Day 3: Confidence in Mercy

The third day of the Saint Therese Novena turns to the theological foundation of the Little Way: confidence in the merciful love of God. Therese understood, with extraordinary clarity for a young Carmelite who had read no theological textbook, that the central fact of the Catholic faith is the love of God for the soul, that the Lord is more eager to give graces than the soul is to ask for them, and that the soul's principal task is simply to trust.

Today's invocation

Saint Therese, Little Flower of Jesus... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

In Story of a Soul, Therese articulates her confidence in mercy in passages of disarming simplicity. "What pleases God in my little soul is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, that He sees in me a blind hope in His mercy." The same theme appears in her Act of Offering to Merciful Love (composed on 9 June 1895, the feast of the Most Holy Trinity), in which she offers herself to the Lord "as a victim of holocaust to Your Merciful Love" and asks the Lord to overflow with grace into her soul, in compensation for the souls who do not love Him.¹

The Catholic theology of confidence in mercy is grounded in the broader Catholic doctrine of the love of God. "God is love" (1 John 4:8). "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Psalm 145:8). "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor requited us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him" (Psalm 103:10-11). The Lord's mercy is not contingent on our worthiness; it is the foundational disposition of God toward the souls He has created.

Therese's particular gift is to have lived this doctrine in a way that makes it concrete and accessible. Where the great saints sometimes describe the love of God in language too abstract for the ordinary Catholic to apply to himself, Therese describes the Lord's love for her (and by implication for us) in language that a child can understand: as the love of a Father who delights in his small daughter, as the love of a Bridegroom who has chosen his bride, as the love of a Master who is pleased with the small efforts of the lowest servant.

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, ask Saint Therese for her gift of confidence in mercy. Saint Therese, you trusted the Lord's mercy with the trust of a child. Where I have been afraid that the Lord is angry with me, that I am not good enough for His love, or that He cannot overlook my sins, give me your confidence.

If you have particular sins that have been burdening your prayer in this novena (and most Catholics, in honesty, have some), bring them today to Saint Therese as you bring them to the Lord. Lord, I have these sins on my conscience, and they make me afraid to approach You. Through the intercession of Saint Therese, give me her confidence in Your mercy.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that the soul's principal obstacle in advancing toward God is not its sin (which can be confessed and forgiven) but its distrust (which keeps it at a distance from the Lord even when sin has been forgiven). Saint Therese's contribution to the modern Catholic spiritual life is precisely the gift of dissolving this distrust. The soul that has spent time with Therese, that has read Story of a Soul slowly, that has prayed the Saint Therese Novena and the Act of Offering to Merciful Love, comes away with a deepened conviction that the Lord truly loves her, and that her sins, however they grieve her, are not greater than His mercy.

The novena's third day is the appropriate moment to recover this conviction if it has been lost. The Lord is not waiting for us to earn His love; He is waiting for us to receive it. Therese's prayer is that we may.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Therese, teach us to trust in the mercy of the Lord. Pray for us.

Footnotes

1. Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, chapters 4 and 9. Act of Offering to Merciful Love (1895), preserved in her Pri ères (Prayers). ↩