Day 4: Spiritual Childhood

The fourth day of the Saint Therese Novena turns to the disposition that makes the Little Way possible: spiritual childhood. Therese understood that the Catholic soul cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven without becoming a child again, in the literal sense given by the Lord Jesus: "Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it" (Mark 10:15). The Saint Therese devotion is the deliberate Catholic act of recovering this childlike disposition.

Today's invocation

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

Today's meditation

The disposition of spiritual childhood, in Catholic spiritual theology, has several precise components.

First, the disposition of trust: the child trusts the parent without analyzing the reasons. The spiritual child trusts the Father without requiring proof.

Second, the disposition of dependence: the child cannot feed himself, dress himself, defend himself; the spiritual child accepts that he cannot save himself, sanctify himself, or protect himself, and he depends on the Father for everything.

Third, the disposition of simplicity: the child does not have complex calculations about what to ask for or how to ask; the spiritual child simply asks, simply receives, simply loves.

Fourth, the disposition of naturalness: the child is at home in the parent's house, not as a guest who must observe formalities but as the parent's own; the spiritual child is at home in the Catholic Church, in prayer, in the love of the Father, with the natural ease of one who belongs.

Therese embodied each of these in her Carmelite life. She was twenty-four when she died, and the descriptions of her by her sisters and by other nuns who knew her converge on the same impression: she was, despite the strict life of the Carmel, natural, simple, trusting, and transparent. The disposition of spiritual childhood was not a forced spiritual exercise; it was the actual disposition of her soul.

Today's intention

Today, ask Saint Therese to obtain for you the disposition of spiritual childhood. Saint Therese, you became as a little child before the Lord. Help me to recover the same disposition. Where I have become spiritually adult in the wrong sense (calculating, complex, distrustful, defended), bring me back to the simplicity of the child.

If you are praying this novena for the conversion of a child or a teenager in your family, today is an appropriate day to bring that intention specifically. The child has natural childhood; what is needed is that natural childhood be elevated by the Lord's grace into spiritual childhood. The Catholic family that prays daily for its children, especially through Saint Therese (who was herself a child saint, a teenage saint, a saint by the age of twenty-four), is given the grace of seeing this elevation happen over the years.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that spiritual childhood is harder for adults than for children. The natural development of the human person involves the gradual loss of childlike dispositions: we acquire skills of calculation, defense, mistrust, formality, complexity. These are not bad in themselves; they are necessary for adult human life. But they are not the dispositions that prepare the soul for the Kingdom of Heaven. The adult Catholic must, by deliberate practice, undo some of the natural defenses of adulthood and recover the dispositions of the child.

This is what the Catholic mystical tradition has called passive purification: the soul allows the Lord to strip it of the false adulthood that has accumulated, until what remains is the simplicity of the child. Saint Therese's Little Way is, in this sense, a gentle path of passive purification. The soul that walks the Way day by day, in the small acts of trust and love, is gradually being made small again, gradually being prepared for the Kingdom.

Closing prayers

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

Saint Therese, teach us to be little. Pray for us.