leonie and therese - st. therese of the child Jesus oct 1

I believe you have heard this gospel a hundred times before.  And I believe the reflections that followed this gospel would almost always be an attempt to interpret Jesus’ answer to the question “who is the greatest?” And I believe you have also heard this a hundred times before.  This morning I will not upset you.  You will hear the same thing as expected.  Console yourself therefore with the thought that if you are bored to death with this reflection after having attended Therese’s feasts year in year out, imagine how the nuns of Carmel would be feeling right now after having attended and heard the same for the past 60, 65, 70 years.  You can always leave if you’re bored but the nuns and seminarians cannot unless they excuse themselves for a personal necessity curiously timed almost always on lousy sermons.

Who is the greatest?  One way of answering the question is to try to understand why the question was asked in the first place.  In understanding the question, context is very important.  Where is the question coming from?  Why was it asked?  The context will also provide the key to understanding Jesus’ answer.

Although not all commentators agree I would like to use the observations of St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome and Origen.  St. John Chrysostom is one of the Fathers of the church and as his surname translates, he is “golden mouthed”, named so because of his beautiful homilies.  St. Jerome is also a Father of the Church whose legacy it is to remind us that ignorance of scriptures is ignorance of Christ.  And Origen, again a father of the church who was one of the first bible scholars.   These are 3 big names in preaching and scriptures, and depending on them gives us a more certain foothold.

So why was the question asked in the first place?

St. John Chrysostom and St. Jerome both agree that the question was triggered because of the event that happened just before this episode.  Jesus and the disciples were in Capernaum and the tax men came upon them and asked Peter, does your master pay the temple tax.  And to make the short story shorter Jesus paid the temple tax for both himself and Peter.

So why would that trigger among the disciples our question today, who is the greatest?  Why? 

Ngaa si Pedro lang ginbayran ya haw?  Ngaa kami ya wala? Ngaa sia lang ginsakop?  Aha, my dear seminarians, it’s an age old problem.  Ngaa sila lang ginsakop?  Ngaa ako ya wala?

Of course they would be too embarrassed to ask Jesus these questions.  I believe they would not even admit to such feelings.  And so St. Jerome said, they did not openly ask Jesus, “why have you honored Peter above us?”  No, instead they asked Jesus in general, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

It was clearly ambition that drove the apostles to raise that question, perhaps a veiled ambition to seek first place in the church, to seek the highest honor in the community.  But what did Jesus do?  He did not deny them their ambition.  He simple redirected their ambition.  You want to be the greatest?  Jesus took a child and said here is the greatest, this is the way to greatness.  What started as an ambition to seek first place in the church ended in Jesus with an ambition to seek first place in heaven.  Love persuades us to seek first places in heaven.  As St. Paul has said, outdo each other in showing love.  You love me, I will love you more.

But there is another interesting take on this gospel this time by Origen.  When the apostles asked the question who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven they recognize that saints are not created equal.

In the kingdom of God not everyone is great – all are good, some are better, others are the best, but not all are great.  All of us can be great (by God’s grace) but not all of us will be great.  You just have to be good. Thus the apostles, Origen said was asking Jesus to clarify who among these many good and great people, who among them is the greatest.

That’s the point of the question, and I would like rather to foucs my reflection on this observation of Origen, because these changes the kind of humility that is presented in the child by Jesus.  It is not just a generalize kind of humility.  It is a specific kind of humility.  It is a humility which recognizes that all are good, some are better, others are the best, not all are great.  This is the kind of humility that we missed many times, the failure to recognize God’s unique and individual gift to each one of us. And instead of these gifts building our community, we used these differences to bludgeon and fight each other.

These are the two things I would like us to consider in our gospel:  first the ambition to seek first place in heaven, to be the greatest, to outdo each other in love.  And second that all of us are called to greatness but not all of us can be the greatest, it is the call to recognize our uniqueness, our individual gifts for the building up of the community.

So where does Therese come in?

If I am going to talk about Therese it is because she served as the inspiration.  Because her spirituality became the kindle that set the fire burning.  But I am not going to talk about her.  I am going to talk about her sister, Leonie.  Why.  Because she is the first disciple of the Little Way of her sister St. Therese.  In fact one author called Leonie the verification that the Little Way of St. Therese works. 

Of the nine children born of Louis and Azélie Martin five children survived, all sisters – Marie, Pauline, Leonie, Celine and Therese.  When the elder sisters adopted Celine and Therese, Leonie was marginalized, the proverbial middle child. She was left to the care of a maid who abused her.  Unlike her sisters, she was intelligent nor gifted.  She was a difficult child, a rebel, and a character.  They called her “poor Léonie, the lame duck Leonie.”  Even her spirituality was such that she only said her prayers when she can’t get out of it, when she ran out of excuses.  She was expelled four times from her school.  She entered only to leave these monasteries three times.  In a word she was a disappointing daughter.  Then finally at the age of 35 she entered the monastery of the Visitation at Caen as Sr. Marie Franciose Therese and she remained there living a hidden life until she died in 1941 at the age of 78.

The Little Way worked in Leonie because in her life she welcomed who and what she was.  She embraced her poverty, her frailties and accepted all her limitations with faith, surrendering herself to the will of God. She loved her inadequacies, keeping herself humble.  She loved and sought always the will of God.

Leonie may have made a disappointing start but she had that burning and undying ambition in her heart to seek first place in heaven.  She knew that she was born in a holy family, and she felt an obligation to sanctity.  Though late she later joined her family outdoing each other in showing their love for God. 

Leonie may not compare with Therese.  She cannot compare even with her three other sisters.  But she was unique in that she allowed grace to transform her rough nature and her impossible temperament.