literature. Then, as a teenager, I came to know her more as I investigated the way of life of the Carmelites. She is St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, the Patroness of the Missions, Doctor of the Church and author of the Little Way.

My favorite Saint

I so admired her and wanted so much to follow her example that I too desired to be a Carmelite nun. When that desire was not granted, I prayed to be a Carmelite Missionary. That prayer was not answered as well. God led me to understand that His Will for me is not to be a Carmelite nun or missionary. He revealed to me that His Will for me is to be a missionary wherever He places me, and that includes my home with my family.  So, inspired still by the example of St. Thérèse, I strove to be a missionary in my own small way wherever God led me.

The Carmelite Missionaries
(Photo taken from their web site)

These days, I can identify with St. Thérèse very much again because I hardly leave our home because of my duties as a wife and mother to our small children. I served God and the Church mainly through my gift of writing. And as I do this service, I feel God reminding me of my prayers as a child and young lady. I realized that God has granted the desire of my heart by calling me to be on mission in the past years in many different ways. He allowed me to be a missionary by spreading the Good News through the communities I led and was a part of. He also answered my prayer by letting me spread the Good News by giving talks. But lately, I had been spreading the Good News more through my writings. I may not be travelling a lot like I used to but God tells me that I had been serving Him and His Church far and wide.

 

 

Today, God affirms that message to me through the reflection in Didache. God reminds me that there are many ways to be a missionary and one of them is by being an example through the lives that we live. He me reminded me too this morning as I reviewed the life of St. Thérèse that I don’t need to leave my house to be a missionary. My home is also my mission field. And like St. Thérèse, I am able to serve His priests and His Church even while at home as I use my gift of writing. All I need to do is answer every call from God and saying yes to every opportunity He presents to me to share the Good News and bring hearts and souls closer to Him.

The message in my desk calendar confirms these insights as well.

 

 

“Your primary gifts will lead you to your sacred mission.”

“For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.” (Romans 11:29)

 

 

I thank the Lord for keeping my heart burning with love for Him and for the desire to make Him loved. I pray that St. Thérèse’s Little Way would continue to inspire me especially when I face challenges to keep on loving in the way our Lord wants me to love. I pray that like St. Thérèse, I would be love in the middle of His Church even as I stay at home.

 

 

I choose to do whatever God calls me to do, big or small, right here, right now, with all the love in my heart. In the words of St. Thérèse herself, "You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions,nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.”