When You Can't Take The Stairs

Many days--most days--I'm really not sure I'm going to make it. I know that sounds overly pious and fatalistic. It does not minimize my hope for salvation. I try to keep my eye on the prize, on the cross. But my sins and weaknesses, my pride, my self, runs so deep, knocking me down as soon as I get back up from the last beatdown, it is very very clear that I am too weak for perfection and that I have no hope for salvation in the slightest under anything I could every accomplish.

That is not a bad thing to realize. We are not meant to save ourselves in the Christian life. "Good people" do not go to Heaven because they are good. The more we realize our dependance on Christ for salvation, the more we will embrace our weakness and (paradoxically, bien sûr) it is in weakness that we are made strong (2 Cor 12:9). I am too weak to do great works, to attain great heights of mysticism, contemplation, or prayer. But I have a guide that I look to and lean on à la place de.

When I was in Detroit this time last year for a conference and was listening to a talk on the stages of divine ascent of a soul, I realized with some sweat on my brow that I had grossly, grossly underestimated the trials and tribulations of spiritual fortitude. By God's grace, I was introduced to the 33 Days to Morning Glory devotion in preparation for consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I realized that the words of St. Louis Marie de Montfort about her held a key in my hapless helplessness spiritual life: "Mary is the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus." There may be hope for me yet.

This idea--total consecration--was a complete paradigm shift for me. Rather than trusting in my own way, I would entrust myself (and my family), turn over my rights, to Mary to show me the right way. My judgment can be suspect, my ideas of what I should be doing, how and for whom I should be praying--I wanted to turn it over to someone closer--indeed, the closest--to our Lord than I to show me. So in October of last year, we did just that.

This idea of 'turning everything over,' as I said, was a Spiritual paradigm shift for me, a totally different way of approaching prayer, mortification, salvation. It also renewed in me an interest in a saint I had until a year or two ago had previously dismissed.

Ten years ago I regarded St. Thérèse the Little Flower as an insufferable "nervy" saint whose little infractions in the convent were, in my eyes, a nauseating expression of a piety I simply could not relate to. Now I am beholden to her.

Her "Little Way" may be little but it is not easy by any means. Whenever we accomplish a scrap of virtue in our lives our heel can slip from that spirit of helpless dependency on God's love and mercy to an attitude of self-determination in which we set our sights on Heaven by the sweat of our brow. That's when things quickly fall apart, at least for me. So, to follow this way, it's like a GPS constantly recalculating as you veer off course, trying to bring you back to the road you should be on. I did a "big" thing (fasted for a day, spent a long time in prayer, did a noble work of charity, etc) and suddenly I feel justified. Off course. Recalculating. When we come back to repentance, humility, love, directing the will to good, we are back on course. But that does not come from mighty acts, but a deep trust, one that can meet resistance in being developed.

To remember what it means, how St. Thérèse sought to be united with her Savior, the image of the elevator is what stuck with me. From her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, she says,

"We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs … I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. … The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more."

There's an expression in the business world: work smart, not hard. Of course the teaching of the Church is that we are saved by faith and works, not faith alone. But this is not about "working towards Heaven," but a different approach that leads to radical trust, radical dependency, radical love--because it's all one has. Not everyone can fast like St. Antony or hear Confessions for as many hours as St. John Vianney or write volumes like St. Augustine. But everyone has the capacity to love, to will, to trust. It can take some real "work" to get there, but it is a different kind of work, an inner work, a work that leads to trust and dependency in one's helplessness. The strength of the Little Flower is in her helplessness, her weakness, and her Little Way should give us great hope that Heaven is not beyond us, but that Christ desires we commune with him there forever.

Even if we have to take the elevator.